Digital marketing is a bit of a buzz term lately. It’s constantly changing, and there are always new and improving ways to market your product or service to new clients and customers. Everyone is a “digital marketer”, but what exactly does that mean? What are the best digital marketing methods and tools for you and your specific needs and goals?
If the marketing world is new and confusing to you, continue reading. Don’t worry, I’ll break down 10 different digital marketing methods that can help you grow your brand and attract the right kind of audience.
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What is Digital Marketing?
Some people think that digital marketing is only on social media. While a lot of digital marketing is done on social media, and a lot of the most popular and profitable forms of digital marketing are on social media platforms, this isn’t entirely true.
If you limit your digital marketing knowledge to your social media, you’re also limiting your marketing potential.
Digital marketing is basically any advertising that’s done through digital channels.
Digital marketing isn’t exactly new. While a lot of our more popular methods of digital marketing are new, the concept has been around for a very long time. Digital marketing can also involve offline methods of advertisement.
Depending on the service that you offer, it might be beneficial for you to utilize at least one non-internet form of digital marketing. While almost everyone is online, not everyone uses the same kinds of websites and social media channels. Also, not everyone responds to the same kinds of advertising.
If you want to get the most out of your advertising plan, it’s best to diversify, and use several different forms of digital marketing to enhance your reach.
Digital Marketing Methods
You have plenty of options here, but I’m going to give you 10 to start with.
All of them have their own place in the digital marketing sphere, and some of them pair better together than others.
Remember, you want to reach new audiences and make sure that people can find your valuable content. Whatever gets you to that end goal is a good method.
1. Social Media Marketing
For me, this one has to come first.
Social media is a huge part of many people’s daily lives. If you want to be on their radar, getting in on social media is the way to do it.
Now, you can pay for ads on social media channels if you want (and this can definitely be helpful) but you can also grow social media platforms organically.
Content that you produce on your website or blog can be easily advertised or teased via Instagram or Twitter posts. The very ambitious social media marketers can start YouTube channels for extended videos on their content if it fits their goals. You can even go after the newer and younger ones like TikTok, though this looks less organic.
Social media marketing helps viewers feel connected with the brands being marketed. The advertising can feel more organic.
2. Email Marketing
How many emails do you get per day from brands that you’ve purchased things from recently?
These brands are utilizing email marketing, and you can do this too.
On your website, you can set up a screen for visitors to input their email address if they want to be notified of new content or receive newsletters from you and your brand. You’ve probably seen dozens of screens like this yourself!
This ensures that your followers are able to keep up with you. It also makes sure that the people receiving the emails have opted into it themselves. Those people will return to your site when they get the notification that there’s new content to be seen.
To make it more attractive, you can offer something along with the newsletter, like a free eBook, or useful information that they might not get from your site alone.
This makes it feel like more of a “VIP” experience and makes people more likely to subscribe.
3. Affiliate Marketing
While you might be familiar with being on the other end of affiliate marketing, how does it work if you’re the brand being advertised?
If you have a product or service to offer, and you’re looking for more customers, affiliate marketing can be really useful.
Essentially, bloggers, influencers, and other digital users can come to you for affiliate codes or links to share with their platform. If they convert their users into using your products or services, they get paid a small commission.
This is mutually beneficial. They only get paid if they convert their audience, but if they’re reaching out, they’re likely confident in their ability to convert.
There’s very little downside to affiliate marketing if you have a product or service that could use a wider audience.
4. Smartphone Marketing
While a lot of these can be done with a smartphone, some marketing tactics are smartphone specific.
Many people have their phones on them at all times. They’re essential tools at this point. This means that you can use them too.
Setting up text notifications for subscribers can be a great way to let interested parties know when you’re updating your site with new content. Like the email marketing technique, it will only target interested parties. This way, it’s beneficial but non-invasive.
If you’re very motivated, you can also have an App made for your brand or website. This will keep all of your content in one place for your users, and you’ll gain the ability to send push notifications to anyone who has it downloaded.
5. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO
This one is hugely popular and for good reason.
Anyone who knows how to do SEO right is going to have a much easier time getting new organic users to their website over time.
When done correctly, good practices in SEO will land a website on the first page for a related search term on a chosen search engine. This makes the website much easier to find for new users.
SEO can be a little bit confusing, though, and there are a lot of factors that go into it.
Essentially, your goal is to make your website as user-friendly and valuable as possible to people putting in search queries.
It can be beneficial to get an SEO expert or service to help you out, especially if you’ve never worked with it before. Ranking high in Google is so important, you want to make sure that you’re doing it correctly.
6. Brand Journalism
This one is a little different and requires a different set of skills.
You’re going to be targeting a harder audience here.
Brand journalism is when brands know who their target audience is, but also know that their audience isn’t responding to traditional kinds of advertising.
They start to put articles up on their websites that they know will be useful to their target audience, even if they aren’t directly related to their brand. For example, a vegan supplement company posting articles about vegan food news, or animal welfare in their blogging section.
With properly used SEO, this will drive traffic from the target audience and introduce this audience to the product even though they were resistant to the traditional advertising methods.
This also makes the brand seem more trustworthy to their new customers, and allows them to immediately provide value with their website which improves their SEO rating.
7. Influencer Marketing
Speaking of resistant audiences, influencer marketing can be great for this problem.
With influencer marketing, you partner with someone who has a large social media following. This person endorses you and hopefully drives more traffic your way.
Influencer marketing can be costly, and can often have very little payoff. It’s important to choose the right person for the job. Audiences appreciate authenticity. An influencer from the beauty community advertising protein powder might not be an ideal match, for example.
Not only will this seem inorganic, but the audiences won’t match up. You’d be better suited going after an influencer from the fitness community.
If your product is in a specific niche, it can actually be helpful to go for influencers with smaller and more dedicated followings. Their audiences tend to trust their opinions more, and if they’re focused on their niche, the audience shares the same interest.
The people that respond best to influencer marketing thrive on authenticity, so you would do well to try to find a perfect match for your product. Not all influencers will endorse things that they’re not actually interested in, and that’s okay.
Genuine interest from an influencer is better than false interest, as they’ll be able to more enthusiastically show your brand or product off to their followers.
8. Radio Marketing
The radio isn’t dead yet.
This is where we’re getting away from the internet, just for a moment (although this can definitely include internet radio).
There are still people who don’t pay a lot of attention to the internet. Some people don’t care about social media or influencers. Some people don’t check their emails and only use Google for work.
These people might, however, still listen to the radio.
Getting a well-placed radio advertisement for your product or service can open you up to a whole new audience. It will also put you a step ahead of the people who have left radio behind for the greener pastures of the other forms of digital marketing.
Radio marketing is old-school, but it’s not outdated. It still has value and depending on your niche, it might be the perfect way to drive traffic to your site.
9. Search Engine Marketing, or SEM
Search engine marketing is another popular tool of the trade.
This isn’t quite as effective as organic SEO marketing, but it can be useful for someone trying to grow their site quickly.
For this, you’re going to have to pay. When you do, though, you’ll get your site posted above the organic search results. When you’re on Google, what do you see first at the top of your search? The advertised results, right?
That could be you.
It is obvious to new viewers that it’s an advertisement due to the “Ad” in the corner of the URL, but it’s also showing your website to people who are obviously interested in your content. This could be a valuable tool, especially if you’re just getting started.
10. Guest Blogging or Posting
Now, this one can be tricky.
There’s been a bit of an SEO crackdown on guest posts and how they can look kind of “spammy”. That said, as long as you’re not overloading your post with links, you’re in the clear.
A guest post is a mutually beneficial relationship. You’re providing value to someone else’s website, and they’re showing you to their audience. As long as their audience is relevant to your niche, this can help you grow.
Select your guest posts carefully, but this can be a really useful tool for you. Just don’t take advantage.
Digital Marketing is Crucial
There are so many ways to market yourself and your brand online, and new avenues for advertisement open up every single day.
As long as you stay mindful of the rules, generating traffic and customers that are genuinely interested in your work and services can be easy. You just have to put the work in.
Between social media, guest blogging, and search engine optimization, many of these are also genuinely fun to learn and implement. They can also be outsourced to professionals if you’re too busy or overloaded to take it on yourself.
For more tips on how to grow your website, visit my site. There’s so much to learn about digital marketing methods and personal branding, and I want to help you out.
