We've covered traditional marketing mediums which means it is time to introduce a more modern way of advertising. In this blog post we will be talking about Digital Marketing, the most widely used and cost-effective way to market in the 21 st century.
Digital marketing is the promotion of products or services on the internet. What are the types of digital marketing strategies?
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and these are paid for advertisements online that are charged on the following basis: pay-per-click, pay-per-call and cost-per-click. Pay-per-click means you only pay for the advertisement if a person has clicked on it, thus encouraging the advertiser to make relevant and quality ads that people will click on. Pay-per-call is when consumers can click on a number on your advert therefore, you pay per call logged and lastly, cost-per-click is when the cost of your advert is divided by your number of clicks, indicating an average of what you spend per click. Cost-per-click is how you determine if you have a successful ad campaign or not. SEM is successful as it allows you, as the advertiser, to use keywords that people search for in a search engine to display your adverts.
The most popular SEM tool is Google Ads.
Social media, as I am sure most of us know, is any social platform that is used for people to connect with others through news, statuses, pictures and videos. The other side of social media is the advertising side and most platforms have either organic advertising (not paid for) or sponsored advertising (paid for). The cost of a sponsored advert is cheap compared to traditional marketing methods and the budget can usually be determined by the advertiser.
The biggest benefit of social media is, however, the reach an advert can get. You can, without blowing your entire yearly marketing budget at once, advertise to people all around the world and for a long period of time.
The most popular Social Media Platforms are LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
Drip mail is essentially the use of an email marketing automatic system that allows you to place your customers in a mailing list that will receive a certain amount of emails in a specific period. For example, A customer who has just bought one of our products will be added to the list of “X app purchases” and will received a “thank you” email immediately, a “please review us” email a week later and a “have you seen our latest product ”mail 2 months later, thus the term 'drip' mail.
This method helps keep your brand top-of-mind and assists in upselling to current customers.
Some of the most popular email marketing automatic systems are ActiveCampaign and MailChimp.
Blogs and Vlogs have increased in popularity over the past 2 years and some people make a living by creating them however, in the business world they can be useful in marketing as an add content to the company's pages / websites etc. A blog, in short, is a series of articles on a specific topic that your business shares to draw customers in, share business practices and to show potential customers who the company “is”. A Vlog is similar to a blog however, it uses video as the tool to share business tips, company news, etc. The use of both these mediums create brand trust and ultimately it assists people to understand “who” your business is and as we mentioned before, consumers want to feel connected to the brands they purchase from.
Popular mediums for Vlogs would be YouTube and Blogs, usually your company's website will host your blog series.
Influencer marketing has recently become a term that is used in digital marketing, especially on social media. What influencer marketing means is that you use people that are highly influential to promote your products, thus their followers, fans or subscribers then see them using the product/service and are “influenced” to buy the product/service for themselves.
For example, a homeware appliance company like SMEG might have a famous chef like Gordon Ramsay use one of their fridges in a post. Consumers automatically assume that if Gordon Ramsay will use the fridge it must be of great quality and thus, will buy the same fridge for themselves. A company can also have an affiliate marketing model where the influencer gets commission on sales made that are linked to them.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization which entails creating a quality, user friendly and accessible website for your company that users can easily find when searching for products / services and keywords that relate to your company. The higher your website quality and relatable the keywords you use to describe your website, the higher your website will rank in searches made on search engines such as Google. This will lead to more activity on your website and ultimately, sales. The best part about SEO? It's completely free!
SEO is not a platform however, the best way to find out your SEO ranking is to use websites such as seranking.com and others to see where your website ranks and tips on how to improve your ranking.
Billboards fall into an older type of marketing however, it evolved into digital billboards or even interactive billboards thus, still making billboards an effective marketing tool in the 21 st century. Digital billboards compared to traditional billboards are more cost effective as it is a digital design instead of print material and instead of having to pay for a set amount of time for the billboard to be displayed, it can be up for certain periods and for certain times of the day, thus allowing you to control your budget. Digital billboards can be used for brand awareness, brand retention or even as a medium to advertise a special. Digital billboards can be highly effective if placed in the right area and displayed at the correct times (eg peak hour traffic).
- Geena Kolbé, August 2020