Surely you are familiar with the terms digital marketing or online marketing. But are you clear about what they mean? We’ll tell you in this post.
What is digital marketing
Digital marketing (or online marketing) includes all those advertising or commercial actions and strategies that are executed in the media and internet channels.
This phenomenon has been applied since the 90’s as a way of transferring offline marketing techniques to the digital universe.
Parallel to the tremendous development and evolution of digital technology, online marketing has been experiencing, progressively and very quickly, profound changes both in the techniques and tools used (and in their complexity) and in the possibilities it offers to the recipients. Let’s see how!
How online marketing was born: from web 1.0 to web 2.0
At the beginning, online marketing was based on Web 1.0 pages and was a translation of advertising from traditional media (television, radio, paper media…) to the first web pages, which did not allow a bidirectional communication with users. The advertising companies controlled the message completely and limited themselves to exposing it to the audience.
In addition, the advertising of the Web 1.0 stage was limited, in most cases, to reproducing a showcase of products or services in the form of an online catalogue. Even so, this type of advertising already pointed out interesting virtues, such as the potentially universal scope, the possibility of updating the contents and the combination of texts, images and, little by little, also multimedia formats.
But, in a few years, the revolution arrived. A frenetic technological development allowed the massive introduction of a higher level internet. The web 2.0 was born and, with it, marketing 2.0 (as digital or online marketing is also known today). And what a change!
From that moment on, it became possible for all users to share information easily thanks to social networks, forums or platforms, allowing the almost instantaneous exchange of previously impossible pieces, such as photos and video.
The Internet became much more than a means of searching for information and became a large community. Today, the network is only understood as a means of exchanging information in two directions. Feedback is therefore total and fundamental between brands and users, with the pros and cons that this entails.
The tools of digital marketing
Digital marketing offers us a series of highly diverse tools from which we can carry out small actions at practically zero cost to complex (and obviously more expensive) strategies in which we can combine an infinite number of techniques and resources.
Web or blog: Undoubtedly, a website or a blog are two of the main tools from which to centralize a digital marketing campaign or inbound marketing (digital strategy to attract users and convert them to customers by generating valuable content and non-intrusive).
However, the use of a website or blog as a central axis does not imply exclusivity, quite the opposite. It is possible to use, in a complementary or parallel way, other digital actions to give more visibility to the campaigns: social networks, video platforms or forums, etc.
Once you know if you want to have a website, a blog or both, keep in mind that you will have to make other decisions. For example, what domain will you use, where will you host your page (we always recommend betting on Hostings from Spain), how will the architecture of the site be, what content will it have, how will you create it, what techniques will you use to get users to your page…
Search engines: Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo or Bing, are tools that allow Internet users to find content related to what they are looking for.
In order to successfully position a page or blog in the first positions of search engines and get visitors, it is essential to perform organic positioning actions (SEO) or paid positioning (SEM) in your online marketing strategy.
Display advertising: This is the most traditional branch of digital marketing. It could be considered the billboard of the digital media. They are advertisements (banners) of different sizes and formats (text, images, graphics, videos…) that occupy a space on Internet sites in an attractive and striking way.
Email marketing: This heiress of the classic mailing is, possibly, the oldest tool but still effective for having known how to adapt to changes and its ability to work in combination with other strategies, such as monitoring and nutrition of leads (lead nurturing).
Email marketing can be done to own or external databases, from which messages are generated in the form of newsletters, bulletins, catalogs, courses, etc.
Social networks: These platforms, as you know, have not stopped growing and gaining popularity since the emergence of digital marketing. Furthermore, they have been able to adapt perfectly to the changes and demands of users and consumer habits.
Social networks are completely effective for the dissemination of content, as well as for the creation of a brand community, branding and even online shopping, crisis management and customer service.
Moreover, in many of them (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) there is also the possibility of launching targeted online advertising campaigns, which can be a good complement to any online strategy.
