What is Digital Marketing?

You know those of us in marketing tend to throw around a lot of buzzwords and marketing jargon.  Digital marketers are not unlike traditional marketers with their jargon and terminology.  SEO, SEM, PPC, Remarketing, rich snippets, organic campaigns and the list goes on.  Even when it comes to Digital Marketing, there are a wide array of definitions out there.

Digital marketing is a channel that can be used for promoting your brand, your service or your products using digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also via mobile phones, search marketing, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

There are many components to digital marketing.  Our experience is in Search and specifically Organic Search.  We work with brands to help them gain visibility in the Search Engines.  The end goal is to help them drive qualified traffic to their web properties and to engage with their target audience.  Ultimately we help companies build relationships with their audience.

The digital universe is a vast locality with a number of new Web properties showing up daily.  According to Internet Live Stats there are currently over a billion websites on the Web today.  While many of these are parked or inactive domains, the Internet is a very competitive and populous space.  That is one reason as to why having a sound digital strategy is a must.  You want people to find you online.  You want people to learn about your brand, your services, your products and even your approach as to how your company does what they do.

People seek information and for the first time in history they have access to the World’s information at their fingertips as technology has grown dramatically in the past two decades, we have become a digital society.

Digital marketing takes time, investment, and knowledge in order to pull it off.  Like technology, digital marketing continues to evolve.  SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has evolved dramatically in the last 16 years.  Your digital marketing efforts need to evolve and be flexible as well.

Why You Need a Sound Digital Marketing Strategy

If you are even remotely trying to promote your brand, your services or your products online then you require a digital marketing strategy.  A digital marketing strategy is required to attract, engage and convert customers online.  That is really what digital marketing is.

At Jody Nimetz Co. we focus on a couple of aspects of Digital Marketing: Organic Search Marketing and Content Marketing.  Why do we focus on these two elements?  Well it is what we know.  It’s what we’ve been successful at for the past dozen plus years.

When it comes to Organic Search (what some refer to as SEO), we take a simple approach.  We feel that Search is about visibility.  Whether it is Google, Bing, Yandex, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn etc, Search is about visibility.

You need to be found online.  We help you get found online.  To do this we use a simple formula where we initially focus on three aspects:

  1. Crawling of your website
  2. Indexation of your website
  3. Visibility/Presence of your website (often referred to as placement or ranking)

From there we used Content Marketing to ensure that you creating an opportunity to engage with your audience or target demographic.  Your content and your messaging is critical for your digital marketing success.  Without strong content, you have nothing but a website floating around in a vast digital universe.  The purpose of content marketing is many but at the heart of it, content marketing is used to attract, educate and retain customers by consistently creating and publishing relevant and valuable content with the intention of enticing, changing or enhancing consumer behavior.

Digital Marketing and the Buying Cycle

Digital Marketing, like traditional marketing plays a role during all stages of the buying funnel.

  1. Awareness –Prior to awareness a customer may have a need, but they are not aware there is a solution.  Digital Marketing can be used to intercept potential customers by creating an awareness of your brand, your products or your services.
  2. Research –Once a customer is aware there is a solution for their issue, they will perform research to educate themselves. Leveraging digital marketing practices such as SEO can ensure that when people search for information within the digital space (such as on Google, Facebook or other channels) that your business shows up and will be included as part of the consideration set.
  3. Consideration –At this point the customer starts comparing different products from different vendors to make sure they’re getting a high quality product at a fair price.    This is where your digital marketing efforts can help ensure that your business is one of the rungs on the ladder as part of the consideration set of your audience.
  4. Buy –Ultimately you want the customer to follow through with some form of action such as completing a purchase.   Your digital marketing efforts can directly impact the customer’s decision as they move closer towards the transaction.
  5. Loyalty – In the digital marketing age, the buying funnel does not stop with completed purchase. The consumer is educated, they know their options.  You want to leverage digital marketing through practices such as content marketing to help your customers evangelize your products, services and your brand.  You want them to share information and their experience.  You want review and testimonials (especially positive ones).  You want to continue to build and nurture your relationship with your clients or customers.

Buying Funnel

Synonyms for Digital Marketing?

Right or wrong, many people use the term “digital marketing” as reference to other types of marketing channels. Here is a list of some of the terms that are on the semantic map for “digital marketing”:

  • Online marketing
  • Internet marketing
  • Search marketing
  • Search engine marketing
  • SEM
  • SEO
  • Pay per click advertising
  • Display advertising
  • Banner advertising
  • Online advertising
  • Digital media marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • Web marketing
  • Device marketing
  • Mobile marketing
  • Integrated marketing

There are a number of references around digital marketing, many coined by a marketer in some office, but at the heart of it digital marketing is simply promoting a brand, product or service through a digital medium.

Want to learn more about digital marketing?  Here is a great post from our friends at Top Rank Marketing from 2014, where they interviewed a number of marketing professionals and clients for their definition of digital marketing.

Need some guidance with your digital marketing efforts (specific to organic search or content marketing efforts)?  Contact us at: jody@jodynimetz.com today.

Here’s a nice read on the 7 Habits for Highly Effective Digital Marketers courtesy of MarketingLand.com.