Digital marketing is the promotion of products and services via the internet and mobile apps. This is an online version of a traditional marketing program that uses television, radio, and print to distribute information to potential customers. This article discusses digital marketing, including the types of programs available, the challenges digital marketers face, and the privacy issues associated with their campaigns online.
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Understand digital marketing
Understand digital marketing
Digital marketing typically centers around online properties such as websites and mobile apps. Marketers typically want to drive more people to a website or app designed to promote a product or service. Users may have the option to purchase directly from there, or they may be prompted to call or visit a store to continue the sales process offline.
How you measure the success of your digital campaign will depend on your goals. If online sales are the goal, marketers can analyze the gross profit generated compared to campaign costs. Marketers can also assess the number of leads generated and the rate at which those leads are converted into customers.
lead generation
The process of finding potential customers who may be interested in your product or service.
If a business's typical customer makes repeat purchases, the analysis can become more complex. In that case, marketers might consider the average cost of acquiring a new customer compared to the average profit the customer generates over time.
other types
Types of digital marketing
The main types of digital marketing programs are:
- content marketing. Content marketers create and publish articles, videos, e-books, podcasts, and other information to attract and engage specific audiences. Content can be published on a company's own digital properties or elsewhere.
- Search engine optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of updating your website so that it receives consistent and relevant traffic from Bing. alphabetMr. Miss(google 0.58%)(Google 0.86%) Google and other search engines.
- Pay-per-click marketing. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns display ads on search engines, social media platforms, and other websites. Marketers pay each time someone clicks on an ad.
- email marketing. Email marketing involves delivering content and promotional messages via email to individuals who have agreed to accept them.
- Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing pays commissions to online publishers who refer customers or prospects. Publishers promote links using encrypted codes so that referrals can be tracked.
- social media marketing. Social media marketing is a subset of content marketing.This includes sharing content metaMr. Miss(meta 20.32%) Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms.
- influencer marketing. Influencer marketing rewards people with large social media followers and relevant website traffic to promote products and services.
- mobile marketing. Mobile marketing involves sending promotional messages and content to customers and prospects via text messages. As with email marketing, message recipients must opt-in to this service.
Social media
Social media are internet platforms that facilitate the creation, sharing, and discovery of user-generated content.
Challenges for marketers
Challenges for digital marketers
The field of digital marketing has evolved over the past 30 years, from new technologies with few options to an increasingly complex field. That evolution poses challenges for digital marketers.
This is especially true for small and medium-sized businesses with fewer resources. These challenges include competition among advertisers, a large and fragmented set of platform options, messaging fatigue among audiences, and increasing privacy restrictions.
Competition between advertisers
In the early days of digital marketing, smaller marketing budgets could compete for the same audience alongside larger marketing budgets. That is not the reality today.
Digital marketing of any kind now requires the resources to pay professionals, buy advertising space, and create engaging content for websites, emails, social media channels, and text messages. A larger budget allows you to hire better talent, buy more advertising, and produce more (and sometimes better) content.
many platform options
Marketers use Google, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, pinterest (pin 5.77%), LinkedIn, snapMr. Miss(snap 7.43%) Snapchat, X, mobile apps, and more. You can also pay for email and mobile messaging platforms, content creators, SEO analysts, and developers.
It can be difficult to understand how to create an effective marketing strategy to allocate funds across these options. It typically requires experimentation and subsequent data analysis, which can be cost-prohibitive for small marketing organizations. The growing field of marketing analytics seeks to address this challenge.
marketing strategy
A plan that businesses use to reach potential customers and promote products and services that may be of interest to them.
Messaging fatigue
Internet and mobile app users are exposed to many marketing messages every day. Social media platforms and gaming apps are especially loaded with ads. Amidst the noise of messaging, it's difficult for marketers to create engaging and memorable content.
Privacy restrictions
Governments in the United States and around the world are increasingly passing privacy regulations that impact digital marketing practices. These regulations require marketers to be more transparent about how their data is collected and allow users to request that their data be deleted.
Digital marketers must update their practices to keep up with increasing user privacy regulations. This will be explained in more detail below.
privacy issues
Digital marketing and privacy
Digital marketing delivers content to the right people based on user data. For example, PPC advertising has traditionally relied on users' digital activities tracked by small data files stored in their internet browsers. These data files are called third-party cookies.
Cookies provide user data to make advertising more effective. For example, a car dealer would do better if they advertise to local people who have already bought a car, rather than people from another state who are buying children's bikes online.
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However, tracking for advertising purposes is becoming increasingly controversial. Some web browsers already restrict this activity.
What's holding it back is the Google Chrome browser, which has 64% market share. After falling several times behind schedule, Chrome began testing his phase-out of third-party cookies in January 2024. Google's parent company Alphabet has announced that it will complete the transition by the end of the year.
Digital marketers will need to adapt to that phase-out. Alternative strategies include collecting user data directly through opt-ins and targeting ads to relevant website content rather than user activity.
Randi Zuckerberg is a former head of market development and spokesperson at Facebook, sister of Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a member of the Motley Fool's board of directors. Alphabet executive Suzanne Frye is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Katherine Block has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Pinterest. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
