Digital marketing, simply put, is marketing that utilises online marketing strategies and tactics. There are so many methods and channels that digital marketing employs, such as:
Websites
Search engines
Social media platforms
Apps (desktop & mobile)
Email marketing
And more…
There are new avenues of digital marketing being developed all the time. Each platform also has various features that you will need to learn in order to utilise them for your business. Whether you are wanting to learn digital marketing for employment, or for starting your own business, learning these different methods of digital marketing can be incredibly time consuming. However, the benefits they yield make learning these skills a worthy long-term investment.
Digital marketing has become the mainstream method of marketing. Customers are trading in the traditional brick and mortar shopping experience for a more convenient online experience. This has been a significant transition over the last 10-20years.
Marketing strategies have moved from traditional methods of marketing to digital avenues in response to this. A clear example of this response is businesses adapting during the COVID-19 pandemic: more and more orders were being placed online - this behaviour almost being forced out of necessity rather than customer preference. It was Hard not to notice, once restrictions on retail stores and travel etc., were in place, that your inbox may have became flooded with even more email marketing than usual, and your social media pages abound with ads tailored to your preferences. These are just two examples of how businesses adapted to this rapid change in demand but also how they adjusted their marketing strategies to suite the digitally-orientated climate at the time.
Digital marketing has many avenues that are usually used in collaboration with one another rather than in isolation. For example, a business will use social media platforms to advertise their products or services which will encourage conversions (moving from the platform) to their website.
Some people, such as influencers, may not require conversions to their own website, but rather they advertise conversions to other business' websites instead. Although it is more common for marketing to establish various methods of marketing, social media has become a distinct and highly employed method of digital marketing in and of itself.
What is social media marketing?
As mentioned, social media marketing is an avenue of digital marketing. Digital marketers that choose to specialise primarily in social media marketing are generally called a Social Media Manager. Amongst those, there are social media managers that then specialise in particular platforms. For example, Instagram Marketing Managers specialise in the features and marketing opportunities made available by Instagram.
Social media marketing is the use of social media channels and platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram, to engage and build an audience. Your audience is your target market; your potential clients and customer base. Usually your primary marketing objectives will be growth and exposure in order to both drive traffic to your website and, as a consequence, increase sales. This is done through strategically planning sales funnels, which are the “journey” your customer takes with the end objective of completing a sales transaction. Sales funnels are a key element of social media marketing which we will cover in detail in a later post.
The main social media channels being used, as of January 2021, are:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter
Tik Tok
Youtube
Pinterest
Each platform has its own purposes and typical users. Knowing which platforms are relevant to your business is another essential aspect of your digital marketing or social media marketing strategy. It also forms a key area of you preliminary research which is the research that you need to conduct before you even create your social media accounts. This research determines your marketing strategy and, to an extent, your business objectives.
We hope you found this brief introduction to digital marketing helpful. Our topic for next week is preliminary and market research.
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Connolly Media & Marketing