What is Digital Marketing?

With many people spending more of their time (and money) online, digital marketing has become an essential piece for businesses.

What is digital marketing?

Marketing, whether traditional or digital, has always been about capturing, connecting, and converting the right audience.

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is simply any marketing tactics that takes place online and helps to connect with customers. 

What does a digital marketer do?

Digital marketers manage lead generation and help businesses build brand awareness through digital channels such as social media, the business' website, email, and search engine optimization.

For each digital channel there are key performance indicators (KPI), which help the digital marketer accurately measure the performance of your business throughout each platform.

A generalist in a smaller company may possess the skill to be able to assess the KPI for several different channels, while in a larger company, there may be only one or two specialists for each digital channel. Learn more about the different types of digital marketing specialists here.

Why is digital marketing beneficial?

Digital marketing not only allows you to reach a wider audience than traditional marketing, but it also helps you target consumers who are more likely to buy your products or services.

Here are a few more crucial benefits:

1. Unlike traditional marketing (TV/radio ads, billboards, flyers), digital marketing is measurable. Metrics such traffic, subscribers, follows, shares, conversions, etc. are accurate and readily available.
2. Digital marketing is cost effective. Businesses can target specific audiences and promote to them directly which can lower marketing and advertising costs. As you track campaigns daily, you can adjust your ad spend based on the performance on a certain channel so you don't waste money.
3. It's easy to pivot and modify campaigns that are under performing. Being able to refine a digital strategy that isn't producing results as expected is highly beneficial than having to scrap the entire strategy and starting over.
4. Digital marketing allows you to engage with and learn your audience very well. Once you identify and target your audience, you are able to personalize converting marketing messages. Using and analyzing the metrics from different channels allows you to follow the entire buying journey of your customers. It is important to understand and analyze the movements of your customers to ensure that you can replicate that process for other potential customers. 
5. In getting to know your audience, you can build relationships and trust with them. The power of digital marketing allows you to speak directly with customers, receive their feedback and optimize their brand experience.

Learn more about how digital marketing can help your business today!