With the explosion of digital technology—including widespread and pervasive use of computers and smartphones—businesses began to experiment with new marketing tactics. Thus, digital marketing was born.

Overall, businesses of every shape and size can achieve powerful benefits through effective use of digital marketing methods. Furthermore, the cost of digital marketing can be tailored to each specific business, stripping many barriers to entry of traditional methods. With so many benefits available for just about any budget, it makes sense why so many businesses are succeeding with digital marketing efforts.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing refers to any marketing methods conducted through electronic devices. This includes online marketing efforts conducted on the internet. In the process of conducting digital marketing, a business might leverage websites, search engines, blogs, social media, video, email, and similar channels to reach customers.

Digital marketing takes advantage of this reality, promoting business products and services across the internet. In this way, businesses ensure that their marketing efforts are more likely to reach customers, by targeting them where they spend most of their time.

Advantages of Digital Marketing:

  • Lower costs compared with traditional marketing
  • Global reach
  • Accurate audience targeting
  • More measurable results
  • Stronger presence
  • Increased conversion rates

Aside from the above, another main advantage of digital marketing is that a targeted audience can be reached in a cost-effective and measurable way. As well as increasing brand loyalty and driving online sales.

Types of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing can be broadly categorized into the following types:

There are many practices that can be considered part of digital marketing, such as analyzing data and mobile marketing, it’s wise to strategize and mix between various practices to acquire the best results.

What Should You Focus On When Building A Digital Marketing Strategy?

Building a strategy can be tricky sometimes, most strategies fail because the main focus is set on generating leads instead of conversions. It’s also crucial to focus on building a long-term strategy, while it’s not critical to have every detail of a multi-year strategy ironed out, it is a good idea to have a plan for growth and an understanding for how a tool will help make that plan a reality.

With that said, here’s what a digital strategy should consist of:

  • Goals
  • Market Analysis
  • Target Audience
  • Duration / Timeline
  • Approach
  • Spend (daily/monthly)
  • Targeted Platforms

While the above are crucial aspects of every digital strategy, strategies could require extra attention to certain aspects more than ones. Always comprehend your goals before anything else.