Your Absolute Guide to Types of Digital Marketing Services

By Imeru Wambui

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mostly on the Internet, but digital marketing extends beyond internet marketing to include channels that do not require the use of the internet. It includes mobile phones (both SMS and MMS), social media marketing, display advertising, search engine marketing, and any other form of digital media.

Digital marketing is a broad field that consists of the following 7 types of digital marketing. Each type is serving a specific purpose and role in making these different types of digital marketing critical and successful.

1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

What is SEM

• Search engine marketing is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (or SERPs), such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is one of the most effective ways to grow your business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Search engine marketing’s greatest strength is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to put their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re ready to make a purchase

How does SEM work

SEM, or search engine marketing, is the act of using paid strategies to increase search visibility once a user enters a search query that matches what your business offers.

1. Advertisers bid on keywords that users of services such as Google and Bing might enter when looking for certain products or services. Brands or businesses pay for ads to appear as search results on search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. They target select keywords so that when a user searches for those terms, they see an ad from the brand or business. This gives the advertiser the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.

3. The brand is charged only if a user clicks on the ad.

SEM keywords are the terms and phrases that you target in your search engine marketing campaigns. When users search for those keywords, they see your ads.

2. Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC)

What is PPC Advertising

• PPC (pay-per-click) marketing is a form of online advertising in which advertisers accrue costs when users click their ads.

PPC is all about relevance when users are searching for specific products, services, and information at any given time. Advertisers bid on the perceived value of a click in relation to the keywords, platforms, and audience type in which it originates. Giving them the ability to show a targeted ad at the exact moment this search is occurring.

PPC can be used on sites that support digital ads like Promoted Tweets or Facebook Ads. Other forms of PPC advertising include display advertising and remarketing.

How PPC Works

1. PPC is a paid marketing strategy where a brand creates a digital ad and is charged each time a user clicks on it.

2. Every time your ad is clicked, sending a visitor to your website, you pay the search engine a small fee.

3. When your PPC campaign is well-designed and running smoothly, that fee will be trivial, because the visit is worth more to your business than what you pay for it.

PPC advertising offers a unique opportunity to:

1. Increasing sales

2. Generating leads at a lower cost

3. Promoting brand awareness

4. Grow your customer base

3. Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing

• Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing or recommending products or services of brands or businesses to their friends, readers, followers, or subscribers.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Affiliate marketing works by spreading the responsibilities of product marketing and creation across parties, it manages to leverage the abilities of a variety of individuals for a more effective marketing strategy while providing contributors with a share of the profit.

The process of implementing affiliate marketing flows includes

The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy

• Promotes that product or service

• Earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make.

• The sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another.

To make this work, three different parties must be involved: They include the following below,

1. Seller and product creators.

2. The affiliate or advertiser.

3. The consumer.

4. Search Engine Optimization/SEO

What is SEO

• SEO refers to techniques that help your website rank higher on organic search results.

SEO allows you to reach those consumers who are searching the web for content that is relevant to your business or service.

Ranking High on Search Engines

The number one objective of search engines is to provide you with the most relevant results possible in relation to your search query. The main 2 areas that search engines determine what your website is about and how to prioritize it to show on the SERP when a query is entered include

1. Content on your website

2. Who is linking to you

There are 3 elements that a Search Engine considers when determining where to rank your website on the Search Engine Results Page-SERP

1. Rank- it is the position your website falls on in the SERP when a specific query has been entered. It indicates how relevant and authoritative your website is in the eyes of search engines.

2. Authority- it determines how authoritative and credible your website content is through the following factors calculating how many inbound links it has, how authoritative the websites that link to you are and how old is your domain name

3. Relevance- they look for clues to determine how relevant your content is to a specific search query entered. They are looking for the following, actual text on your webpages, website structure, page formatting, use of keywords in your URLs, body text, webpage titles, and headlines

How Search Engines Works

1. Search query is entered, every search engine has bots that constantly scan the web, indexing websites for content and following links on each webpage to other webpages

2. The search engine looks into its index for the most relevant information for your search query

3. Displays the results on the search engine results page-SERP

4. The order is listed from the most relevant and authoritative

Every Search engine has proprietary methods to gather and prioritize website content this process is called indexing. Your website should be indexed and optimized for keywords and phrases that are relevant to what your business is offering.

Optimizing your site content for the search engines and using relevant keywords that help describe your product or service offering can help you bring more targeted traffic to your site and reach more qualified buyers online.

5. EMAIL MARKETING

What is Email Marketing

• Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses email to promote your business, products, or services and develop relationships with prospects and customers.

• E-mail marketing is an online marketing technique and communication tool that uses e-mail to send advertisements or commercial information.

E-mail and the Internet have gone hand in hand since the Web was created. The beginning of the Internet dates back to 1969 (Arpanet at that time), while the first e-mail was sent two years later (1971). Despite the rise of social media, email remains the number one communication channel with active email accounts expected to hit 4.48 Billion users in 2024.

Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel and an effective way that many businesses can leverage to play a pivotal role in their marketing strategy with lead generation, brand awareness, building relationships or keeping customers engaged between purchases through different types of marketing emails, building a relationship with your audience while also driving traffic to your website, social media, landing page or eCommerce site.

Email Marketing Benefits for Businesses

Email is the number one channel when it comes to sharing content and a communication method when it comes to business transactions. Email marketing has an average return rate of $41 for every $1 spent whereas a personalized email message will increase transaction rates by 26% compared to a generic message.

The following are benefits that businesses can derive from email marketing

1. Email Has a Great ROI of 4400% better than any social media platform.

2. One of the best features of email is its ability to be automated

3. Develop relationships such as automated email sequences that take subscribers through a customer journey that hopefully leads them to purchase from you.

4. Email integrates with Other Channels

5. Promote a business’s products or services

6. Incentivize customer loyalty.

7. Create awareness of new products, discounts, or other services on an email list

8. Educate the audience about your brand or keep them engaged between purchases.

9. Segment your emails and target users so you’re only sending them messages they want to see most

6. CONTENT MARKETING

What is Content Marketing

• Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and drive profitable customer action

• Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis.

1. Content marketing includes things like educational articles, e-books, videos, entertainment, and webinars that answer specific questions people have and provide them with something they can’t get somewhere else.

2. Content marketing must include strategic planning, content creation, distribution, and metrics for multiple stages of the buying cycle to multiple customer personas.

The goal is to have content that speaks to all of these scenarios and stages of the buying process in order to capture these interested prospects where they naturally are online.

Benefits of Content Marketing for Businesses

Statistics show that high-quality content marketing is still one of the main ways of achieving digital marketing success for both B2B and B2C brands.

The following are the benefits of content marketing to your business.

1. Get discovered by the right audience

2. Earn customer loyalty and trust

3. Enables your brand to strengthen its customer relationships

4. Grow an active and engaged subscriber base

5. Increase profits

6. Drive profitable customer action

7. Attract and retain a clearly defined audience

7. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

What is Social Media Marketing

• Social media marketing (SMM) is the use of social media websites and social networks to market a company’s products and services.

• Social media marketing is the process of creating tailored content for each social media platform to drive engagement and promote your business.

Social media marketing involves the following

1. Publishing great content on your social media profiles

2. Listening to and engaging your followers

3. Analyzing your results

4. Running social media advertisements.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Business

Social media marketing is all about connecting with your audience or customers and helping them understand your brand better. It is incredibly beneficial to your business growth.

The following are the benefits of social media marketing to your business,

1. Connect with Your Audience

2. Build Your Brand

3. Increase Sales

4. Drive Website Traffic