There are different types and variations for each type of digital marketing but, we are about to tell you in this blog post what the most common types are and how to apply them. Read on to learn the basics of the 12 types of digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Agency Australia & Ireland

In our many years of working with the internet, marketing, advertising, game development and more, we have seen and been around the massive growth in digital marketing. Prior to 2005, you would have been a fool to invest in digital marketing. Now the tables have turned, making digital marketing a smart investment. More and more businesses are pouring their marketing budgets into digital marketing as it is considered a cheaper and effective option in comparison to print marketing and traditional methods of advertising.

Digital marketing campaigns are very cost-effective to set up, run, monitor, review, and majority of the results are measurable. This alone sets it apart from non-digital marketing and advertising. Simply put, we are truly in the digital age and it is not going anywhere anytime soon… Well, until virtual reality, time-machines or tele transportation become the new norm.

For a business taking their first step into the world of digital marketing, it can seem a little overwhelming. All the terminology, different services and technical nonsense can easily make the average person feel like a deer in headlights. Our goal is to assist small businesses to grow digitally while providing digital marketing information and explaining all it has to offer.

The core problem that prevents most businesses from investing in digital marketing, is that they do not know what they need. Unfortunately, some digital marketing agencies would take advantage of that, offering you something that will simply not give you that return on investment (ROI).

We get it, investing in digital marketing is a big decision. But you do not need to pay for the whole ‘shebang’. Sometimes it could be that you just need a little Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, or some video content to shift some seasonal products that are on sale. Or maybe some Social Media Marketing (SMM) to grow your following online. Whatever your needs, when it comes to investing in digital marketing, you need to find the right service or agency that fits your goals.

Luckily for you, the Loveridge team have put our heads together to come up with a no-nonsense list of the different types of digital marketing, so you can better understand what they are and what to invest in.

Traditional Marketing Is Not Dead Yet

While traditional advertising and marketing have diminished over the years, utilising traditional marketing alongside your digital campaign can be highly beneficial. Traditional marketing efforts can still be an effective way to generate leads, create brand awareness or sell those products and services. Traditional advertising and marketing have diminished over the years with everything becoming more and more digital, and you can see why.

How it Works

Traditional marketing includes your printed media such as advertising in magazines, newspapers, signage, flyers etc. Keep in mind that some traditional marketing sources are now being presented in a digital format such as newspapers being accessible via social media and apps on our devices.

Strategy

An important thing to consider is how can you align your traditional marketing with your digital marketing campaign. Traditional marketing is most effective when it aligns well with a successful digital campaign. So, when it comes to looking at your marketing budget, maybe consider devoting more money and time into your digital marketing as opposed to your traditional marketing. But remember the key to your success is having a great agency, partner or personally having a greater understanding of marketing and advertising as a whole. Remember to take everything into account to align with your business goals, your personal goals and most importantly your industry/consumer behaviours.

Digital Marketing Categories

There is a lot of different types of digital marketing (and we mean a lot), but leading digital marketing experts Neil Patel, Ryan Deiss and ourselves at Loveridge Digital back the theory that all digital marketing falls into 12 categories. And these are…

1. SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
3. PPC (Pay-per-click)
4. SMM (Social Media Marketing)
5. Content Marketing
6. Email Marketing
7. Influencer Marketing
8. Affiliate Marketing
9. IMM (Instant Messaging Marketing)
10. Video Marketing
11. Mobile Advertising
12. Audio Marketing

We are going to go through each of these categories with some detail, so you can fully understand what you need to be investing in. Whilst the biggest businesses in the world have their finger in every metaphorical pie, a smaller business can benefit from just focusing on, or using a few digital marketing services. It is all dependent on what kind of business you are, your industry and what your personal goals are too. Do not be fooled into thinking you need every service offered above – unless your goals line up with all the services on offer.

1. SEM- Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (or SEM) often gets confused with SEO because both have very similar names. Both also deal with search engines like Google or Bing. But these two types of digital marketing have some important differences.

While SEO helps you rank organically for your target keywords, SEM is all about increasing your website traffic from search engines through paid means. The two most used SEM services are Bing Ads and Google AdWords.

How it Works

SEM helps you put paid ads on the search results page. These paid ads look almost identical to organic search results in Google, except for an “Ad” label. They appear at the top of the page – before any organic results – giving you great visibility and instant brand awareness.

Strategy

Digital marketers love SEM because it is easy to create targeted search ads based on keywords and the searcher’s location. This means you can narrow your ads down to a specific demographic or geographical location. You can even take it a step further and target competitor keywords, making it possible for you to “steal” some website traffic from a competing business.

Search Engine Marketing is not meant to be a replacement for Search Engine Optimisation. You should always incorporate a bit of both to drive as much traffic to your website as possible.

2. SEO- Search Engine Optimisation

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO works to make your business optimised for search engines, like Google and Bing. It is all about moving you up the search engine results page rankings to have better visibility for users searching for your website or keywords related to your services. Who scrolls past the first search page, or even the first three results?! By no means is SEO a quick fix. When our clients sign up for SEO, we always inform them that the process will take time to yield results, and depending on your industry, we can guarantee page 1 results within 12 months.

There are four main types of SEO, Onsite SEO, Offsite SEO, Technical SEO and Local SEO.

Onsite SEO is the process that results in your the optimization of your websites content with the goal of gaining increased visibility in unpaid search results, this process allows crawlers bots to better understand what your website is all about and why people should care about it.

Offsite SEO is the umbrella term for all the SEO techniques that are utilized off your actual website, an example of this would be back link building which means placing links to your content in reptuatable places on the internet where users may be interested in your content, this is often done through the process of guest blogging & collaboration with other websites.

Technical SEO is where we dive into the files of your website and do a full audit of your codebase to look for areas that can be improved to increase load time which in turn reduces your sites bounce rate over an extended period of time, its pretty simple the faster your site loads, the more likely someone is to stay on your website!

Local SEO is a type of SEO that focuses on getting your business listing to show up in Google map results. There is no charge for clicks. Please keep in mind for both Organic and Local this does not mean the service is free, it simply means that your website traffic is not in a paid state.

How it Works

Through keyword research and ranking analysis along with a full technical breakdown of your site, we determine how your website currently performs and ranks against your competitors. We then work on optimising your website onsite and offsite through smaller subcategories, utilising various techniques within the SEO world such as Page Speed Optimization & Backlinking Building but to name a few. It is important your content is optimised as it is crawled by search engine robots, or crawlers, to collate the data and index it in search engine archives. Then, when a lead or customer uses a relevant search term to your services or keywords, Google will return your site as a result to the customer. The ranking determines how relevant your site is to a user’s search term. The goal is to be in the coveted top 3 spots whether that is local or organically.

Strategy

SEO is an ongoing strategy, and the longer you invest in it, the more results it yields. It is not a quick fix or a quick solution. Most SEO services will cost money but once again, use a reputable agency otherwise, you might find your website backlinked to some dodgy sites, or your website targeting the wrong geolocation.

3. PPC- Pay Per Click

PPC or Pay Per Click is a form of advertising on search engines, like Google and Bing. It is a way of moving to the top of search engine results pages by paid means. It is called PPC because your ad account is charged every time one of your adverts is clicked. The cost of each ad, or CPC (cost per click), depends on the quality score of your website and the selected keyword’s competition. PPC campaigns can be a short-term solution, and they have many uses including shifting products or seasonal deals, boosting revenue or depending on the saturation in your industry, your goal may be to maintain the number 1 spot. There are around 4 spots for Ads on Google, so getting your website in the for a selected keyword can be challenging. SEO work is about your ranking being ‘earned’, but PPC your ranking on the first page is bought.

How it Works

By bidding on a selected keyword or search term, you can make your way into the 4 ad spaces on offer by Google. Through tools like Google AdWords, PPC pros work on finding keywords that your website will perform well, and dependent on the competition, CPC is determined. Through bidding on keywords, against competitors, your ad appears in relevant search results and will charge you if a user clicks on your ad.

Strategy

Many of our clients use both short-term and long-term PPC campaigns. Dependent on your industry, goals and what you are using your PPC for, PPC campaigns should never be a standalone digital marketing effort, and should always be run in conjunction with other marketing efforts, whether that be traditional or digital. Always do your research, find successful keywords that do not charge too much and never be scared to try new strategies. Think ahead of the competition and not with them.

4. SMM Social Media Marketing

SMM or Social Media Marketing is the process of working on marketing through, you guessed it, social media. With the ever-growing social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (to name a few), businesses online need to invest in social media marketing in order to grow their following and reach a whole new pool of potential customers. Dependent on your business type, there is a social network out there for you. All businesses would do well to be on Facebook, but if you specialise in business to business (B2B), LinkedIn is the one for you. If you are a ‘visual business’, then Instagram is the ideal platform. We could go on and on, but you get the point. If you are not currently on social media, now is the time. But how do you market on social media?

How it Works

As, you would be aware sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more collect data about you. They collect information in a private manner which is secure but what they collect is information around what you like, your interests, what you search for and what you engage with. They also gather information regarding personal factors like your age, your location and more. Some of this information is available to Facebook business users to create targeted ads and our mission is to place adverts on social media that resonate with the selected demographic.

SMM has two areas businesses focus on organic and paid. Organic strategies are focused on providing valuable content, while paid is generally focused on your campaign or business goals. Some SMM goals are to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate new leads, grow revenue (signups or sales), boost brand engagement, build communities, provide more customer service touch points and more. Social media should always be considered as a major driving tool in the hopes of gaining more business through social platforms.

Strategy

SMM should be used in today’s world in both a long-term and short-term investment. This includes organic and paid campaigns. Whilst maintaining a social media presence is key, always think quality over quantity and you must pay to play. Use targeted ads over a short-term period otherwise, it could cost a lot, with minimal return. When using ads remember to decide on at least one of the following three targeting methods: interest, broad category or precise targeting. Your decision should always be made before creating your advert. Also, remember video is king, and while writing your copy think Neil Patel’s AIDA Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

5. Content Marketing

This style of marketing is a little different than the previous ones we have mentioned. It is not so much about directly marketing products and services to customers, but rather creating enriching and valuable content that enhances customer experience. Some of the biggest brands in the world will actively use blogs for this, and entertaining/informational videos for social channels. It is what establishes your business as a brand and essentially what increases your customers interest in you. It is promoting your brand by providing information that is both enriching and engaging, without incentive-driven advertising. For example, our ‘Getting into it with Loveridge’ series is based solely on a content marketing strategy that fits into our SMM strategy.

How it Works

Through posting blogs, videos, and infographic images, you can build up a loyal consumer base, that visit your sites and channels for content that serves a purpose. Your customers will appreciate the effort behind every blog, video, or image you post that provides information. It is about listening to your customer needs and producing what they want. If your content is share-worthy enough, it can help drive in traffic and potentially more business.

Strategy

Just like SEO, content marketing should be a long-term investment. To yield results, constant work is required, similarly to SEO. Always remember to think ‘Value, Value, Value ‘. What will bring value to my audience? What would they appreciate? You may even look at competitors to find out what content they are delivering.

6. Email Marketing

Another form of digital marketing is email marketing, and you have guessed it, it involves email. It is a form of direct marketing which sends information, offers, etc directly to your communities that you have built from your SMM and SEO efforts. Through a sea of emails, your marketing email will appear, but the trick is getting it read. Yes, it may emerge alongside 100’s of emails, and if you cannot create an email that is eye-catching, then it will be lost. Luckily, there are email marketing tools and agencies (like us), that can assist you. Email marketing is a great way to reach your customers, interact with them after purchases, or even sending them a newsletter. Be warned,

sending unsolicited emails will land you a place in the spam box, or worse, drive your customers away. So, make sure you have gathered your mailing list by your own means, and not from a third-party company. They need to be your customers or have opted in to receiving your mail.

How it Works

By using your existing mailing list, you can create a prospective list of recipients for your mail. Whether it be for remarketing or to update them on a new service/product/ blog post, you need to send the right email to the right people. This means segmentation should be active amongst your lists. With your analytic tools, you can monitor things like open rate, deliverability, click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, number of clicks, plus more.

Strategy

Email marketing is usually considered more in short term campaigns but can also be used in long-term strategies. If you are running a blitz launch campaign or a funnel, it can be a short-term campaign to boost sales. Or if you choose to send blogs, newsletters, or product updates, to boost your website traffic, those would be used long term. Just keep in mind that by bombarding people with email after email, you may end up on the “I hate this company” list.

7. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing utilises those in a position of ‘power’, usually social media influencers or industry experts etc. Influencers could be professional athletes, business gurus, etc. Influencers generally assist businesses in a short-term marketing campaign to influence consumers buying behaviours. Influencer marketing has been around for years through your traditional media outlets such as commercial T.V and print, however, has seen an increase in popularity in recent years. Now moving more into using all different groups of influencers through sites such as Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. These collaborations can involve giving away unique discount codes, product reviews, prize draws, etc. to the influencer’s audience, to build some buzz around your brand and campaign.

How it Works

This investment cycle usually entails finding someone with a large following or many influencers with smaller followings. This can be on social or in an industry and then approaching them with a collaboration. Most will require a payment and sometimes a cut of the sales that come from their audience purchasing their products or services. You will be required to create the project brief, and outline what you need from the influencer so they can create posts, blogs, or videos, to ‘show off’ your collaboration and bring in more sales for your business. As always it is about finding the right influencer for your business.

• Micro-influencers are people with thousands of followers, but usually not more than 100,000. These are people who usually have a specific niche or expertise and are trusted within their community, no matter how small. Plus, they are also usually much more affordable.
• Macro-influencers are people who have anywhere from 100,000 to a million followers. These influencers are usually at the top of the social media crop. If you want a bit of expertise and a decent reach, then this is the influencer type to target.
• Mega-influencers are people with millions of followers. These are usually celebrities, but some social media stars make it to this level as well. While you get the most reach out of mega-influencers, sometimes casting too wide a net does not get you as many customers as you would like. Also, mega-influencers often charge exorbitant rates, like thousands or even millions of dollars for just one post.

Strategy

Influencer marketing is usually used in a short-term campaign, to help bring in more sales or increase website traffic. Influencers usually do not continuously promote for any longer than a week. This is because their following will disengage (they get bored of seeing your product on their ‘idols’ feed). However, you can run a long-term series for an example: An Influencer could appear at your store every month for a product demonstration to draw in crowds for those bricks and mortar businesses.

8. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative types of digital marketing. It involves a partnership with an online retailer where you earn a commission from every sale or lead that you bring in. The two most common ways of doing this are:

• Offering a unique discount code to their readers/followers
• Linking to your website from their content website

How it Works

Whenever a user plugs in the discount code or clicks on the link, you pay your affiliate partner for the website traffic/sale. The most popular affiliate network is Amazon Associates, but there are also affiliate marketing programs with eBay, Shopify, and other e-commerce sites. You can also skip the middleman and establish your own affiliate program.

Strategy

It is a win-win in most cases. You outsource some of your marketing, reach a new target audience in niche communities, dictate your cost-per-click/sale, and only pay for actual conversions. In return, your partners get to earn a passive income with no upfront cost and very little stress. Ideally, you will tie this in with some form of Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Video Marketing

9. IMM or Instant Messaging Marketing

Instant messaging is most often used to connect with friends and family, but it can also be used by businesses to connect with their customers. And not just to answer questions or fulfil orders, but to promote themselves too.

How it Works

Marketing through instant messaging apps requires a slightly different approach to other types of online marketing because of the one-on-one nature of the chat. Ideally, you should personalise your messages, inspire action (e.g. “Learn more”, “Buy now”, etc.), and most of all, keep it short and snappy. Users are likely to skip over long messages.

Strategy

One of the more underrated types of digital marketing, IMM offers many advantages for your business:

1. Setting up a profile or account is a no-brainer.
2. Instant messaging is, well… instant. Customers can (and often do) view and respond to your messages immediately.
3. You can often create lists or groups to segment your target audience, allowing you to send the most relevant messages to the right people.

When considering which messaging apps to sign up for, a few stand out above the rest. WhatsApp comes out on top, with more than 1.6 billion people on the app. Facebook Messenger is a close second at 1.3 billion, while WeChat, Viber, and Telegram round out the list with a few hundred million users.

10. Video Marketing

Video Marketing had risen to the top of all strategies in 2017, and there’s no wonder why with these statistics. Using a video on a landing page is capable of increasing conversion rates by over 80%, and the mere mention of the word “video” in your email subject line increases open rates by 19%. With 90% of customers also saying videos have helped them make purchasing decisions.

So, why else should you focus on video marketing today?

According to Daniel Finn, Owner of Daniel Finn Builder, “retargeting our website visitors on social media has led to a 47% increase in visitor value city-wide. By having the Loveridge Digital team handling all my marketing efforts from creation to implementation, they have really transformed my business”

The granularity of video analytics on platforms like Facebook is one reason why, in 2018, 93% of Loveridge Digital customers reported getting a new customer on social media thanks to the video we created for them. 

Today, video is a holistic business approach, meaning video content should be produced by all teams in a conversational, actionable, and measurable way. Consumers like video because it’s easy to digest, entertaining and engaging, and marketers like it because it can give a potentially huge return on investment (ROI) through many channels.

Video is also very accessible to anyone with internet access, both to watch, produce and engage with. While in a recent case study conducted by Wistia, showing that a 10k production performed well over two times better than a lower budget production utilizing the same ad spend on a professional level, anyone can hop onto their phone and create their own video in under an hour and the quality of video needed will largely be determined by your campaign for e.g. Do you really want a phone quality video showcasing who you are or what your brand is about in sales, product, launch, tips, interview or a talking head style video? Most likely not if you want your brand to be taken seriously and professionally by the consumer. However, behind the scenes on the production to build “hype” done in an Instagram story is definitely something to consider using your phone while there is certainly a huge advantage and trend towards higher quality videos the success behind a video is all about the campaign and strategy the video is used in.

How it Works

You employ us at Loveridge Digital and we create you versatile and engaging Video content that not only gives your consumer a real-life picture of what is going on; it’s also easy to share across multiple platforms.

Strategy

You need to carefully think about how to adapt your videos into your broader advertising and marketing strategy. You will need to consider the type of Video (Check out this link for several different types https://loveridgedigital.com/most-used-types-of-videos-in-marketing/) and optimise the video for the social channels you plan to utilise. Your strategy will depend on you knowing your goals and knowing the finer details will help you pivot and generate a video campaign that has a high conversion rate.

11. Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is something that spans across all forms of digital marketing we have mentioned above. Whether it’s mobile social ads, mobile search ads or even mobile TV and radio ads, every form of digital marketing we’ve mentioned can be transferred to mobile. Businesses all over the world are shifting more of their advertising budget into mobile because consumers spend more time on their mobile devices than any other device.

How it Works

You can target mobile ads by audience segments or by using geofencing. Geofencing is one of the most popular tactics as it is based on a consumer’s physical location. This is a laser-focused strategy as you can target mobile ads to a clearly defined and relevant audience.

Strategy

You need to carefully think about how to adapt your broader advertiser strategy and optimise it for the mobile device environment. You need to consider that you have a much smaller screen size to work with and that intrusive interruptions tend to be less appreciated on mobile than any other device.

Once you have prepared everything, you are ready to launch your ad to the mobile device spectrum and begin testing conversions. You can collect data by using key metrics when running your mobile ad campaign and then invest even more time in perfecting your strategy once you know that it is working.

Knowing the fine details will help you pivot and generate a mobile ad campaign that has a high conversion rate. You can collect and analyse this data through sources such as Google Analytics.

12. Audio Marketing

Audio media may not be as glitzy as video media, but it still holds a key role in the online ecosystem. The podcast phenomenon is taking over from traditional talk radio, and music streaming sites such as Spotify and Deezer are incredibly popular.

How it Works

Audio advertisements on these platforms are an effective way to market your products and services. Since these podcasts usually feel more personal and relaxed than traditional radio, when the advertisements are played, they also feel more authentic – particularly when read out and endorsed by the host of the podcast. The increasing popularity of podcasts provides another marketing opportunity. Hosting your own podcast relevant to your products or services is a creative form of brand journalism.

Strategy

For example, if you are a sports apparel distributor, you could host a podcast on the latest sports news. Podcasts are particularly useful for marketing because people often listen to them while doing other things, as opposed to text articles or video pieces, which people must be in front of a screen to consume.

Summary

There you have it. That is our list! Hopefully, now you understand a little more about the types of digital marketing. Which means you will be able to find the right service for you. If you have any questions about digital marketing, you can speak to our team of experts. We will devise a winning marketing strategy to help with your goals!

What to Do Now? Get in touch or start “dabbling yourself”

Just remember you do not have to incorporate all types of digital marketing into your strategy, but you also should not be hyper-focused on just one aspect. Most businesses would do well to start with a mix of content marketing, SEO, SEM, and SMM and then expand to other types as you get a feel for digital marketing including finding an ROI.

We hope you found this both informative and engaging, feel free to share it with your colleagues, friends, or family!