Types of digital marketing

Many people ask us about the types of digital marketing they can carry out on the internet. First came marketing. That English term used to refer to any action whose objective is the sale of a good or service. Little by little, this word became king in the terminology of the sector in business schools, advertising and even high schools. We communication professionals were often thankful to be able to explain to our parents in a single word what we did for a living (even if communication sciences are something more complex, which we will discuss in another post).

Today, when talking about digital marketing, almost everyone identifies that it is internet marketing actions. But to be more specific, what kind of actions are we talking about? What can be done in the ocean that is the internet to promote the sale of a specific good or service?

When we talk about "types of digital marketing", we actually mean "digital marketing strategies". There is no such thing as digital marketing The strategies are not all watertight as if they were separate boxes, but are all part of the same thing and in most cases interrelated. Likewise, not all of them need to be useful for us. It all depends on our business, objectives and audience.

The great example of a strategy that spreads to all the others. At Presentia we consider it the king tactic in the world of digital marketing. Content marketing uses the creation of relevant and useful content to the user in order for the latter to carry out the desired action. It should form part of the rest of the strategies that come after it, as there is no point in an SEO or email marketing plan without a content thought out and that generates some impact in the reader.

Advantages

• We could speak of a very "ethical" strategy as both parties benefit. The user obtains valuable information that is of interest to them and we get another follower and possible client of our service.

Difficulties

• It is necessary to visit in depth our audience and our target audience to nourish them with what they are looking for.

• High competence is needed in copywriting, Therefore, it is recommended to have a professional.

SEO is all the rage. It would be the person who walks into your party with the latest model and starts talking to all the guests. Every company or person who is on the internet wants to be on the top positions in Google, This is why SEO experts are among the most valued professionals in the digital marketing sector today.

It is a set of "free" techniques which aim to make Google take us into account and invite us to their first page party. Contrary to what is often believed, it is not simply a matter of repeating keywords like a parrot. They are very varied techniques that range from carrying out a prior study of meaningful keywords, correctly meta-tagging the website, monitoring its speed, carrying out actions "outside the website" to obtain links and increase authority, correct maintenance, etc.

Advantages

• It is highly respected between the different types of digital marketing as everyone relies on Google.

• If it is done well and we manage to appear in the first positions with the keywords we want, we can save a lot of money in paid advertising.

Difficulties

• Not everything can be positioned. Depending on the business we have, we may find high competition for certain keywords. We must detect the positioning opportunities and focus on them. There is no point in trying to compete against Amazon for "trainers" if we are a small shop, but maybe we can compete with Amazon for a blog post that is "how to take care of sneakers correctly".

• SEO takes time. When we talk about SEO, we are not talking about doing 5 tweaks on the web and magic, we are already on Google. There are factors that Google takes very much into account such as domain authority and links to our website that are achieved over time.

The ugly friend of SEO. Although with good planning you can achieve very good results, it is not as popular as its neighbour, because thanks to SEM we will appear in the first positions of Google, but.., paying.

Advantages

• It is a relatively easy because we pay to appear in the top positions and we will be there. The challenge lies in choosing the right good texts that connect with the user so that they click on us and do not opt for the scroll towards the organic search results (those chosen by Google without any money involved).

• You can help us at the beginning. When a website has just been born, its SEO is weak because it generally has low domain authority and few incoming links. Thanks to SEM, we can compensate for this initial shortcoming and increase the visibility of our site until the SEO grows.

Difficulties

• They are still advertisements (only instead of on the marquee they are on Google) and are indicated as such. Therefore, these links are perceived as paid advertising and do not attract as many clicks as organic results.

Within the types of digital marketing, we are talking about a fairly well-known and consolidated strategy, closely related to the content marketing. These are those newsletters o planned email blasts (and authorised by the user) that provide you with information of interest to you on a specific topic or business. It can be product news if we are a shop or news information if we are a magazine, for example.

As noted above, in order for this tactic to succeed, it is essential that we provide information that really interests the customer.

Advantages

• It provides a consistent relationship and over time with the reader, very much in line with relationship marketing.

Difficulties

• The malpractice and the spam saturation often makes the user reluctant to subscribe to further information.

• It takes time. Like any relationship, we must take care of it and not only focus on telling what interests us in a unidirectional way, but also on achieving interaction with our reader.

The name itself indicates this. It is based on using the social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn to promote our brand. It is generally a method widely used by SaaS companies (those that offer applications in the cloud, such as Gmail for example) and B2C companies (those that target the end consumer).

The use of networks is also closely linked with the content marketing. The networks should not be used to talk about ourselves all the time but to publish useful content for our supporters.  

Advantages

• It is cheap and is in vogue. Nowadays there are even small businesses that, with a powerful social media strategy, have dispensed with having a website as such. Obviously, this option has its limitations and is not the recommended option for a strong online brand, but it is a real demonstration of the power of social media.

Difficulties

• There is a view that social media marketing is easy, that it consists of having a profile and posting news without any criteria. The truth is that it takes a well thought-out strategy and, in most cases, to rely on professionals to make this type of marketing work.

Affiliate marketing has been gaining momentum in recent years and is presented as the new way to earn "easy" money on the internet, especially among bloggers. Basically, it is about the promotion of another's products or services on a particular website or blog. The affiliate (the person doing the promotion) receives a commission for each transaction achieved, previously agreed with the merchant (either a sale or a visit to the external website).

It is a system based on the recommendation It is therefore necessary for the affiliate to have a certain amount of authority on the subject in order to succeed. It is worth knowing that, although websites and blogs are the most common channels for affiliate marketing, there is also affiliate marketing on the Internet. social media and even by email marketing.

Advantages

• It does not require of a large investment.
• Benefits at trader, at member and the user end. The merchant increases the number of visits and the affiliate offers resources that may be of interest to their readers, thus enriching their own content.

Difficulties

• Many are being detected malpractice and hoaxes in this type of strategy. Merchants who do not pay their affiliates or pay a lower commission than agreed, stolen links, etc. It is advisable to be very careful with the agreements that are made.
• It must be a strategy that is made naturally. Overly obvious and/or artificial promotion (or the affiliate promoting services that they themselves think are lousy) will generate rejection and can lead to a loss of reputation and credibility for both the affiliate and the merchant.

A good example of affiliate marketing is the website of Ferdy Korpershoek. In addition to generating a useful and valuable content for its followers on how to use WordPress (which gives it a certain prestige and authority in the field) has sponsored links to hosting services quality and other resources external.

The web world is developing by leaps and bounds and we are witnessing an increasingly compulsive birth of types and types of digital marketing. The trends, with their constant dynamism, are already telling us about the influencer marketing, on mobile marketing, on blended marketing... What is important, as we have mentioned, is that we are not talking about pure types of marketing, but rather that most of them are mixtures or variations of each other. We will have to wait to find out more about the effectiveness of these new methods and how they behave in the digital world that offers so many opportunities.