Digital marketing is a term that refers to the use of digital technologies to promote the sale of goods and services, and it is primarily done on the internet by specialists, such as SEOs (e.g. SEO Expert HK), PPC Experts, and Social Media Advertisers. Additionally, it can be done using digital media like display advertising and mobile phones. Digital marketing first emerged in the 1990s and over the years, it has significantly changed how individuals and organizations reach out to potential customers, employees, governments and other stakeholders.

Types of digital marketing

Marketing via online platforms can take various forms. These include: search engine optimization, mobile phone advertising, search engine marketing, display advertising, content marketing, email direct marketing, influencer marketing, social media optimization, content automation, electronic commerce promotion and data driven conversion optimization. Let’s look at three main types of online advertising.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a process that involves enhancing a web page or a whole website’s online visibility in the unpaid/natural/earned/organic results of a search engine. Generally, the higher a web page or site appears in the SERPs (search engine results pages), the more visitors the site or page receives from visitors of Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Such visitors can then be more easily converted into clients. Various types of search can be targeted by search engine optimization, ranging from image search to vertical search, video search, news search and academic search, among others. SEO considers how Google and other search engines work, the search engines that targeted audience prefer to use, computer-programmed algorithms that determine search engine behavior, actual keyword terms that people type and what internet users query, among other factors.

Social Media Marketing

SMM is a form of digital marketing that involves the promotion of services and products using websites and social media networks. Most of the networks have inbuilt tools for collecting and analyzing data. These tools enable companies and other organizations to tract progress, engagement as well as failure or success of advertising campaigns. Through this form of online marketing, companies can reach out to all stakeholders, ranging from customers to journalists, government agencies, employees and members of the general public.

Affiliate Marketing

This is a type of digital marketing whereby affiliates get rewarded for attracting customers. Affiliate marketing involves four primary players: merchants, networks, publishers and customers. This form of marketing has become complex, leading to the emergence of affiliate management agencies, special third party vendors and super affiliates. The most common compensation method is pay-per-sale. Other less common compensation methods are cost-per-action, cost-per-mille and cost-per-click. Merchants favor this form of digital marketing strategy because it makes use of a pay-for-performance model. It means they will only pay commissions when sales are confirmed.

With the rapid advancement in technology, there will be major shifts in digital marketing. Companies that don’t pay attention to new trends that will emerge in the marketplace may be overtaken by competitors that do. With the increased need to attract more clients and become more visible, expect to see paradigm shifts in the above-described advertising channels. As people increasingly make use of digital devices rather than visiting bricks-and-mortar stores, and as digital platforms become increasingly incorporated into day-to-day life and companies’ marketing plans, online marketing campaigns are undoubtedly getting more widespread, efficient and effective.