The Ultimate Online Marketing Guide

The internet is a beautiful place packed to the brim with information and cat videos.

The sheer size and scale of the internet are immense and almost incomprehensible. But the internet is more than a safe haven for adorable puppy videos and tutorials on how to boil water: it is any company’s marketing dream come true.

On a single platform, companies are able to connect and reach millions of people, communicate with them and share their message among them.

Companies have swarmed the internet in recent years to take advantage of this, a strategy known as Digital Marketing.

Now you may have heard of Digital Marketing along with various other hype words in seminars and other marketing-related events.

As much as you may not want to believe them, people overhyping the effectiveness of Digital Marketing are often right.

So if you have been somewhat hesitant in using Digital Marketing — it can be overwhelming — this post will help you slide right into the scene.

This guide will go over:

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is any and all marketing efforts that rely on electronic devices, and in extension, the internet.

It’s the group of activities that a company (or individual) performs online to attract new business opportunities, create relationships, and develop a brand identity.

Digital Marketing is very diverse and versatile.

The sheer amount of tools, data and channels available on the internet creates opportunities for marketers to deliver effective content to specific people, through personalization.

Are you looking for a more direct advertising strategy for a very particular audience, that will help your brand to grow?

Well, Digital Marketing strategies such as using emails or sending out ads in specific social media groups can attract a very niche audience with a tailored message based on their intentions.

Are you looking forward to advertising your company to a mass market, garner massive appeal and brand awareness?

Video ads and regular ads on social media applications and search engines should put your brand in front of millions of people.

Regardless of the type of audience you want to reach and how niche your product may be, you can easily find the public that you want.

Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Although you may occasionally see the terms “digital marketing” and “inbound marketing” used interchangeably, it’s essential to understand they’re not the same thing. 

Digital marketing is a much more general term that applies to any marketing tactics involving digital media, platforms, or communication methods.

That said, inbound marketing is actually a type of digital marketing, especially as compared to outbound marketing.

Outbound marketing is probably what you think of when you picture a more traditional marketing approach. Think marketing tactics that attempt to reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they’ve shown interest in the advertised product. 

Examples include offline approaches like trade shows and cold calls, as well as online tactics like old-school banner ads and untargeted email blasts.

On the other hand, inbound marketing is about focused strategies designed to reach an ideal audience of potential customers. 

These are people who have either shown active interest in the type of solution being sold or are struggling with pain points the solution could address.

Inbound marketing content is designed to be helpful, entertaining, or otherwise valuable to this audience.

Popular examples of effective inbound marketing techniques include subject-specific blogs, ebooks, videos, social media posts, and web-based seminars.

Why Your Company Needs Digital Marketing

Not all the people that have told you that Digital Marketing is the greatest thing since sliced bread are wrong.

A single place where you can have access to unlimited information, leads, and potential customers is an offer that no one should look over.

If you are not utilizing Digital Marketing, you are giving up on an incredibly lucrative marketing space.

That said, the most important reason for why your company needs to use Digital Marketing is simple: the internet.

The online world allows brands to communicate with all of their clients and possible clients. You don’t even need to be in the same country to find and engage your public.

And the technology turned simple phones, designed to make calls, into true computers with all the access the user needs to connect with other people. Apps, emails and websites are literally in the palm of their hands.

Smartphones are incredibly popular, especially among Millennials and Generation Z. With applications like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat taking up hours in their days, companies have very much found a direct link to their lives.

Facebook is a very famous social media site that has over 2 billion users and is a popular choice among companies to market their products.

Ads play before videos on Facebook, and it also has sponsored posts that appear on everyone’s news feed.

Instagram is another incredibly famous and popular social media site that companies use to market to a wide age group.

Although Instagram is mostly a photo and video sharing platform, companies are still able to make use and take advantage of it.

The best part about websites like Instagram and Facebook is that they all have a very wide and massive age demographic. So, on the same site, you can reach customers that are in their teens or customers that are reaching retirement age.

With such a massive reach, advertising for companies is often like shooting fish in a barrel.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools for any company to use. And to prove our point, here are some of the benefits of using Digital Marketing.

1. The most measurable form of marketing

Let’s start with what is possibly the most obvious benefit of using Digital Marketing: you can track it.

We all know that the only way to ensure that a marketing strategy is working is to check its success over time. Since everything on the internet runs on numbers and algorithms, it is easy to keep track of just how effective a marketing strategy really is.

Although that may be a little difficult with more traditional mediums, it is very simple measuring the effectiveness of a strategy with Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing analytics takes away the guessing games related to traditional forms of marketing.

Through these analytics, you can measure in real-time how many people are looking at your posts or ads, as well as how many users have opened your posts, along with all of the people that have replied, liked, or shared your post.

2. The most cost-effective marketing technique

Other than being able to track all of your posts, along with all of the likes, comments, and shares that it receives, it is also the most cost-effective marketing technique.

Now it is important to note that Digital Marketing is comparatively cheaper than most traditional forms of marketing.

While there was once a paywall between major companies and smaller ones in terms of advertising and exposure, that is no longer the case. Nowadays, smaller companies can get the attention of people that they otherwise could not.

Competing with bigger companies for the ad space in most forms of traditional marketing can be almost impossible for smaller businesses.

This is something that they can cover with the help of Digital Marketing, as they can reach an audience of their choice with minimal effort.

3. Allows you to choose any audience

Speaking of choosing your audience, another great benefit of Digital Marketing is that it can be as specific or broad as you want.

You can find specific groups or forums on social media websites like Instagram or Reddit to market to a very niche audience.

You can also market to a very broad audience through internet ads or sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram. No matter who your target demographic is, you are sure to find them through Digital Marketing.

Other than directly marketing to your audience, you can also make use of influencer marketing, which allows you to directly tap into a specific market through mediators and familiar faces.

Sometimes influencers need the support of sponsors, and to help them, users will often follow the links they provide.

Moreover, getting a respected figure in the community you are tapping into can grow trust for your brand.

4. Everyone is already there 

A common problem that people face with traditional forms of marketing is the question “Will anyone see it?”. 

Most crowded places in the city are very expensive to rent. With Digital Marketing, you don’t have to worry about such a thing. 

With billions of people using the internet and social media daily, the question is no longer will anyone see it, but rather when.

Print ads and other forms of traditional advertising also have a limit on just how many people they can reach.

No matter how big the network might be, there is a cap on just how many people a traditional marketing strategy can connect to.

On the other hand, Digital Marketing strategies have no peak of exposure and can grow along with the company itself.

5. Customers start their buying journey on the internet

Customers depend on the internet for everything, including their buying options and choices.

For more and more customers the buying journey starts with research and insight into the product or service. What better place to find out more about something than the internet?

Since the term “Google it” has become such a common part of our language, the first instinct of most people is to search for something on the internet.

A study published by Bazaarvoice in 2018 registered that 82% of smartphone owners consult the internet on purchases they are about to make.

That is the goal of designing a great Digital Marketing strategy: you can be the answer that these people are looking for.

6. The message can be customized

Another big advantage of Digital Marketing is that this strategy allows you to customize your message to the public.

Advertising today is different from the old days. Back then, when you wanted to talk to you public, you needed a generic message, that could be used in mass media such as billboards, TV broadcasts, flyers, etc.

The conversation with the public was not so effective, once you were talking to people of different genders, ages, interests. 

Now, you can target groups by their similarities, customizing the message and making it more real and directed to them.

Email marketing, online advertising, niche marketing: all of these strategies can be customized to reach the audience that you want. 

Best Digital Marketing Strategies

Now that you have a better understanding of Digital Marketing and how it is important for your company, we can move on to marketing strategies.

There are various types of Digital Marketing, each aimed to help a company in a specific area.

Each type has a different objective and is based on specific channels. It’s really important to mention that they are not mutually exclusive.

Every company, before starting its marketing, has to come up with a proper marketing strategy.

A marketing strategy often consists of all sorts of planning, from the financial side of marketing to the more intricate planning of software that they will use.

A good Digital Marketing strategy can go a long way in getting your company and brand the attention that it needs.

Choosing the right Digital Marketing strategy can be very difficult, seeing how each of them has its specific utility as well as its downfalls.

Therefore, if you are wondering what some of the best marketing strategies to use are, here is a list of the most effective Digital Marketing strategies for any company.

#1. Social media marketing

Social Media Marketing is possibly the most popular Digital Marketing trend of the current generation. It can be very hard to ignore the sheer force that social media has become over the past decade.

Social Media provides a new level of engagement that brands can leverage to increase brand awareness, positive perceptions and, if everything goes really well, even go viral!

Applications like Snapchat and Instagram allow users to connect with their friends and even celebrities. But it is also a great place for brands to show off their products and services, seeing how both the platforms rely on people sharing short videos or photos.

Other sites like Reddit rely greatly on the power of groups that share a common interest, making it a place for companies to know about the public’s current perception of their brands and publish content

These social media platforms only scratch the surface in terms of what Social Media Marketing can achieve. With over 2 billion people connected to each other through platforms like Facebook, social media cannot be ignored.

Nearly every company relies on social media to market their brand and for a good reason. To quote Todd Howard from Bethesda, “it just works.”

Since social media is so massive and branches out into various other platforms, it is difficult to be certain about which social media site to use.

The general rules fall into Facebook being the biggest social platform for any product regardless, while Instagram relies only on visual content and attracts more teenagers and young adults.

So, even though marketing is rarely about absolutes, we can certainly say that if you have a brand that’s targeted toward young adults, you need to be on Instagram.

There are many more social networks around: LinkedIn is focused on professional interactions, TikTok is a brand new contender and there’s always a new one just around the corner.

The “secret” to success in Social Media Marketing is having a valuable message on the right social network and to keep the conversation with your audience alive.

It’s a two-way communication platform. And people love to chat.

#2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Another very popular Digital Marketing strategy is using Search Engine Marketing to promote a brand.

SEM is a specific form of marketing that caters directly to people and what they are looking for. This can be done by two ways: buying ad space on search results page or by SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

When you use ad space you basically pay the search engine — oftentimes Google — for ad space on specific pages.

This means that your page will not appear as a regular search result and will be visibly different from the rest. This technique also applies to social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, seeing how both rely heavily on a search bar.

On the other hand, SEO is a organic way to attract more traffic to your blog or site by offering to the public relevant content that clarifies their doubts.

To better understand this concept, stay with us through this article.

#3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a very powerful Digital Marketing strategy. This is a set of techniques that optimize your blog or site to rank better in search engines, like Google and Bing.

This is one of the most important strategies you can do to create authority for your brand and increase your leads and clients. 

SEO’s biggest goal is to rank your content higher in the search engines, increasing the organic traffic your blog or site receives. This is so relevant in a world where 90% of the people who make Google research click on the results that are shown on the first page of the engine.

And the Search Engine Optimization technique offers a great advantage: it is way cheaper than traditional marketing strategies, such as billboards and even online advertising. 

If you write relevant content that answers the questions of the audience, while offering a good experience on your page, you have good chances to make it to the top of the search engine.

This allows companies with relatively less funding to still compete and acquire the exposure that they want.

#4. Content Marketing 

Content Marketing is also a great way to market to your intended audience.

This strategy is based on the education of the market towards the solution your company offers. Using relevant content, you can increase your clients and possible clients by educating and engaging them.

This way, they will trust in you and advocate for your brand, creating a bond of fidelity between brand and customer. 

While most people think that written content is the only thing that companies use in content marketing, the truth is there are different types of content that you can use for Digital Marketing.

Since your entire audience is living in the information age, traditional marketing and advertising methods are not as effective as before.

Catchy quotes, eye-pleasing pictures, and incredibly detailed videos of your brand and its personality can reach them just the way you want.

#5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the type of marketing where the affiliate receives a commission on every post they promote. 

So an affiliate may make multiple posts and receive payments for each of these posts, based on sales they generate.

Anyone can be an affiliate: from customers to salespeople. 

And if you wanna crossover strategies, you can join affiliate marketing with influence marketing. This way you’ll bring new audience by the popularity of those you invited to be affiliates.

This is often an option that companies offer to smaller influencers, like smaller YouTube channels.

#6. Blog

If you have embraced Digital Marketing as a way to get to more people and turn them into clients, you know that a website is an important tool for the process. 

Blogging helps a website do its job. By posting relevant content on your blog and using the appropriate keywords, your website will be on a higher page rank at any search engine.

The higher the website ranks, the more likely it is to be seen and the more traffic you will have. That means that business blogging helps with SEO.

Providing content through a blog that answers your customers’ questions and offers real solutions, you will turn traffic into qualified leads. 

By doing that you are building a relationship with those leads and nurturing them through the customer journey, which we will talk about later.

#7. Email Marketing

While each of the marketing tactics mentioned has its advantages, email marketing is the king of content and brings in an unbeatable return on investment compared to other Digital Marketing strategies.

By using email marketing, you can attract and retain customers with personalized messages that promote your content, product, and brand. 

In addition, you can segment contacts and use personalization techniques to deliver important messages to your customers.

The fact is that email marketing is effective and cost-efficient. Besides, this is an incredible tool that allows you to measure the results of your campaigns.

#8. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the key to scaling your marketing production. By using marketing automation software your department can automate basic tasks and optimize its workflow.

Email marketing, social media posting, lead generation, lead nurturing workflows and metrics analysis can all be done with a marketing automation software.

Working with these tools, your team will be able to increase sales and leads, as well as decrease the customer acquisition cost.

All of this while having more information on your clients and potential clients, mapping all steps of the buyer’s journey and having more time to think about your marketing strategy instead of doing the manual work.

#9. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is perhaps one of the most critical, relevant digital marketing strategies today, so it’s crucial that you make it part of your ongoing approach. 

As a methodology, it’s about more than simply driving traffic to your website and generating leads. It’s truly about making genuine connections with your potential customers and building strong long-term relationships with them.

You do this by creating content and presenting insights that deliver genuine value to your target audience. 

And how do you provide value? In one of the three following ways (or any combination of them).

• Attract: Bring your audience to you by creating content and starting conversations that position you as a trustworthy authority in your field.
• Assist: Provide your audience with solutions that either directly address their most pressing pain points or answer questions they have about a topic.
• Empower: Give your audience compassionate authority-level support that helps them make solid purchasing decisions and empowers them as consumers.

When you, as a marketer or brand representative, give a consumer what they need in the form of helpful information, genuine assistance, and authentic connection, they’re much more likely to buy from you. 

In this way, inbound marketing helps your brand build serious momentum.

#10. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has been a digital marketing mainstay for a long time and with good reason. 

When approached correctly, it’s highly effective at driving high-quality traffic to your website and generating leads that are highly likely to convert.

Today, PPC ads — paid advertisements designed to accompany a variety of web experiences — can take a couple of different forms. 

The one you’re likely most familiar with is the paid advertising that appears at the top of Google search results. However, advertisements that appear before YouTube videos, in mobile apps, and so forth also follow the PPC model.

One of the most significant advantages of PPC is it’s easy to scale your campaign to match your current budget since you only pay when someone clicks on an ad. 

However, the actual cost of a particular campaign can vary greatly from one project to the next.

How much it will cost to run a particular ad depends mainly on how competitive your chosen keywords are, as you must bid on the key phrases you want. 

But PPC as a digital marketing discipline is highly flexible. You can target consumers located anywhere globally, including local customers you want to attract through the doors of a brick-and-mortar business.

#11. Sponsored Content

Branded content is a huge deal in today’s digital marketing world for more reasons than one. 

Not only does branding your content help boost ongoing brand recognition, but people tend to remember branded content roughly twice as long as they do standard content.

That’s because brands have more in common with people than you might realize, including distinct personalities, voices, and values. 

So when you brand your content, you give it a unique identity that sets it apart from all the rest of the noise out there.

However, it’s not always time-effective or even desirable to produce all of your branded content yourself. 

Sponsored content is content you pay an influencer or another brand to create or distribute on your behalf.

It offers you a great way to generate more of the type of branded content that delivers results and leverage other people’s followings to expose your brand to a larger audience.

Sponsored posts are most successful when you partner with companies, influencers, and other content creators who already specialize in topics that align with your brand. 

The ideal result is material that is so in sync with your brand, it feels less like an ad and more like any other piece of helpful, entertaining content.

#12. Native Advertising

Native advertising is paid advertising that fits so seamlessly into the design of the surrounding media or website that it feels like it’s part of the experience. 

Consider the way the ads you see while scrolling through your social media feeds look just like the rest of the posts versus how an old-school banner ad on a website sticks out as something that doesn’t quite belong.

While traditional online advertising can be jarring and disruptive to a person’s user experience, native advertising blends nicely into the editorial flow of the content around it. 

It makes it easier to expose an audience to advertising without also making them feel intruded upon or otherwise interrupted.

Like other forms of paid advertising, native advertising can take many forms. One of the most popular, effective options is in-feed advertising that appears as part of the news feed flow on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 

However, native ads can also occur as content suggestions at the ends of articles and promoted listings on SERPs or in sidebars.

#13. Online PR

Also known as digital PR, online PR is a digital marketing tactic focused on distributing select content to choice media outlets. 

The idea is to boost coverage of a brand, company, product, or service and build that brand’s catalog of high-quality backlinks.

When a brand’s being talked about and linked to online, especially by trusted news sources and high-quality authorities, that’s a signal to search engines that it’s relevant and worth taking seriously. 

An excellent online PR campaign also works wonders for building brand awareness and increasing a consumer’s likelihood of buying from that brand in the future.

Online PR differs from traditional PR in several fundamental ways. Traditional PR typically leverages standard media formats like radio, television, and print to spread the word about a brand and get people talking about it. 

Since these methods tend to be less targeted than online alternatives, it can take longer to see the desired result.

Online PR tactics are more finely focused and use specially created content (like infographics, videos, articles, and interactive content) to reach specific audiences. 

The results tend to manifest more quickly, and progress is much easier to measure thanks to extra-precise metrics and user-friendly tools.

#14. Instant Messaging Marketing

Over the years, instant messaging has become so much more than just another convenient way to keep in touch with friends, family, or colleagues. 

It’s now a preferred means of communication for many people, including when communicating with businesses.

In fact, according to a recent survey by Avochato, nearly two-thirds of modern consumers — 63 percent — far prefer doing business with companies who offer text or instant message as a contact option. 

Not only are instant message and text far more in step with the amount of time modern consumers spend on their phones, but they’re also more personal.

And although text and instant message are both good options for companies looking to stay connected to their customers, instant message marketing has some distinct advantages.

You’re far more likely to forget about a standard SMS text you receive from a brand about a sale or special deal. 

However, an instant message integrates seamlessly with the rest of a person’s social media activity, so it’s more likely to attract a response. 

Plus, instant marketing messages can transition naturally into a conversation if needed or desired, making it a terrific way to establish and maintain ongoing communication.

How to Do Digital Marketing

Creating an effective digital marketing strategy isn’t just a must in today’s increasingly web-based world. It’s easier to do than you might think, even if you’re brand new to the game. 

Here’s a look at how to get started.

1. Set clear goals and objectives

Without a clearly defined goal, a digital marketing strategy is nothing more than a shot in the dark that may or may not hit the target. 

So start your journey by figuring out what your goals are, because they will be the focus of all your future efforts.

Keep in mind that solid goals are never vague. They’re not only reachable and specific but measurable. 

Otherwise, you can never be sure you’ve even made progress toward your goal, let alone reached it.

2. Build your customer personas

In the past, all a digital marketer really needed to create a solid campaign was enough information and collected data about their target demographic. (Think details like age, gender, location, interests, or profession.) 

But these days, your strategy really isn’t complete until you also have a set of buyer personas in your corner.

Buyer personas are semi-fictional identities representing one or more of your desired customers. 

They make it easier for marketers to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and are best created by interviewing actual members of the target group.

3. Conduct ongoing keyword research

Thorough ongoing keyword research is at the heart of any good digital marketing campaign.

It’s how you know what your target audience is out there searching for, so it’s naturally also the key to obtaining top ranking on Google, Bing, and the rest of the search engines. 

Keyword research is an essential part of optimizing your social media marketing campaign, as well.

Start the process by choosing a keyword research tool that appeals to you and building a running list of options. Include both high-performing keywords and clever longtail alternatives to expand your potential reach.

4. Create and maintain a blog

Content marketing is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing today, and a blog is one of the most effective tools you can have in your corner. 

Adding a blog to your company website gives you a terrific way to boost your site’s SEO and attract interested consumers to your site in the first place.

Set a content production schedule for your blog and stick to it, so your audience knows when to expect new content from you. 

Fill your blog with content your target demographic would find useful, helpful, entertaining, or just plain interesting. 

Think industry news and answers to burning questions someone shopping for products like yours might have.

5. Add variety with an omnichannel approach

Competition is fierce these days, so it’s crucial that you leverage your creativity to make your marketing material unique, engaging, and exciting. 

Innovate using an omnichannel approach to digital marketing, learn where your target audience spends the most time, and meet them wherever that is.

And although written content is still the mainstay of a good content production effort, it’s far from the only type that yields results these days. 

Modern consumers respond to dynamic imagery and exciting interactive content options, so be sure to include options like infographics, videos, professional-level images, eye-catching designs, etc.

Be open to diversifying your marketing strategies, as well, especially when looking to tap into brand new demographics. 

Energetic, clever marketing material and timely, helpful content that’s in step with a market’s current interests and concerns are crucial to meeting your marketing goals and growing your customer base.

6. Optimize for mobile

Another critical factor to keep in mind when putting together a digital marketing campaign is how prevalent the use of mobile technology is today. 

Mobile devices are no longer just items people occasionally use to shop, consume content, or search for information. 

According to research by Dynamic Yield, 76 percent of modern consumers say they prefer mobile shopping because it saves them so much time.

That means you’re losing a lot of potential business if your website and content aren’t optimized for mobile use. 

So if your site isn’t mobile-optimized, change that as soon as possible. And if it is optimized, go over your current mobile-responsive web design, go-to email templates, and so forth to ensure they’re in step with the latest standards.

7. Make yourself available to your customers

It’s no longer enough to simply add a contact page with your email address and phone number to your website and call it a day. 

Today’s consumers expect a more intimate connection with the companies they do business with. 

Your customers need to feel like you’re not just reachable but genuinely available, and it’s vital to meet this expectation.

Make sure your website’s contact page is complete and easy to find. Your landing pages should be clear, concise, and free of any requests for unnecessary information. 

Calls to action should be highly visible and crystal clear. Guarantee that your customers know they can reach you on social media, as well, and always respond to questions, comments, and messages in a timely manner.

8. Distinguish yourself from the competition

Although the digital market is filled with opportunities for great companies to connect with the right audience, there’s a lot of competition out there, too. 

And your competitors have more in common with you than you think. They’re selling similar products with similar selling points, and they’re certainly looking to sell to the same demographics you are.

If you’re not standing out from the rest of the crowd, you’re bound to get lost in the shuffle. 

So consider what makes your company different. Maybe you offer more variety in your catalog than your competitors do. 

Perhaps your products are more reliable, more efficient, or better suited to a particular type of customer than anything else out there.

Do some research to confirm your differentiating factors and make them the focus of your digital marketing campaign.

Be creative, get personal, and always keep your eyes open for ways you can connect on an even deeper level with your customers.

9. Keep track of your results

No digital marketing campaign is complete without an airtight plan for gathering and analyzing data, so be sure to monitor your progress on an ongoing basis. 

The sooner you can determine whether or not an approach is working, the sooner you can correct anything that isn’t working as it should.

Celebrate successes, but learn from failures. And don’t forget to gather and consider customer feedback as part of your process. 

Ultimately, your customers’ responses to your marketing efforts are the most telling as to whether or not they’re really working.

What Does a Digital Marketer Do

Even though Digital Marketing might seem easy in theory, it is quite complicated and requires a lot of knowledge as well as experience.

If you feel like having to learn the ins and outs of digital marketing is too much for you, then hiring a digital marketer might be just what you need.

A digital marketer — or a Digital Marketing Manager — is responsible for crafting a marketing strategy, as well as implementing and managing it.

These marketers have plenty of experience in their respective fields and can bring in an impressive amount of leads or customers to your business.

They use training and experience to find the most suitable marketing channels to promote your brand and products.

To put it simply, a digital marketer is responsible for the success of your Digital Marketing campaign.

They will accomplish the goals of the campaign while keeping in mind budgetary restrictions and other important aspects of the business.

They will also use their knowledge and experience to decide the best strategy to adopt for promoting a specific brand or product.

Although a marketing manager can be quite a lifesaver in certain situations, not every marketing manager may know what they are doing.

So if you are looking to outsource your Digital Marketing, here are a few tips on what to look for in a proper marketing manager.

What to look for in a good Digital Marketing manager

Digital Marketing can be quite challenging, especially when you are new to the whole affair.

You can learn a lot about Digital Marketing through online resources, courses, and training, but nothing quite matches the experience and knowledge that a dedicated professional has.

Professional marketing managers see that your strategy is successful throughout, with minimal expense.

However, you cannot just choose someone that claims to be an expert in Digital Marketing, which is why you should know exactly what to look for in a good digital marketer.

Here are traits that make for a great digital marketer:

Can use analytics and data effectively

One of the core characteristics of a good digital marketer is that they can use various quantitative data to their advantage.

Since the internet is completely based on numbers and algorithms, a good digital marketer will track the results of their strategy.

This means that they can actively track the success of their marketing strategy and make changes accordingly.

In other words, it is by keeping track of the performance of the strategy that digital marketers will gather data to their advantage, allowing them to make well-informed decisions.

Are true leaders

Digital marketers are much more than managers of your Digital Marketing campaign; they are proper leaders in their own right.

Since they will be leading an entire marketing team, they must have proper leadership skills as well as qualifications to lead your team.

Most importantly, they should be able to communicate their ideas very clearly with the rest of the team.

They should be understanding and sympathetic towards problems that their team members may be facing and should help them in overcoming such issues.

Finally, by setting up tangible goals and making sensible and fair decisions, they should be able to easily promote your brand in the most effective way.

What Type of Content is Better For Each Stage of The Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to their purchase. 

It follows them through four stages: becoming aware of a need, considering different solutions to fulfill that need, making a decision between the different solutions and becoming loyal to a brand.

The buyer’s journey is a very intricate process filled with doubts and many hassles for the customer.

To help your customers make more educated decisions through every step of the buyer’s journey, here is a small guide to what is relevant and engaging content at each of the steps.

Stages of the buyer’s journey

To better understand the different types of content that you should use through every step of the buyer’s journey, we will go over each step of it and the solution that you can use.

Awareness

Awareness is the first step in every buyer’s journey, as they start to identify the problem that they are facing and the possible solutions to it.

This step often includes extensive research by the customer, as they are not quite sure what they want.

So, this is where you step in to help them make a much smarter decision.

Since your customers will be researching the problem, they will need content that is precise and helps them better understand their situation.

You can provide them with this information through various social media posts, research studies, eBooks, and even blog posts, among other things.

Of course, your priority in each of these cases should be to inform your customers of their situation, and not sell your product or service.

You must give the impression that you genuinely care about your audience, and this content is less like marketing a product and more like informational content.

Consideration

Consideration is the next step in the buyer’s journey, and by now they have graduated to buyers that know the solution to their problem.

That means they are now looking for sellers that can provide them with solutions. In this case, the buyer may know about your company but are looking at other options, or may not know your company at all.

For the buyers that got into the consideration stage, you will have to change the perspective of the content as well as the type of content that you are sending their way.

While in the awareness stage you were referring to people that did not know much or anything about the source material, here your target audience knows what they want and are now looking for potential opportunities.

You will have to use videos, comparison papers, case studies, and expert guides to explain the best options.

Decision

The time has come. These customers are now willing to buy a product after doing plenty of research on its utility and more.

But now they are not just looking at products; they are looking for companies and brands that are willing to offer what they want.

Here you can take a more advertising approach to your customers so they can buy your products.

You will have to use content that perfectly represents your brand and the personality around it.

Content that works well with this specific step in the buyer’s journey are testimonials, product comparisons, product demonstrations, and even product reviews.

These types of content can be very effective in convincing your audience to get your product because of its unique selling point.

Loyalty

Once the customer purchases a product from you, this is a big win, especially with all of the competition in the market. However, your marketing to them does not end with their transactions.

In fact, this is the start of a new type of content marketing that will entice them to come back and make another purchase.

It is true some businesses do not follow up on their old customers, but these are often bigger companies like Amazon or Steam.

These larger companies have such a dominant market presence; it is often more convenient for customers to shop there exclusively.

On the other hand, smaller companies have to rely on these marketing techniques to make sure their older customers come back to shop.

Moreover, keeping in touch with your customers after their initial purchase is a great way of showing that you care.

This care can generate loyalty among buyers, making them more compelled to spend on your site.

Digital Marketing Examples

Naturally, not all digital marketing campaigns are equal. Some merely get the job done, while others absolutely knock it out of the park. 

Here’s a look at some exceptionally terrific examples of digital marketing in action.

National Geographic

When it comes to publications, it doesn’t get much more recognizable than National Geographic. 

This brand knows its strengths and leverages avenues like social media to use them to its advantage. 

For instance, National Geographic has established quite a presence on Instagram thanks to its beautiful images and worldly take on current events.

With over 200 million followers, its account is a shining example of how to turn a free social media presence into a valuable digital marketing asset.

Dove

The Dove brand name is practically synonymous with concepts like authenticity, healthy self-esteem, and mindful natural beauty. 

These values are further supported by intelligent digital marketing decisions. 

For instance, Dove’s Reverse Selfie campaign spotlighted the impact of social media on today’s children and teens by showing the reverse of one teen girl’s selfie prep routine.

That campaign is a beautiful example of how powerful and intimate digital marketing can feel when a brand is truly in sync with its audience and gets straight to the heart of what matters to them.

Alice and Olivia

Alice and Olivia is a contemporary clothing company, so its team definitely knows its way around a modern digital marketing campaign. 

The brand also happens to operate a popular blog that brings much value to its massive audience.

In other words, Alice and Olivia is a brand to watch if you want to see a stellar example of the value of digital marketing techniques at work. 

Yes, it’s embraced paid advertising and other similar avenues, but its blog is where it really shines the brightest.

Always

Another example of a brand that’s great at creating successful individual campaigns is Always. 

Take their #LikeAGirl campaign, for example. It tapped into the power of emotional marketing by asking people what does it mean to do something “like a girl”.

The idea behind the campaign was to inspire and empower an audience, and it does that very well.

However, very little of the marketing content directly mentioned the Always brand. 

This helped place the ultimate focus where it belonged — on not only the values behind the brand but the women and girls who rely on Always as part of their everyday lives.

How B2B And B2C Companies Can Use Digital Marketing Strategies

Digital Marketing plays a major role in every company’s marketing strategy. In fact, most companies only rely on Digital Marketing strategies to promote their brand as well as their business.

Two very major types of companies — B2B and B2C (Business to Business and Business to Customer) — use Digital Marketing in very different ways.

Depending on your business model and your potential audience, your Digital Marketing can be informal, outdated, or just ineffective.

Major differences between B2B and B2C

These days, B2B and B2C marketing are somewhat similar. While traditional marketing methods were different for B2B and B2C companies, social media and the internet have bridged this gap.

Thanks to channels such as social media, companies can now advertise to both companies and customers alike with the same platform and the same strategies.

The difference between these strategies comes in how the company uses them and the type of content you should address them with.

The audience

The biggest difference between these two types of businesses is their target audience. This is the first thing you will have to consider when implementing a marketing strategy. 

Customers in the B2B businesses include business owners and managers. In other words, people that know a lot about the industry that you are operating in.

Companies will have to make sure their content does not talk down to these professionals and instead talks to them.

On the other hand, B2C companies deal with customers who know a lot about the market but do not know the intricacies of the said market.

Companies will be able to market to them in an informative way, which will help them make more educated decisions.

Another big distinction between B2B and B2C customers is that one is looking for a product or service that has plenty of utility, while the other is looking for the best value.

B2C customers are often looking for products that give them the most utility for a lower price. However, B2B customers are rarely concerned with the price of a product and look more to its functionality, versatility, and utility.

Platform and tone

Another important distinction between the B2B and B2C companies is their marketing platform.

It is safe to say that social media plays a vital role in every company’s Digital Marketing strategy. The major difference between the two comes in the platform that they are using as well as the tone they choose.

B2C companies will often choose a very friendly, inviting and often very casual tone to attract their target audience.

This tone is also a reflection of the brand’s personality, which is why it is essential to every B2C business.

These companies will also use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and even Snapchat — casual and relatable social media suites — to promote their brand.

B2B companies tend to have a more serious tone and a very straightforward message. These companies use very specific social media platforms like LinkedIn and AngelList, which are all business platforms.

People that are on these sites have a business mindset, allowing you to connect with them on a more professional level.

Size of the market

The size of the market is also a major differing factor in both types of businesses’ Digital Marketing strategies.

B2C companies are effectively advertising to a massive market with millions of possible customers. 

On the other hand, you have B2B businesses that are always catering to a very specific niche of owners and managers.

Relationship with customers

B2B and B2C companies are also very different in the relationship that they form with their target audience through their marketing.

In other words, these two different types of businesses have very different business objectives.

B2C companies are more concerned with creating brand loyalty and increasing revenue.

B2B companies have a much more specific criterion that takes higher priority over increasing revenue.

Although that is not to say that increasing revenue is not one of their priorities, they are more focused on creating long-lasting relationships with their customers.

Wrap Up

And with that, we come to a close. This guide goes over what is Digital Marketing as well as everything revolving around it.

With the help of this content, you can now better implement Digital Marketing in your advertising strategy and use it to its fullest potential.

If you want to take leverage your strategy, take our Marketing Stack Assessment to identify the gaps in your marketing strategy.

After that, you will receive a customized report of technology recommendations that will improve your marketing stack!