Explore the 10 Best Types of Digital Marketing Strategie

The Types of Digital Marketing world is a beast. What are the best channels to watch? How do SEO and PPC work? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each type of digital marketing? Do you even know where to begin?

Here are the top 10 types of digital marketing to help you out. Although there are blurred lines between the various options, at least you’ll have a menu to choose from.

Digital marketing involves two questions: WHY are you using itf and WHO are you trying to reach? You will be able to achieve your goals if you choose the right formats and channels.

Digital marketing types

Take a look at the top 10 types of digital marketing, their pros and cons, and what you can do next if you want to get started.

1. A content marketing strategy

Instead of just broadcasting an advertisement message, content marketing involves creating and distributing content-text, images, multimedia- that adds value to your audience. For B2C (business-to-consumer), you can create content through social media posts, blog articles, and videos; for B2B (business-to-business), you might create white papers, reports, webinars, and educational videos.

Advantages

• It’s free because it’s about attracting customers to your brand rather than paying to reach a cold audience with your message
• With content, you can build your brand while educating, entertaining, and inspiring your audience; it’s the fuel for search engine optimization, social media, and email marketing.

Disadvantages

• As everyone now realizes the value of content, they’re pumping out blog posts, videos, and whatever else they can think of, creating a very cluttered space where it’s hard to stand out
• For your content to be effective, it must meet the needs of your customers, represent your brand, and achieve your business goals.

2. Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing is all about making sure your website appears at the top of search results when someone searches for your brand, your products, or other relevant terms. Consider Google (let’s face it, that’s the main one), but also Bing (often installed on business computers, great for B2B!). The term includes both organic search (search engine optimization, or SEO) and paid search (pay per click, or PPC), and both desktop computers and mobile devices (as well as smart home assistants now, see number 10).

Search engine optimization does what it says on the tin: optimizing for search engines! This means creating content that people are actively searching for as well as making sure that this content, and the platforms where it’s sitting, is optimized from a technical point of view as well. Everyone should be doing this, no matter what business or industry you’re in.

Advantages

• It’s free!
• When your brand appears in the organic search results, it comes across as being more ‘authentic’ and objective in the eyes of your customers

Disadvantages

• Even if you don’t have to pay directly for the search results, creating amazing content and optimizing your website takes time and effort.
• With all the content out there now, it’s very hard to rank highly in the organic search results since Google’s algorithms are constantly changing.

Pay-per-click

Paid search advertising, such as Google Adwords or Bing Ads, is pay per click. A little box that says ‘Ad’ appears at the top of the page, almost identical to the natural search results. It’s especially useful for e-commerce and local businesses to buy a top-ranking position through an auction based on keywords, geographical location, and demographics.

Advantages

• If you’re willing to pay, PPC can quickly get you top rankings
• The only time you pay is when someone clicks (hence the name!)

Disadvantages

• When you target popular keywords, it can get expensive
• The natural search results are more likely to be trusted by customers than paid ads

3. Advertising on display

The display ad, also known as a banner, is similar to the print ads you’d find in magazines, except that they’re online, and you can target specific publications your audience reads. The industry has become much more sophisticated in recent years with programmatic advertising (in which ads are booked, analyzed and optimized automatically) and retargeting (like when you look at a pair of shoes on your favorite department store website and they follow you to every website you visit for months on end).

Advantages

• Targeting and retargeting customers is very effective
• Display ads are easy to track and allow you to measure conversions in real time

Disadvantages

• It’s possible for your customers to experience ‘ad blindness,’ ignoring your ads to focus on the content they’re trying to read instead
• Make sure you maximize your impact so that people notice you, but not too much so that they get annoyed!

4. Marketing on mobile devices

Your digital marketing strategy must include mobile marketing given the amount of time your customers spend on their phones. Sandeep Kasundra designed this.

Mobile marketing overlaps with many other types of digital marketing, almost as broad as digital marketing itself. Mobile marketing involves the same things you do on desktop, but adapted to mobile, as well as mobile-specific activities such as in-app advertising, text messaging, and social messaging apps. Particularly if you’re targeting a younger audience who spends all their time on their phones

Advantages

• Since most people (including you and me!) spend more time on their phones than on their computers these days, mobile marketing involves reaching them where they are.
• To reach people in a specific location, mobile marketing can use specific audience segments or geo-fencing

Disadvantages

• With a phone, you have a very limited creative space, mobile ads have a low click-through rate (mostly due to fat finger syndrome!) and most apps are downloaded once and forgotten.
• Brands and marketing messages shouldn’t interrupt people while they’re communicating with friends and family

5. Marketing on social media.

Compared to TV, print, and even online display advertising, social media offers a whole new level of interaction and engagement. You can interact with your customers instead of just broadcasting messages to a mass audience. The options range from organic-for example, Facebook groups, page posts, stories, and Messenger-to paid-for example, Facebook ads. At least a few of these social channels should be used by every business.

advantages

• Your efforts can be multiplied as people like, comment, and share your content
• Facebook ads, in particular, have become very sophisticated, and you can target specific customer segments with your content to reach the right audience

Disadvantages

• Social networks run by Mark Zuckerberg are constantly changing, adjusting their algorithms, or finding new ways to make money, so it’s hard to keep up with all these changes and keep your marketing working.
• If you want to do social media well and consistently, you need a proper strategy and a lot more time than you think

6. Email marketing

Although email marketing may seem old fashioned in a world where everyone is instant messaging or Snapchatting, it remains one of the most effective digital marketing tools. Especially e-commerce sites and retail brands are seeing a lot of success with seasonal promotions and discounts (think Black Friday deals or Mother’s Day), while email newsletters can also be used to ‘nurture’ your prospects by giving them a lot more value than just pushing your products and services.

Advantages

• By having an email list, you can keep in touch with your followers regardless of algorithm changes (for instance, if Mr Zuckerberg suddenly decides to close your Facebook group).
• Keeping in touch with your email list regularly can help you build relationships and keep you top of mind when they’re ready to buy

Disadvantages

• To grab people’s attention away from their cluttered inboxes, you’ll need strong subject headings
• To keep them from unsubscribing, you need to keep adding value

7. Influencer marketing

When targeted to the right audience, a smaller influencer can be much more effective (and cheaper!) than one of these top influencers.

Influencer marketing involves partnering with influencers, such as celebrities, experts, and authority figures. Their loyal followers will buy from you when they recommend your product to their audience, often on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat or YouTube. You might naturally think of the Kardashians or some uber-cool young actress helping to promote your product to individual customers, but influencers can also be effective for B2B—you just partner with more serious and specific thought leaders and experts in your field.

Advantages

• By piggybacking on an influencer’s existing audience, you don’t have to wait to build your own
• Being associated with a popular personality can give you instant ‘cool points’, especially with young people

Disadvantages

• A big celebrity isn’t just about paying a lot of money – it’s about finding the right influencer based on your brand and audience, and finding a way to partner authentically with them.
• In the current climate, influencers are distrusted, so you need to be very transparent about the fact that you are paying them to promote your brand.

8. Marketing through affiliates

Affiliate marketing involves outsourcing your product promotion to other companies or individuals for a commission. Bloggers and e-commerce sites (Amazon Associates is one of the largest) are especially interested in the program. A commission will be paid to your affiliate if a customer clicks through and purchases your product.

Advantages

Your affiliates are doing the hard work of marketing and sales for you!

• As you only pay for conversions (when someone actually buys from you), there is no upfront cost.

Disadvantages

• Your brand won’t be 100% under your control, so it’s essential to educate them on your brand identity and messaging
• Affiliates can’t just be outsourced and that’s it; you need to track and monitor them.

9. Video marketing

If there’s one thing you should be doing, whatever your business, it’s probably video! Videos can be short clips or longer formats, educational or entertaining, pre-recorded or streamed live. Creating bespoke content for your digital channels is no longer just about taking a TV ad and putting it online.

Advantages

• With video, you can create a strong emotional connection with your audience and make your message more memorable than just text or even a picture alone
• Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are all pushing video, so your video content will gain more reach and engagement in these social feeds and rank higher in search engines.

Disadvantages

• You need to grab people’s attention in just a few seconds-or they’ll move on to whatever’s next in their feed.
• It takes time, skill, and money to create high-quality, engaging video contentf

10. Marketing with audio

Radio has come a long way since the Golden Age of commercial broadcasting in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Despite television replacing radio, most people still listen to the radio every week-especially with internet radio on the rise. Although you can do traditional radio advertising or similar ads on channels like Spotify, audio marketing is much broader, including podcasts and smart home assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Launching your own podcast, or simply being a guest on someone else’s, can be a great way to reach your target audience.

Advantages

• Whether it’s traditional radio or podcasts, audio is a very convenient medium that offers on-demand, on-the-go listening for a busy audience, so accessing that means reaching them where they are already spending their time.
• Audio content can be easier to produce and cheaper than video (and the audio from an existing video can even be repurposed).

Disadvantages

• Listeners will often be multi-tasking and Types of Digital Marketing it can be difficult to get them to take the next step (there is no easy button to click on for them to learn more or sign up!)
• Smart home assistant marketing is still pretty experimental, and there’s no immediate return on investment