Types of Digital Marketing

Did you know that there are different types of digital marketing? From SEO to SEM, to Content Creation and Pay Per Click (PPC), there are many types of digital marketing efforts. You see, marketing and advertising are ever-evolving, and one of our goals here at 7efex is to always educate our audience on that evolution. If you were to ask a business owner twenty-five years ago to invest in digital marketing, they would look at you like you were crazy. Decades ago during the golden age of advertising, businesses would turn to advertise in newspapers and radio and would’ve laughed at the idea of television. Years later, you would be a fool not to try to advertise on television. Later sending an ad through the mail seemed to be very effective until everyone started to throw out their “junk mail.” We go through phases and different trends. The key is to stay on top of those trends.

Today, digital marketing is becoming more and more commonplace and slowly becoming the standard in a small business’ marketing efforts. However, with the ever-growing and fast pace evolvement of digital marketing, it could be confusing to many businesses as to which avenue would work best for their business. In order to choose the right path for your business, we believe it’s important to understand the different types of digital marketing, and although there are many to choose from, below is a list of our top five digital marketing types.

1. SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization for short might be a term that you have heard thrown around the past decade in a half or so. So, what is SEO? SEO is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. SEO works to make your business optimized for search engines like Google. The goal with SEO is to have you moving up the search engine results page rankings to have better visibility for users searching for your website or related content.

These efforts are met by conducting rigorous keyword analysis to see which keywords or phrases are trending in your industry. Efforts are then made to create content on your website with those keywords and keyphrases to hopefully have better results when people search for those phrases and search engine bots crawl the internet to find them. Efforts are also made by making sure your website has the proper loading time, is mobile-friendly, has images that are optimized, has the proper meta tags and headers, and so much more.

Please note that SEO is an on-going strategy, and the longer you invest in it, the more results it yields. It’s not a quick fix.

2. PPC

PPC or Pay-Per-Click might be another term that you’ve heard more recently. Pay-per-click is an online advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser like us pays a publisher when the ad is clicked. Pay-per-click is commonly associated with search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. In a nutshell, when someone searches for a keyword and your site pops up as an ad, we pay Google every time someone clicks on that ad.

PPC campaigns can be a short-term solution, and many use it to shift products or seasonal deals, as a way to boost revenue. It differs from SEO because instead of trying to rank organically, we are paying the search engine to boost us up for the specific keywords and phrases we’re looking for. PPC could be a great type of digital marketing for those that are looking for quicker sales, maybe for a physical or online store, rather than those offering a higher-priced service.

3. Social Media Marketing

Another term being thrown around as of recent is Social Media Marketing and for the most part Social Media Advertising. What is social media marketing? Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. These social media platforms could include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, among others.

Why social media? It should be of no surprise by now that social media is one of the most used forms of communication today. From politicians to celebrities, to Uncle Joe and Grandma Betsy, we all use social media in one way or another. And, as we always say, go to where your audience and the attention is.

Depending on your business type and model, there’s a social network out there for you. All businesses would do well to be on Facebook, but if you specialize in B2B, LinkedIn might be the one for you. If you’re a ‘visual business’ and are targeting the markets between 24-40, then Instagram might be the ideal platform.

So, how do we create a social media marketing effort? Well, sites like Facebook collect data about your likes and interests, as well as personal factors like age, location, etc. Because this information is available by Facebook, business owners are able to create targeted ads to appear on a select demographic’s news feed. These ads can be used to promote products, services or entice users to hop on over to your website for more information or view other products. This one in our opinion is one of the most powerful types of digital marketing that we’re working with as of today.

4. Email Marketing

Emails have been around for a long time. Although it was first developed in the late 1960s with the invention of the internet, Email really took flight since the creation of the world wide web in 1993. You could send a message instantly to anyone across the world, given that they had an email address and would be able to respond if they had internet access. Do you remember the good ole’ AOL days? You’ve got mail.

Although we still use email today as a tool to communicate with someone else with text, images, and attachments, marketers have also used email to reach current and prospective audiences. So, what is email marketing exactly? It’s a form of direct marketing that sends information, newsletters, offers, blogs etc. directly to your mailing list. The trick is to get a big enough list to reach many people and have those people actually open your email.

So, what is email marketing exactly? It’s a form of direct marketing that sends information, newsletters, offers, blogs, etc. directly to your mailing list. The trick is to get a big enough list to reach many people and have those people actually open your email.

Efforts are made by creating creative headlines and content to go into your email in the form of newsletters, blogs, etc. If you’re sending out unique discount codes for a brief time, it can be a short-term fix to boost sales. it can also be a long-term solution by keeping your current audience informed of anything new or current in your business.

However, you need to make sure to send the right email to the right people. Once you’ve decided on the mail you’re going to send, using email marketing tools or a digital marketing agency *cough*, us, *cough* you can design an on-brand email to send out to your mailing list.

5. Influencer & Nano / Micro Marketing

If Social Media Marketing is news to you, then we encourage you to step up your game a bit, because influencer marketing is becoming an even bigger branch of that. Remember the days when a big brand like Nike or Carl’s Jr would hire the likes of Michael Jordan to promote their brand or product? They did this because they knew that Jordan was the biggest name in basketball, and commanded attention. They also knew that people would be more likely to buy their products or use their service because MJ was promoting it. The same goes for today with influencer marketing on social media.

What influencer marketing strives to do is to use those in “power” to promote a product or a service. Those in “power” today, when we talk about influencer marketing, are social media influencers; those that have a large following on social media. And believe us when we tell you that not only do they have a large following, but a faithful one at that. So, because these influencers have such a large and loyal following, businesses and corporations are seeing the opportunity to leverage the influence to promote their brands. It’s the same concept when we used to pay high-end celebrities to promote a perfume; it’s just that the “celebrity” status and attention have now shifted to these influencers.

That being said, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the influencer has to have millions of followers to see a positive ROI. We are seeing a trend in the use of nano-influencers when it comes to influencer marketing. When it comes to influencer marketing, at times it’s ok to look beyond the old adage “go big or go home.” For the biggest bang for your buck on social media, brands are considering the impact of micro and even nano-influencers. Why? Because even though these smaller influencers have a smaller following, you better believe that they have a FAITHFUL one. And faithfulness is the name of the game with influencer marketing. They come at a high ROI for the fraction of the price of a macro-influencer.

And there you have it…

Our top five types of digital marketing efforts. Please, note that there are many more digital marketing types to choose from, but the key is to identify what will work best for your business and put your effort into it and trust the process. If you have any questions on which type of digital marketing will work best for your business, please feel free to reach out to us for a free consultation.

Good luck and Good Marketing!