Digital Marketing Defined for Newbies

What is digital marketing?

Here is a Financial Times definition: Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

So, digital marketing is all things marketing done online. Simple, right? Nope. To better understand digital marketing let’s define the assets and tactics.

Digital Marketing Assets

In digital marketing, your assets can include any or all of the following:

• Your website/blog
• Your Youtube and other video channels,
• Infographics,
• Email marketing templates,
• Marketing automation tools
• Etc…

These are mediums which allow you to reach out to both potential and current clients. These assets are opportunities for you to score a point (read: make actual sales) each time you get your audience’s attention.

Digital Marketing Tactics

Now, the tactics in digital marketing are a bit different from offline marketing because it’s less in-your-face. In fact, when your potential clients are just discovering your brand, don’t be too eager to pounce. In most cases, it’s a painful courtship process which requires you to do sly content marketing.

We add the word sly because it’s really about getting to know the way your client thinks and behaves online. It’s about giving them information and other things which they consider valuable and letting them chew it through the bone. It’s about getting them to need you so much that you can actually convince them to buy.

But hey, remember, you have to be sly. You can’t allow them to see your motive until they are sold on the idea of purchasing your product. You need to look irresistible, and you need to live up to the hype.

Content Marketing and Optimization

In content marketing, you need to get to know the ways you can give anything valuable to your potential and current client for free.

Are we talking about discounts to your store? We could be. But that is too close to offline marketing. That is also not actually free as that translates to a loss of income for you. We’re talking about something more “devious and innocent-looking”.

We’re talking about memes, infographics, graphic narratives, helpful blog articles that share expert knowledge. These are the very things you see, read and share on social media.

These are things that, at first glance, might not look like it is doing anything to direct sales to your page, but when done cleverly, it can make your product or brand an essential part of your audience’s culture. They get affected (or at least interested) and they decide: they simply need to have it.

Now, the way you structure copies for your content is similar to subtle offline advertising, however, you need to remember two things: subtlety works for humans, but you need to optimize to attract search engines. A good content marketer will know how to balance the two. If you don’t have that sensibility, hiring a professional would do you good.

Digital Marketing Strategy

Your assets are your tools and your tactics are your skills. Both are important in digital marketing, but they mean nothing without the right strategy. When you are starting out, you can try all of the possible methods to attract customers and see how that translates to some sort of sales.

As your business grows however, you need to streamline and strategize. Sure, grow your digital marketing assets first and apply basic tactics whenever you can. After the first few months, however, try to plot things out more carefully.

Analyze the performance of all your marketing efforts online, and see which parts still need to be developed more to achieve its full potential. If you want to track mentions of your brand for free, you can try Google Alerts.

Need help with your digital marketing strategy? Get a free quote now.