Digital Advertising: Everything You Need to Know

There are many different marketing techniques that you can use to promote your brand, and digital marketing is an important one, especially if you consider today’s increasing shift towards the online world.

Many consumers are influenced by what they see online. Therefore, as a brand that operates mostly in the digital space, your presence on different channels and platforms is a must when you need to reach your desired audience. It’s one of the best ways to increase your brand awareness and, ultimately, sales.

Read on for a breakdown of digital marketing.

A. What is Digital Marketing?

Essentially, digital marketing is an umbrella term covering all the methods you use to build your brand and advertise online. The internet is an amazing resource for your business, and you should make sure you’re taking full advantage of it. 

According to Statista, as of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide. This means the internet can be a powerful tool for growing your business and drive profits.

B. Developing Your Strategy 

When it comes to developing your strategy, digital marketing is entirely flexible, and you can easily manipulate your strategies to suit the needs of your business. There is a wide array of tactics and techniques that you can implement. 

However, before you decide which avenues to pursue, you should think about what your brand is really about and ask yourself a few important questions. Are there any values or ethics that you want to portray? Who is your target audience, and where do they spend the most time online? Lastly, what is your budget?

C.  The Different Types of Digital Marketing

There are many different forms of digital marketing, but the needs of your business will inform what type will work best for you. 

1. Social media advertising

Firstly, there is social media advertising, which is one of the most powerful tools you could use. Think Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, or others.

On average most people will spend a couple of hours scrolling through social media every day, giving you the chance to expose your brand to millions of users.

You can use different methods to promote your business on social media, such as partnerships with influencers, sponsored posts, interacting with consumers, or banner ads.

For the most part, you can create the content yourself, or you can outsource it. It all depends on your skill level. 

But with some things, such as banner ads, you can use Creatopy and do the job yourself, even if you don’t have any design skills or don’t know any programming language. The platform has a wide range of templates and presets that you can use to ensure that your banner ad is as effective as possible. 

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO or search engine optimization is an option that shouldn’t be omitted from your online advertising strategy.

It refers to the process of getting your website more traffic through free, organic, editorial, or natural search results in search engines. The better the optimization, the higher your website will rank in search results.

An efficient SEO involves some specific activities, such as identifying and using relevant keywords with good search traffic potential and creating high-quality content in which you can include links from trusted sources.

This can then give you an edge over your competitors and increase your exposure and sales.

3. Paid advertising

Another great option for your online advertising is to use the pay-per-click (PPC) model.

These are ads that you see on websites or search engine results. They often sport a “sponsored” tag, and your business will only pay for these ads when someone clicks on them. You basically pay for the visits to your site rather than wait for them to happen organically. Hence the name: pay-per-click. 

The cost of PPC can vary depending on the third party you use to place the ad. It largely depends on what you are selling and how many clicks it gets.

4. PR

PR stands for public relations, and it’s important to note that it’s not limited to the digital marketing space. However, it’s still worth mentioning as it is all about exposure.

PR and reputation management go hand in hand. It’s all about cementing yourself as a reputable business in the minds of your consumers and build mutually beneficial relationships with them.

Using this method will make you seem more trustworthy, helping your audience decide faster to buy from you and continue doing so. 

5. Email marketing

Email marketing helps you promote your brand and increase sales, but most importantly, it makes sure you connect with your potential or existing customers at different stages of their journey.

Therefore, you can send them welcoming emails, promotions, news, exciting stories, or reminders to improve your cart abandonment rate.

Email marketing is proved to be extremely effective still, with a high return on investment, making this one of the most profitable options for your business.

6. Viral marketing

The beauty of the internet is the speed with which things move, turning everything interesting into a viral post. This is the modern age of word-of-mouth marketing.

Although useful and desirable, the viral marketing method is unpredictable, as it depends mostly on people sharing it with other people.

First, you need to try and create a piece of content that will go viral. To increase your chances, build a solid audience, then analyze it to see what they like and share in general.

If you do manage to create a piece of viral content, you could achieve overnight success.

7. Affiliate marketing

Lastly, you could choose to go for affiliate marketing, but keep in mind that your profits will depend on what you set in your agreement. 

Affiliate advertising is when you pay someone to promote your brand. Using affiliates can generate more leads and expose your brand to new audiences. 

In Conclusion

Considering how things are today, digital marketing doesn’t seem optional for businesses anymore.

The world of digital marketing is huge, and it is expanding daily, but you need to work out where your target audience is and take your product or brand to them. 

I hope that after reading about the methods above, you have a better understanding of digital marketing. Are you planning to use any of these in your marketing strategies?