Digital Marketing

Digital marketing typically refers to online marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, phone, tablet, or other device. It can take many forms, including online video, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social ads and social media posts.

Digital marketing is often compared to “traditional marketing” such as magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail. Oddly, television is usually lumped in with traditional marketing.

Did you know nine-in-ten U.S. adults go online on a daily basis? Not only that, 41% are online “almost constantly.” As a marketer, it’s important to take advantage of the digital world with an online advertising presence, by building a brand, providing a great customer experience that also brings more potential customers and more, with a digital strategy.

A digital marketing strategy allows you to leverage different digital channels–such as social media, pay-per-click, search engine optimization, and email marketing–to connect with existing customers and individuals interested in your products or services. As a result, you can build a brand, provide a great customer experience, bring in potential customers, and more.

According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Mailchimp, “88% of marketers believe their marketing organization must increase its use of automation and AI to meet customer expectations and stay competitive.” Digital marketing provides an excellent opportunity for marketing automation.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.

Essentially, if a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it’s digital marketing.

Inbound marketing versus digital marketing

Digital marketing and inbound marketing are easily confused, and for good reason. Digital marketing uses many of the same tools as inbound marketing—email and online content, to name a few. Both exist to capture the attention of prospects through the buyer’s journey and turn them into customers. But the two approaches take different views of the relationship between the tool and the goal.

Digital marketing considers how individual tools or digital channels can convert prospects. A brand’s digital marketing strategy may use multiple platforms or focus all of its efforts on one platform. For example, a company may primarily create content for social media platforms and email marketing campaigns while ignoring other digital marketing avenues.

On the other hand, inbound marketing is a holistic concept. It considers the goal first, then looks at the available tools to determine which will effectively reach target customers, and then at which stage of the sales funnel that should happen. As an example, say you want to increase website traffic to generate more prospects and leads. You can focus on search engine optimization when developing your content marketing strategy, resulting in more optimized content, including blogs, landing pages, and more.

The most important thing to remember about digital marketing and inbound marketing is that as a marketing professional, you don’t have to choose between the two. In fact, they work best together. Inbound marketing provides structure and purpose for effective digital marketing to digital marketing efforts, making sure that each digital marketing channel works toward a goal.

Why is digital marketing important?

Any type of marketing can help your business thrive. However, digital marketing has become increasingly important because of how accessible digital channels are. In fact, there were 5.45 billion internet users globally as of July 2024.

From social media to text messages, there are many ways to use digital marketing tactics in order to communicate with your target audience. Additionally, digital marketing has minimal upfront costs, making it a cost-effective marketing technique for small businesses.