Companies use digital channels such as Google searches, social networks, emails and websites to connect with their customers or prospects.
Consumers today spend twice as much time online as they did 10 years ago. Consumption patterns have really evolved, and offline marketing has become less effective, while digital marketing has become more effective.
Definition of digital marketing
Digital marketing covers all marketing activities deployed online to engage with customers or prospects, such as maintaining a website or blog, social networks, or digital advertising.
Web marketing has always been about connecting companies with their audience at the right place and time. Today, it’s all about meeting consumers where they spend most of their time: on the Internet.
HubSpot’s specialty is inbound marketing, a highly effective method of attracting visitors, converting leads, closing sales and retaining customers online. An experienced inbound marketer would be tempted to say that inbound marketing and digital marketing are virtually equivalent, but there are a few subtleties.
Before understanding what digital marketing is, it is important to understand the objectives of marketing itself.
What is its function and what does it do?
From your company’s website to the various aspects of digital communication (digital advertising, e-mail marketing, web brochures, etc.), digital marketing covers a wide spectrum of tactics, content and various marketing actions.
The best marketers know how to link each type of content and tactic to strategic objectives. Here are the most common forms of content and tactics.
The key elements of digital marketing
- Website
- Blog posts
- E-books
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
- Free online presence (e.g. comments)
- Web brochures
- Branding elements (logo, fonts, etc.)
Digital marketing techniques
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the process of optimizing a website for search engine optimization so that it gets the best possible ranking in the search engine results and attracts more organic (free) traffic.
Content marketing
This is the creation and promotion of different forms of content in order to increase brand awareness, increase traffic and generate leads or customers.
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is an approach that encompasses the entire conversion funnel and aims to attract visitors, convert leads, close sales and retain customers through online content.
Social media marketing
The practice of promoting content and a brand on social networks to increase awareness, attract traffic and generate leads.
Cost per click (CPC)
This is an advertising method to attract traffic to a website. The broadcaster is paid each time a user clicks on an ad. Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), used for paid search, is one of the most common forms of CPC.
Affiliate marketing
This performance-based advertising method involves receiving a commission in exchange for promoting third-party products or services on a website.
Native advertising
These are content-based ads that are published on a third-party platform alongside non-paid content. BuzzFeed’s sponsored articles are an example. Additionally, many marketers consider advertising on social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram ads, to be native advertising.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation refers to software solutions that automate marketing operations. It often makes sense to automate repetitive tasks, such as sending emails, posting to social networks and certain website actions.
E-mail marketing
Companies use emailing to communicate with their audiences. Email is used to promote content, special offers and events, and to redirect contacts to the company’s website.
Online Public Relations
Online PR is the development of a free online presence via web publications, blogs, and other content-driven sites. It is similar to traditional public relations in the digital world.
Online events
An online event strategy, such as webinars, can help build brand authority on a topic, grow an audience and generate leads.
Mobile marketing
In Singapour, 60% of the traffic is done on mobile. Make sure you have a responsive website and, if your company has a mobile application, your digital strategy will be strengthened.
Difference between digital marketing and inbound marketing
Digital marketing does not differentiate between inbound and outbound marketing strategies, and can be both. An outbound strategy aims to deliver a message to the largest possible audience without segmentation. Inbound attracts target customers through different tactics, especially around content.
At first glance, these two types of marketing seem similar: both are deployed primarily online and focus on creating digital content for consumers. The difference is subtle.
Outbound tactics don’t focus on the relevance or reception of the messages being delivered. For example, the flashy banner ads at the top of many websites try to convince the visitor to buy a product or take advantage of a promotion that the visitor may not be receptive to.
Inbound tactics, on the other hand, are about attracting target customers to a website by offering them online content that is designed to be useful to them. As simple as it is powerful, the blog, an inbound marketing tool par excellence, allows a company to capitalize on the terms sought by its target clientele.
In short, inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital content to attract visitors, convert leads, close sales and retain customers. The generic term digital marketing covers all forms of online marketing tactics, whether inbound or outbound.
At first glance, these two types of marketing seem similar: both are primarily online and both focus on creating digital content for consumers. The difference is subtle.
Outbound tactics don’t focus on the relevance or reception of the messages being delivered. For example, the flashy banner ads at the top of many websites try to convince the visitor to buy a product or take advantage of a promotion that the visitor may not be receptive to.
Inbound tactics, on the other hand, are about attracting target customers to a website by offering them online content that is designed to be useful to them. As simple as it is powerful, the blog, an inbound marketing tool par excellence, allows a company to capitalize on the terms sought by its target clientele.
In short, inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital content to attract visitors, convert leads, close sales and retain customers. The generic term digital marketing covers all forms of online marketing tactics, whether inbound or outbound.
The importance of digital marketing in B2B and B2C
Digital marketing can be useful for any business, regardless of the sector. Whatever your business, digital marketing invites you to define buyer personas in order to identify the needs of your target audience, and to create high quality online content. Digital marketing strategies are not the same because they must be tailored to the specificities of each company.
B2B digital marketing
The digital marketing strategy of a B2B company tends to focus on generating leads to be connected with a sales person. The role of such a strategy is to attract and convert the most qualified leads using a website and other digital channels, in order to hand over to the sales team.
Beyond the website, it is interesting to develop marketing activities on the more professional channels frequented by the target clientele, such as LinkedIn.
B2C digital marketing
The digital marketing strategy of B2C companies usually aims at attracting Internet users to a website, and converting them into customers without going through a sales person (depending on the positioning of the offer). It is a key element for any e-commerce company, but not only.
In B2C, companies focus less on leads in the traditional sense, and more on creating an accelerated buying journey, from arrival on the website to placing an order. B2C companies often need to promote their product higher in the marketing funnel and use more powerful call-to-actions (CTAs).
Channels like Instagram and Pinterest generally serve the needs of B2C businesses better than professionally focused platforms like LinkedIn.
The benefits of digital marketing
- Increased traffic
- Measuring content performance
- Increase in leads
- Improve and control your e-reputation
If you’ve ever run a print ad in a newspaper, you know how difficult it is to determine how many readers saw the page and how many paid attention to the ad. This makes it almost impossible to know if the ad generated sales or not. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing software allows you to measure the ROI of every part of your strategy.
Here are some examples:
1 – Increase website traffic
With web analytics software, you can know in real time how many users have seen your website’s homepage. Web analytics reveal, among other things, the number of pages viewed by each visitor, the device used and the origin of the visit.
This data allows you to prioritize the allocation of resources to different marketing channels based on the traffic generated. For example, if natural search only accounts for 10% of traffic, you’ll need to improve that percentage by refining your SEO strategy.
Offline marketing doesn’t allow you to know how consumers interact with a brand before they talk to a salesperson or make a purchase. Digital marketing, on the other hand, can identify trends and behavioral patterns before the final step of the buying journey. This makes it easier to decide which tactics to deploy at the top of the funnel to attract customers.
2 – Measure content and lead generation performance
If you create a brochure presenting your offer and distribute it to mailboxes, it represents a form of offline content. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know how many recipients viewed it and how many threw it away unopened.
Now imagine that you make that same brochure available on your website. In this case, you will know exactly how many visitors viewed the page on which it is hosted and you can collect the contact information of those who download it using a form.
This way, you’ll not only know how many visitors interact with your content, but also generate qualified leads with each download.
3 – Increase leads and customers generated
Combined with the right tools and technologies, a successful digital marketing strategy allows you to trace every sale back to the customer’s first contact with the company.
It is thus possible to build an attribution model, which aims to reveal trends in the way people discover and buy your products. This will allow you to effectively allocate marketing resources to address any weaknesses, and optimize the various stages of the buying journey to maximize your lead and customer conversions.
Linking marketing and sales is critical. Companies with closely aligned sales and marketing typically grow by 20% annually. Optimizing the buying journey with the help of digital technologies tends to have a positive effect on the company’s profits.
4 – Manage your e-reputation
Implementing an effective online communication strategy will affect your brand image positively, and contribute to customer loyalty. Examples :
You follow up on customer relations via social networks, in order to respond as quickly as possible to their problems. Twitter has become an important platform for customer service and is now part of the considerations for your community management strategy.
Your website has a live chat, a chatbot, or a knowledge base and you offer other means of communication and support to your customers.
What type of content to create?
The type of content to create depends on the specific needs of your audience at each stage of the buying journey. Start by creating buyer personas to identify your audience’s goals and challenges that relate to your business. Basically, the digital content you create should support these goals and help solve these problems.
Then ask yourself when your audience is likely to consume that content based on their progression through the buying journey. This is how you proceed with content mapping.
This process aims to target content based on:
the characteristics of the person who is likely to consume it (defined by the buyer personas)
the position of this person in the buying journey (i.e. the phase of the life cycle)
In terms of format, there are many possibilities. Here are some options adapted to different stages of the buying journey:
1 – Digital content in the awareness phase
Blog posts: combined with a strong keyword and SEO strategy, they are excellent for increasing natural traffic.
Infographics: easy to share, they increase a company’s chances of being discovered on social networks, where users share content. Check out these free infographic templates to get started.
Short videos: also easy to share, they allow new audiences to discover your brand via platforms like YouTube.
2 – Digital content in consideration phase
E-books: more complete than a blog post or an infographic, they are excellent for generating leads. Indeed, users are likely to provide their contact information in order to receive them.
Research reports: this high-value content is particularly effective in generating leads. Research reports also have a place in the awareness phase, as they often attract the attention of the media and trade press.
Webinars: as detailed and interactive video content, webinars are effective in the consideration phase because they are more comprehensive than a blog post or short video.
3 – Digital content in the decision phase
Case studies: publishing detailed case studies on your website is useful for visitors who are ready to make a purchase decision because they represent an effective argument.
Testimonials: If case studies are not appropriate for your business, publishing summary testimonials on your website is a good alternative. For B2C companies, testimonials can take various forms. For example, a clothing brand can post photos showing customers who have customized a t-shirt or dress, and accompany them with a hashtag unique to the brand to allow other users to share their designs.
How long before we see tangible results?
Since digital marketing ROI is easy to measure, performance often seems faster online than offline. However, it all comes down to the scale and effectiveness of your online marketing strategy.
If you spend time creating relevant buyer personas that help you identify your audience’s needs, and produce quality online content to attract and convert leads, you’ll likely see tangible results within six months.
Strategies that incorporate paid advertising tend to produce results even faster. However, to be successful in the long run, it is recommended to work on building your natural (free) reach by focusing on content, SEO and social media.
How much does digital marketing cost?
As in all fields, the cost depends on the components of your digital marketing strategy.
You probably already have a website. By focusing on inbound techniques like SEO, social media and content creation, you can achieve good results at low cost. By using a free CRM to manage the leads generated by these techniques, you ensure not only marketing but also sales and customer service follow-up at a lower cost.
Inbound marketing is all about creating quality content that your audience will want to read. Unless you outsource the creation of this content, the investment required is only in time.
Outbound techniques such as online advertising involve expenses and their cost depends on the expected visibility.
For example, to run CPC ads via Google Ads, you must participate in auctions that compete with other businesses in your industry. The goal is to appear as high as possible in Google search results for keywords related to your business.
Depending on the competitiveness of a given keyword, auctions can be affordable or, on the contrary, very expensive. This is why it is recommended to work in parallel with the development of your natural reach.
If you apply these best practices to create online experiences that are relevant to your audience, you will see results.
