The Who, What, Why, & How of Digital Marketing

Given how easy the internet has become, would you believe that the number of people using the internet every day is growing?

It is. According to Pew research, adults' internet use has increased by 5% over the past three years. Even though we often say this, offline marketing is not as effective as it once was.

Marketing is about connecting with your audience at the right time and place. You need to reach them online, as they are spending their time online.

Global Infinity Pro is a big believer in Inbound Marketing. It's a great way to engage and delight customers online. We still receive many questions from people around the globe about online marketing. We decided to answer their questions. You can click the links below to jump directly to each question or continue reading to learn more about digital marketing.

How do you define digital marketing?

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is also known as online marketing. It refers to any marketing activities that take place on the internet. Digital channels like search engines, social media and email are used by businesses to reach current and potential customers. This includes text and multimedia communication.

While seasoned inbound marketers might claim that inbound marketing is almost the same as digital marketing business near me, there are some subtle differences. Through conversations with business owners and marketers in the U.S. and U.K., Asia and Australia, as well as New Zealand, I have learned a lot about these small differences.

What is digital marketing for a business?

Digital marketing is essential at this stage for your brand and business. Every brand seems to have a website. Even if they don’t have one, they should at least have a digital presence on social media or a digital advertising strategy. Consumers now expect digital content and marketing to be a reliable way to learn more about brands. Digital marketing offers so many strategies and options that you can be creative with your marketing budget.

Digital marketing refers to the use of multiple digital channels and tactics to connect customers online. Digital marketers who are the best have clear understanding of how each campaign supports their overall goals. Marketers can support larger campaigns through both paid and free channels, depending on their goals.

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For example, a content marketer can create blog posts that generate leads using a newly created ebook. These blog posts might be promoted by the company's social marketing manager via organic and paid posts on their social media accounts. Maybe the email marketer creates emails to give more information about the company to those who have downloaded the ebook. In a moment, we'll discuss these digital marketers more.

Why is digital marketing so important?

You can reach more people with digital marketing than traditional advertising and target those who are most likely buy your product or services. It's also more affordable than traditional advertising and allows you to track your success and pivot as needed.

Digital marketing offers several major benefits:

  1. Focus your efforts on only the prospects most likely to buy your product or services.

  2. It is more affordable than outbound advertising methods.

  3. Digital marketing helps you compete with larger brands and even levels the playing field in your industry.

  4. Digital marketing can be measured.

  5. It is easier to modify and adapt a digital marketing strategy.

  6. Digital marketing can increase your conversion rates as well as the quality of your leads.

  7. Digital marketing can be used to engage audiences at all stages.

Let's get into them.

1. Focus your efforts on only the prospects most likely to buy your product or services.

You have little control over the audience that sees your advertisement if it is placed on television, in a magazine or on billboards. Although you can measure certain demographics, such as the typical readership of the magazine or the demographic in a particular neighborhood, it is still difficult to know what the actual numbers are.

Digital marketing allows you to target and identify a very specific audience and then send them personalized, high-converting messages.

You might use social media's targeting tools to target a specific audience based on certain variables, such as gender, age, location, and interests. You might also use SEO strategies or PPC to show ads to people who have shown interest in your product/service or searched for keywords related to your industry.

We at Global Infinity Pro aim to provide the best of the best business solutions that can leverage small, mid-sized, and large enterprises.

Digital marketing allows you to do the research required to identify your buyer persona and helps you fine-tune your marketing strategy over time so that you reach prospects who are most likely to purchase. Digital marketing allows you to market to sub-groups of your larger target audience. This is particularly useful if you want to sell multiple products and services to different buyer personas.

2. It is more cost-effective than traditional outbound marketing strategies.

You can track campaigns and reduce the amount you spend on certain channels if they aren't showing high ROI. This is not possible for traditional advertising. It doesn't really matter how well your billboard performs; it still costs the same regardless of whether it converts.

Digital marketing gives you complete control over how you spend your money. Instead of spending money on PPC campaigns, perhaps you decide to invest in design software to create high-converting Instagram posts. Digital marketing strategies allow you to constantly pivot so that you don't waste money on channels that don’t work.

Digital marketing is, by and large, more cost-effective and offers unique opportunities to make sure you get the best bang for your buck.

If you are a small-business owner with a low budget you might consider investing in SEO, social media, and blogging. These three strategies can provide high ROI with very little investment.

3. Digital marketing helps you compete with larger brands and even levels the playing field in your industry.

It's difficult to compete with big brands if you are a small business. Many of these companies have millions of dollars invested in national campaigns and television commercials. There are many opportunities to surpass the big players with strategic digital marketing strategies.

You might, for example, identify long-tail keywords related to your product or services and create high-quality content that will help you rank higher in search engines for those keywords. Search engines don’t care about which brand is the biggest. Instead, they will prioritize content that resonates with the target audience.

4. Digital marketing can be measured.

Digital marketing gives you a complete, end-to-end view of all metrics that may matter to your company, including impressions and clicks. This is one the greatest benefits of digital marketing. Traditional advertising is useful for certain purposes, but its greatest limitation is the measurability.

Digital marketing, unlike other offline marketing strategies, allows marketers to view real-time results. You've probably seen an advertisement in a newspaper and know how difficult it can be to determine how many people read your ad. It's impossible to determine if the ad is responsible for any sales.

Digital marketing allows you to measure the ROI of virtually any aspect of your marketing activities.

These are just a few examples.

Website traffic

Digital marketing allows you to see exactly how many people have visited your website's homepage. This is possible with digital analysis software that can be found in marketing platforms such as Global Infinity Pro.

You can also see which pages they visited, what device was used, and where they came, along with other digital data.

This information allows you to decide which channels you should spend the most time on based on how many people are visiting your site. If 10% of your traffic comes from organic search, then you will need to invest some time in SEO to increase this percentage.

It's difficult to see how people interact with your brand offline before they make a purchase or have a conversation with you. Digital marketing allows you to identify patterns and trends in people's behavior prior to them reaching the end of their buyer's journey. This means you can make better decisions about how you attract them to your site right at the beginning of your marketing funnel.

Lead generation and Content Performance

Imagine that you have created a product brochure, and sent it out through people's mailboxes. This brochure is an example of content, although offline. Problem is, you don't know how many people read your brochure and how many people tossed it in the garbage.

Imagine that you were able to display the brochure on your website. It's possible to track how many people visited the page it is hosted on your website and collect contact information of those who downloaded it using forms. You can measure the engagement with your content and generate qualified leads by downloading it.

Attribution Modeling

A digital marketing strategy that is effective and uses the right technologies and tools allows you to track all sales back to the first digital touchpoint with a customer.

This is what we call attribution modeling. It allows you to identify trends and patterns in how people search for and purchase your product. It also helps you make better decisions about which parts of your marketing strategy need more attention and which parts of the sales cycle require more refinement.

It is crucial to connect the dots between sales and marketing. According to Aberdeen Group companies that have strong sales and marketing alignment experience a 20% annual increase rate, while companies that are less aligned see a 4% decrease in revenue. Your business' bottom line will likely reflect on how digital technologies can help improve the customer journey throughout the buying cycle.

5. It is easier to modify and adapt a digital marketing strategy.

It takes a lot of effort to develop a marketing strategy. You will generally follow that strategy through to completion, then allow it to take affect and then evaluate its results. Sometimes things don't go as planned. Sometimes, you might realize that something is wrong with your calculation, an assumption was wrong, or the audience didn't react as expected. It is very beneficial to be able to adjust or pivot the strategy as you go along. This will save you from having to do it all over again.

Digital marketing offers many benefits, including the ability to easily change your strategy. Digital marketing is much easier than traditional marketing methods like billboard advertising or mailers. If an online advertisement is not performing as expected, you can easily adjust it or pause the ad to get better results.

6. Digital marketing can increase your conversion rate as well as the quality of your leads.

Digital marketing makes it easier to measure your marketing efforts. This makes increasing your conversion rate even simpler. You can measure the effectiveness of each tactic to help you develop better strategies. Your conversion rate will improve by continuously refining your methods. Online marketing is a great way to ensure that your conversion rates are high.

All leads are not created equal. Digital marketing allows you to target specific audiences that will result in higher quality leads and more likely customers. Your conversion rate will increase if you connect your business to the most valuable leads.

7. Digital marketing can be used to engage audiences at all stages.

Engaging your audience early is crucial. The first step of the buyer’s journey is to establish a connection. This helps move the lead through the sales funnel. Digital marketing makes it possible to do that from beginning to end and every step in between.

You can track the entire buying process of your customers through online channels. It is crucial to understand and analyze how customers move and operate in order to convert leads. You can track customers through digital marketing. Even if they don’t convert at the beginning, it helps to ensure that they are connected with your company.

Here is a quick overview of some of the most popular digital marketing strategies and the channels that are involved in them.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is the process of optimising your website so it appears higher in search engine result pages. This will increase the organic traffic (or free) your website receives. SEO can be used to benefit websites, blogs, infographics, and other channels.

SEO can be approached in many ways to bring qualified traffic to your site. These are:

  • On-page SEO: This SEO type focuses on the content "on the page" while looking at a website. You can answer readers' questions by researching keywords to determine their search volume, intent, or meaning. This will help you rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

  • Off-page SEO: This SEO type focuses on the activities that take place "off-page" in order to optimize your website. What activity could impact my website's ranking? You might ask. You might ask. How high you rank for keywords that you care about will depend on the number of backlinks you receive from other publishers and their relative authority. You can build backlinks by networking with other publishers and writing guest posts (and linking back) on these sites.

  • Technical SEO: This SEO type focuses on your website's backend and how it is coded. Images compression, structured data and CSS file optimization all form technical SEO that can improve your website's loading time , which is an important ranking factor for search engines such as Google.

Check out this case study from Canva to see how you can successfully integrate SEO into your digital marketing strategy.

2. Content Marketing

This term refers to the creation and promotion content assets with the goal of increasing brand awareness, traffic growth and lead generation.

You want to learn how to apply content marketing to your company? Global Infinity Pro Academy's free content marketing training resource page .

These channels can be a part of your content marketing strategy:

  • Blog posts: Writing articles for a company blog allows you to show your industry expertise and generates search traffic for your website. You have more chances to convert website visitors into leads that you can use for your sales team.

  • Ebooks& whitepapers: Ebooks& whitepapers and similar long-form content help website visitors to be more educated. You can also exchange content with readers to get their contact information. This will generate leads for your company, and help move people along the buyer's journey.

  • Infographics Sometimes readers want to see, not hear. Infographics can be used to aid website visitors in visualizing a concept that you wish to teach them.

  • Video or audio content: Radio and television are both popular channels for digital marketing. Your audience can be greatly expanded by creating content that can be shared online via video or radio listeners.

Stumped? Click below to download 150+ content creation templates

3. Social Media Marketing

This promotes your brand and your content via social media channels to increase brand awareness and drive traffic. It also generates leads for your business.

Global Infinity Pro is a tool that allows you to connect social media channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn in one place, if you are new to these platforms. You can schedule content for multiple channels simultaneously and view analytics right from the platform.

Global Infinity Pro allows you to connect social accounts for posting. You can also integrate social media inboxes with Global Infinity Pro so that you can receive your direct messages all in one place.

You can use the following channels in social-media marketing:

  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • LinkedIn

  • Instagram

  • Snapchat

  • Pinterest

These social media platforms can be used by many marketers to create a viral campaign. Viral marketing is about partnering with a well-known content creator or participating in a trend that has a large audience. In order to make something that's shareable, the goal is to spread it across social media channels.

Are you unsure how to get started in social media marketing? Get our social media content calendar for free to get your social media strategy started.

4. Pay Per Click (PPC).

PPC allows you to drive traffic to your site by paying a publisher for each click of your ad. Google Ads is the most popular type of PPC. This allows you to purchase top spots on Google's search engine result pages for a fee "per click" for the links you place. You can also use PPC through the following channels:

  • Paid Ads on Facebook: Users can pay to have a video, an image post or slideshow customized by Facebook. This will be published to the news feeds for people who are similar to your business.

  • Twitter Ads campaigns Users can pay to have a set of posts or profile badges placed in the news feeds for a particular audience. Each post is dedicated to achieving a specific goal. Website traffic, Twitter engagement, Twitter followers and app downloads can all be goals.

  • Sponsored messages on LinkedIn: Users can pay to send messages to certain LinkedIn users based upon their industry and background.

PPC can be difficult to understand at first. We have created a beginner-friendly guide that will help you get started. It's available below.

5. Affiliate Marketing

This type of performance-based marketing allows you to earn a commission by promoting the products or services of another person on your website. These are affiliate marketing channels:

  • Hosting video ads via the YouTube Partner Programme.

  • You can post affiliate links to your social media accounts.

This is part the relatively new wave in Influencer marketing . A campaign that includes influencers is a great way to use affiliate marketing. Your digital campaign can be elevated by finding the right content creators.

6. Native Advertising

Native advertising is a type of advertisement that is primarily content-led, and features on a platform alongside non-paid content. BuzzFeed sponsored posts are an example of native advertising. However, many people consider social media advertising "native" -- Facebook Advertising and even Instagram Advertising.

7. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is software that automates your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments are able to automate repetitive tasks that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do manually.

  • Email newsletters. Email automation allows you to send out emails to your subscribers. You can shrink or expand your contact list to ensure that your newsletters only reach those who are interested.

  • Schedule social media posts: Posting frequently is a must if you want to increase your company's visibility on social networks. Manual posting can be a tedious task. Social media scheduling tools make it easy to push your content to social media channels. This allows you to spend more time on content strategy.

  • Lead nurturing workflows: Generating leads and turning them into customers can take a lot of time. You can automate this process by sending specific emails to leads once they meet certain criteria. For example, when they open and download an ebook.

  • Campaign tracking &reporting:Marketing campaigns may include many different people, emails and content. Marketing automation allows you to organize everything you do by campaign and track its performance over time based on how each component has progressed.

8. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a method for companies to communicate with their customers. Email marketing is used to promote content, events and discounts, as well to direct people to the company's website. Email marketing campaigns can include the following types of emails:

  • Blog subscription newsletters.

  • Follow up emails sent to website visitors who have downloaded something.

  • Emails to customers are welcome

  • Loyalty program members receive holiday promotions

  • Customer nurturing via tips or similar emails.

Get our free guide to email marketing:

9. Online PR

Online PR refers to the process of securing earned coverage online through blogs, digital publications, and other content-based websites. It is similar to traditional PR but online. To maximize your PR efforts, you have the following options:

  • Reporter outreach through social media: For example, talking to journalists via Twitter is a great way for you to build a relationship that will result in earned media opportunities for you company.

  • Engaging online reviews about your company: Regardless of whether the review is positive or negative, you might instinctively avoid touching it. Engaging company reviews can help you humanize your brand, deliver powerful messaging, and protect your reputation.

  • Engaging comments in your personal blog or website: In the same way that you would respond to reviews about your company, responding directly to people reading your content is a great way to start productive conversations around your industry.

It can be difficult to start a PR department if you don't have one. We're here to help. Get our free PR Kit below.

10. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a method of marketing that aims to attract, engage and delight customers at all stages of their buying journey. To create an experience for customers that works with them, you can use any of the digital marketing tactics listed above. These are classic examples of how inbound marketing compares to traditional marketing.

  • Blogging vs. pop-up ads

  • Video marketing vs. commercial advertising

  • Email contact lists vs. spam

11. Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content lets you, as a brand, pay another entity or company to create and promote content about your brand or services.

Influencer marketing is a popular form of sponsored content. Sponsored content is when a brand sponsoring an industry influencer to post posts or videos about the company on social networks.

A blog post, article, or other type of sponsored content, could also be used to highlight a topic or service or brand.

12. Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

A promotion is a great way to reach potential leads who are searching for products or businesses that are related to yours. Payed advertising and SEO can be great ways to promote your business so you can capitalize on future leads. Paid ads placed on search engines are another way to increase website traffic. Bing Ads and Google Ads are the most popular SEM services. These paid ads appear seamlessly at the top of search engine result pages and are instantly visible. This is an example of native advertising.

13. Instant Messaging Marketing

It's easy to market your products via messaging platforms, even if you don't have their phone number. This is a quick way to inform your audience about flash sales, new products or updates regarding their orders. It's also an easy way for customers to reach out to customer service if they have any questions. You have the option to send messages to your mobile phone via text, or through messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.