10 Types of Digital Marketing for your Business

This is the era of digitisation. The digital marketing industry, one of the fastest-growing industries in the modern world, will unquestionably continue to ascend. The marketing skills, channels, and tools are always evolving. This is a dynamic world where everything is either progressing or regressing. With increased competition in the market, a series of new marketing tactics are always being experimented and invented.

Skill and knowledge are the main two pillars for successfully expanding digital marketing strategies. After gathering an idea on all the essential types of digital marketing, you need to decide and choose the types of marketing strategies you feel would be the most effective and premier for expanding your business. The types of online marketing are interlinked. Some of the types are specific to certain industries. So, it is important to consider this factor while you plan your business strategies. 

Remember, a stereotype strategy cannot provide you with the outcome that the combination of a few types can offer. The concept of digital marketing can be put most simply as the varied marketing strategies that use all kinds of digital devices. The average screen time of every human being, be it kids or adults, is increasing significantly with the modern lifestyle and technologies over the past two decades. There are several types of digital marketing services that help businesses to reach their targeted customers in a more appealing and productive way. These marketing strategies have taken the world of modern business owners by a storm.

We are all acquainted with digital marketing as a term. But most of us are not aware of the actual working process of it.

• Digital marketing is alternatively famous as online marketing. However, it does not necessarily encompass online media.
• It also includes some of the popular offline media as well as television and radio.
• The digital marketing industry is an ever-evolving, dynamic, and extremely volatile field.  

The digital marketing industry provides an equal chance for all sizes of business – small, medium or big.

Why is Digital Marketing a big part of every business?

• Anyone can follow the strategies for boosting their sales at a much reasonable cost, cheaper than the old marketing tools.
• The digital marketing platforms are easily accessible for both the sellers/service providers and the consumers. 

This blog will help with a comprehensive scheme on the different types of digital marketing. If you are someone new to this industry, it is imperative for you to have a thorough understanding of all these types before you decide on the strategies for your business. However, it is better to channelise your digital marketing techniques through multiple avenues rather than sticking to just one.  

Types of Digital Marketing 

There are many popular and constructive ways of digital marketing, depending on the marketing platforms and the nature of marketing strategies. One should always include multiple strategies in the list of digital marketing tools to reach the maximum number of audience from all spheres of society. Here, we have listed the most commonly used 10 types of digital marketing techniques.  

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This is one of the most important types of digital marketing for any business.

• Search engine optimisation or SEO is the process that helps your online content feature at the top of the search results in the most commonly used and trusted search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
• It is based on specific keywords.
• This strategy aids in driving substantial traffic to your websites, blogs, or other online content.

There are many different methods of doing SEO for any page. One of the most challenging parts is to follow the constantly changing algorithms of these search engines. You always need to follow up on your methods and strategies according to the trends.   

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The easiest way to understand SEM is by describing it as the paid variety of SEO.

• It is an effective way to acquire traffic from different search engines.
• This is a process through which you can advertise your product as a search result displayed among the organic search results on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Yet, these results are easily identifiable as they come with an “Ad” tag next to the URL.
• Google AdWords and Bing Ads are the two most used paid services for SEM.

You can sustainably boost the traffic towards your website by maintaining a balanced use of SEO and SEM.  

3. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

As the name suggests, this is also a paid method of marketing.

• Here the marketer pays the publisher each time the link to the website is clicked on.
• There is a thin line between PPC and SEM. SEM is mainly offered by the search engines, while pay per click is provided by almost every social network.

Some of the most popular mediums are the ad campaigns of Twitter, and Facebook paid ads, sponsored messages flashed on LinkedIn, etc.  

4. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is one of the most vital types of digital marketing in the 21st century.

• For any business, whether a new one or improving the existing business and taking it to the next level, SMM is an essential tool.
• More than 50% of the world’s population is on social media platforms now. These platforms have people from various parts of society with different priorities, choices, interests, requirements, etc. This is why marketing through these platforms can exponentially increase the traffic to your websites or other content.   

5. Content Marketing

This particular type of digital marketing aims to acquire the attention of the earmarked audience.

• Focuses on enhancing favourable responses from the customers by consistently generating valuable and relevant content.
• The contents can be anything starting from social media posts to infographics, blogs, podcasts, videos, and so on.
• One of the desired long-term goals of content marketing is to produce trust among the customers.

For increasing the effectiveness of content marketing and attaining the optimum result, it must go hand in hand with the other forms of digital marketing like SEO and SEM. 

It works when the readers relate with the content, shares and comments on it.  

6. Email Marketing

This type of marketing that has been prevailing in the industry for a long time is an excellent way to build and foster a personal relationship with the existing customer base that you have personally earned.

• Succours in developing a bond of trust with your customers
• Increases sales.
• Many different methods include: sending thank-you emails, confirmation emails, emails to inform the customers about any product update, etc.    

7. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process of outsourcing the marketing workload to outside service providers.

• The affiliate marketers earn commission by selling someone else’s products after a lead is initiated. They perform all the necessary marketing activities on your behalf.
• The process benefits you by increasing your reach to the customers with a minimised effort for marketing.
• This method is most desired among bloggers and website owners with high traffic rates as they can earn money by selling others’ products.   

8. Viral Marketing

Most of you must have heard the term “Viral Marketing.” The main objective of this business strategy is to create any type of online content that can spread across all the mediums available on the web.

• These contents embody a well-prosecuted Viral Strategy – That is, the outspread of information from one person to another is like the spread of a virus. Hence, it is also referred to as ‘Viral Advertising.’
• It uses a combined strategy of almost all methods of marketing.
• For producing the most potent viral marketing product, you have to uplift the content through multiple platforms simultaneously.   

9. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing refers to marketing strategies through SMS or apps.

Smartphones are undoubtedly one of the most commonly used devices by every human being – a fantastic weapon for digital marketing.

• You can reach people through social media, text messages, emails, etc.
• Mobiles are the one-stop platform for almost all digital marketing avenues.
• Enables you to connect with your audience through push messages using the apps or making them aware of the offers by sending messages.   

10. Radio and TV Ads 

These are the oldest forms of offline digital marketing strategies.

• This way of advertising is a promotional method to reach the audience and familiarise a brand product. Well, we are familiar with the small commercial breaks that appear amidst our favourite shows or music playlists, aren’t we?
• Although not many people now tune in to radio these days, many of us still favour the FM channels.
• These methods may seem a bit outdated, but they are not obsolete yet to be used as marketing strategies. 

The success of a business is not an overnight achievement. It demands a constant involvement of effort, implementation of the innovative techniques and above all the ways to market your product to grab public attention.

Hope the discussion on some of the biggest categories of online marketing would aid you in expanding your business credibly in today’s competitive trade market!