What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing (also known as online marketing) is simply marketing that’s carried out online in the digital realm rather than through more traditional marketing such as through magazines and newspapers or billboards. 

Brands use digital marketing to connect with customers via email, social media, and web-based advertising like PPC (pay per click) ads. In today’s technology-driven society, digital marketing is now a central component of the marketing mix as media consumption habits have transformed and more people now get a lot of their information from social media via smartphones, laptops and tablets. 

Traditional marketing still exists and has relevance in integrated marketing campaigns in the form of things like direct marketing through printed mail-outs and broadcast. Combining traditional marketing with digital marketing gives a company a greater chance of cutting through the noise online and reaching the target audience.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is used in articles and blogs when the copy contains hyperlinks to other sites. By featuring these links or recommendations to use other sites, the blogger earns money for every click and every conversion into a sale via these links. For example, a travel blogger may recommend a particular hotel in an article about a destination, or a baking blogger may direct readers to a particular branded ingredient used in a recipe. 

From a brand’s perspective, they would look to feature in a blog in this way so would identify suitable channels that resonate with their product. In theory, affiliate marketing goes hand-in-hand with search engine optimisation (SEO). They both drive relevant, high-quality traffic to the site with the aim of converting those visits and click-throughs into sales and shouldn’t compete with one another on the page. Taking a strategic approach that aligns affiliate marketing with relevant SEO keywords leads to the best results.

What is marketing mix?

Marketing mix often refers to E. Jerome McCarthy’s four Ps of marketing: product, price, placement, promotion. This mixture helps reach a broader audience because it attracts different customers according to what their concerns or interests are. 

Consumer-focused marketing mixes are concerned with the customer experience and understanding the priorities of the customer. The customer may be concerned with the quality of the product or whether sustainability is built-in for example. Pricing may be the customer’s primary interest, so messaging might focus on a discount for first-time buyers or why the price is excellent value for the quality. Placement can refer to how the product is placed by retailers in store – for example, placed near the till to encourage customers to pick it up as they pay for their shopping. It can also refer to placement in a film or on an influencer’s social media. The final P, promotion is in reference to joint marketing campaigns which may include advertising, sales promotions, and public relations.

What is content marketing?

The creation of articles, videos, podcasts, and social media posts is what constitutes content marketing. Content marketing used to be focused on articles and blogs which could easily be optimised for search engines by using keywords and phrases. However, with the explosion of audio and visual media, vlogs (video blogs) and podcasts are increasingly popular. Both of these forms of content are often accompanied by transcripts meaning that search engine crawlers can still access the content for keywords. 

Video has also become a primary medium in social media with the rise of TikTok. Videos where influencers share their favourite products have proven to be extremely popular, for example, the skincare or make-up that they use in their daily routine. Brands are realising they need to take a mobile-first approach to traditional TV advertising and adapt ads for social media by making them shorter and to the point. Content marketing tends to be inbound marketing, meaning that it ultimately draws customers directly to the brand’s website.

What is a marketing strategy?

Marketing strategy is the planned route that marketers take to reach the target market of potential customers for a particular brand or product. This usually takes the form of a marketing plan that includes goals and objectives across different types of marketing like content, emails, paid advertising, and social media. 

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of a company will often be the one who coordinates the marketing strategy and plan as they have sight of all the marketing communications. Each team will contribute their activities to the overall plan but will have their own templates and calendars for social media, emails, and other marketing activity. 

A small business or start-up may not have different teams for different channels so all activities will be plotted on one document. Using a central document helps to coordinate all activities and gives teams visibility on what is happening, and reports can gauge whether a marketing campaign is working or how it can be tweaked for better performance. 

What is social media marketing?

If digital marketing is the predominant form of marketing, social media marketing is the leading form of digital marketing. 

Digital ads and banners on web pages can feel intrusive whereas social media marketing allows the viewer more control over how long they spend looking at something or whether they scroll past it. For this reason, marketing activities have to be ever smarter at holding the short attention span of potential customers. 

Thanks to algorithms, the kinds of sponsored ads that may appear in your LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram feeds should be tailored to your interests. If they’re not, it’s easy to mark them as irrelevant so that the algorithm can alter itself. Social media also makes it really easy to carry out market research with your customer base by creating quick surveys using functions like Instagram Stories.

Mastering management with digital marketing

If you’re well-versed in digital marketing or you simply want to improve your knowledge of the burgeoning online marketing world, now is the perfect time to learn more. There are numerous case studies of brands going from strength to strength by leveraging their digital marketing strategies in the past few years. 

Find out how you could up your marketing game as part of the MSc Management from the University of Lincoln.