A Deep Dive into the 8 Types of Digital Marketing (with Pro Tips)
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Digital marketing is a diverse subject with different types, including Affiliate Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Mobile Marketing, Pay-per-click, Search Engine Optimization, and Social Media Marketing. Find out how an online digital marketing degree can help you master these concepts.
Do your colleagues and friends use marketing jargon that seems foreign to you? Do you want to better grasp innovative marketing methodologies and terminologies? Keeping up with the different marketing types and industry trends might seem daunting. Read this blog post to discover the eight critical types of digital marketing and how to use them to create meaningful marketing campaigns. Our academic expert at SNHU and Lead Strategic Partnership and Outreach at Perkins India, Perkins School for the Blind, Dr. Veena Tripathi, sheds some light on digital marketing and its importance in today’s context.
“Simply put, Digital Marketing encompasses a large variety of methods and technologies used to reach consumers digitally. Unlike traditional marketing, the Digital Marketing wave has helped brands and organizations create a strong voice through simple means.
However, with increasing competition, CAC or customer acquisition costs have increased tenfold, and marketers today need to be careful about how they allocate their budgets. For someone starting in the industry, an excellent place to start is first to understand the diverse types of marketing and learn how they can each be applied to various business contexts.”
If you are already working in the marketing or allied industries and want to accelerate your career, find out how an online MS in Digital Marketing from the US can help you.
What are the 8 Types of Digital Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing
Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing are sometimes used interchangeably. Letting others speak for you is a powerful way of getting your point across to your consumers. Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy whereby a company pays another company or person for each sale, page visit, or lead generated. With a growing influencer marketing network, brands today have specific budgets to invest in affiliate marketing.
Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are some of the most prominent channels for influencer marketing. Other companies’ blog pages are also growing as a medium for affiliate marketing. According to a report from the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the affiliate marketing business in India was projected to exceed ₹66,168.07 million (approximately $8.3 billion) by 2025.
Besides sponsoring influencers’ posts, brands today also post sponsored comments on influencers’ posts, especially on Instagram, to get more engagement.
Content Marketing:
Content marketing is not restricted to social media posts or blog writing. Content marketing is a vital strategy deeply rooted in the brand's business goals and core messaging. “Content” can refer to any written, audio, or visual piece used across any collateral like blogs, podcasts, videos, etc.
Apart from just trying to sell the product or service, content marketing is also used to build a strong brand. It is about building trust and advocacy with your consumers. While they might not be inclined to buy immediately, good content can help create awareness and encourage repeat customers to become brand advocates in the long run.
Several AI tools have helped content marketers enhance their skills. While ChatGPT can write content, most marketers use it to generate content ideas. Other tools like Grammarly can be used to improve grammar and sentence structure. Meanwhile, more sophisticated tools like Jasper AI help marketers create and draft specific content like blogs, social media posts, and emails.
Before starting with a content marketing campaign, know your audience thoroughly. Do a deep dive into their motivations, interests, most used platforms, and the types of trends they follow to help you craft better content.
Email Marketing:
One of the most effective types of digital marketing, when done correctly, email marketing is a direct way to connect with your customers. Email marketing campaigns typically rely on a known database of customers, sought from a mailing list, customer data, and data bought from third parties. An email strategy is then crafted based on the customer profile, demographics, and product fit. Many marketers use mass-mailing tools to create sophisticated email designs, send emails to a dedicated database, and track the campaign’s performance. Many email marketing campaigns directly complement the sales cycle.
- What should you include in your email marketing checklist?
- A well-defined goal and metrics to measure performance
- A couple of versions of catchy subject lines
- A mobile-friendly email design
- A footer with your company’s contact information and social media links
- A qualified email database list
The subject line is the first touchpoint and, hence, an important one for marketers. Deciding the right subject line, including personalization and variations, is critical for a successful campaign.
An online Bachelor's degree in marketing can help you get started with marketing basics and choose a specialized path forward.
Mobile Marketing:
In India, mobile penetration is 78% of the population, while internet usage is 52.4% in 2024. This makes mobile marketing an essential strategy for all consumer-focused brands. Mobile marketing involves reaching out to consumers on their mobile devices through SMS, mobile applications, social media, and more. Most brands today have adopted a mobile-first consumer outreach strategy. This means all the communication and design, like websites, images, social media posts, etc., are tailored to be viewed on mobile devices.
E-commerce is an integral part of mobile marketing. Whether it is marketing on large e-retail platforms or having your website, mobile marketing is essential to keep your consumers engaged and updated with new promotions, limited offers, and more.
Mobile marketers typically also track the type of device being used by their target audience. This helps them guesstimate the purchasing capacity of their audience and target their products accordingly.
Pay-per-click (PPC):
This type of marketing refers to paid advertising on websites and search engines. Companies typically only pay for an advertisement when a user has clicked on their link. A PPC marketer’s job is to strategize where they want users to see their ads (search engine results while browsing on YouTube or mobile apps) and how much they should pay for each advertisement.
This type of marketing is a subtle art that involves creating the right content (ensuring the right keywords are used), the right target audience, platform, and money. Some keywords might rank very high, meaning more people are searching using such keywords. However, such keywords might also be in higher demand since more brands want to capture traffic, increasing the cost per click. Hence, marketers need to make calculated decisions about how they want to invest in their PPC marketing strategies.
Dedicated courses on marketing, like an online digital marketing degree, can equip you with the proper skill set to start your journey with PPC marketing.
Apart from the search ad itself, optimize your landing pages effectively with the right keywords.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
This type of marketing helps companies list their websites higher in page results on search engine websites. Marketers try to use keywords and phrases in their content that are most searched for by their consumers and target audiences. According to leading SEO software company Moz's "Beginners Guide to SEO," SEO encompasses many elements, from the words on your web pages, how other sites link to you, and how your website is structured. There are three essential aspects to improving the SEO of a website or a page:
- Content indexing: Ensure your content pages have accessible text, include images with alt text, and add transcripts for videos and audio.
- Good link structure: Site crawlers are digital librarians collecting information from websites and pages. Ensuring the URL structure is optimized so site crawlers can index pages appropriately.
- Keyword targeting: It is essential to choose the right keywords and ensure they are used adequately and appropriately. For example, the chosen keywords must be used in the headers and sufficient times in the body copy.
Invest in creating good-quality backlinks to ensure your blog articles reach the right audience.
Social Media Marketing:
While everyone is on social media, marketers use social media as a strategic tool to build their product/service awareness and eventually lead users to purchase. Consistency is one of the most important aspects of growing your audience or follower base online. Marketers spend time strategizing the types of posts they want to create based on what kind of content is being consumed. They also stay relevant by following significant trends and incorporating them in their posts and strategies. Social media marketing can be completely organic (no added budgets for boosting posts) or include a mix of paid and organic content. The right approach depends on several factors, including the business goals.
Engage with your audience by responding to their comments, appreciating any praise, and managing any negative comments as well.
Marketing Analytics:
Marketing analytics is like the glue that ties together all other types of marketing. Marketing traditionally is goal-oriented, with several metrics that eventually add to the growth of the customer base. Modern digital marketing metrics can include:
- Click-through rates: The number of clicks gotten on marketing collateral – indicating buyer interest.
- Engagement rates: Typically measured on social media, this indicates the number of people who have interacted with content written by or about your company or brand. This can also apply to the amount of time spent on a webpage or in a mobile application.
- Return-on-investment: A measure to compare the money invested in the marketing efforts versus the returns (number of interests or leads, sales, etc.).
Expert marketers use a host of tools to track the performance of their marketing efforts. Understanding essential data from their marketing efforts can also help to draw essential insights about consumer behavior. Here is a list of some of the top five commonly used marketing analytics tools:
- Google Analytics for website performance
- SEMRush for keyword research and SEO
- Hubspot Marketing Hub for customer data management
- Tableau for visualizing and managing workflows across extensive customer data
- CleverTap for managing mobile marketing engagement and analytics
Instead of using too many tools and dashboards, several marketers prefer one tool that combines inputs across all platforms and metrics. This can also help to draw insights across different metrics.
Need for Marketing Skills
“Digital marketers are critical members of the core business team, directly influencing every stage of the sales cycle through data-driven strategies.” said Dr. Veena Tripathi. “Their role begins with customer acquisition, using awareness-focused media campaigns to attract potential buyers, and extends into the sales cycle through engagement techniques, like email marketing, to maintain customer interest and guide purchasing decisions.”
“Within digital marketing, each specialization—whether social media, content marketing, or SEO—demands specific skills and offers unique value to business objectives. For emerging marketers, gaining experience across these areas helps develop a comprehensive skill set, allowing for strategic specialization and maximized impact within a chosen domain.”
If you are passionate about marketing, consider investing your time upskilling yourself. Marketing is a continuously evolving field, and staying updated is essential. Consider pursuing an online degree in digital marketing from the US.
Discover the online MS in Marketing – Digital Marketing from SNHU: Explore the types of marketing and the syllabus offered.