Digital Marketing: What It Is And Its Advantages

Digital marketing is a subdivision of marketing, but it has gained so much weight that it has become the marketing model par excellence. For that reason, let’s first see what exactly marketing is.

What Is Marketing, A Personal Definition

Marketing consists of seeking to promote and serve markets.

More specifically, search through market research, promote with communication, advertising and PR, and serve with distribution channels and customer service.

This philosophy is what defined marketing in the 1980s, which is when I studied it. Today, it seems perfectly valid as well as the philosophy of the product manager.

I would only change market research for big data and product marketing for Design Thinking, Prototyping, UX and Lean Startup so that marketing and the product travel at the speed of the consumer.

What Is Digital Or Online Marketing

As we have previously mentioned, Digital Marketing, also called online marketing, which is defined as a form of marketing that uses new media and technological and digital advertising channels such as the internet, mobile or IoT. Thanks to the power of technology, it allows you to create unique and personalized experiences to measure and record everything that happens with the aim of improving the user experience.

So, Digital Marketing, for me, is a radical evolution of marketing thanks to the technology that leads us to formulate strategies. These strategies are achieved thanks to personalized products and differentiated messages. Massive data and the ability to measure with exponential power compared to traditional media is what has unleashed the entire revolution in the marketing and advertising industry.

For example, thanks to Big Data in Digital Marketing, there are applications such as Netflix or Amazon that always know what they have to recommend to us. Or thanks to email marketing and the traceability of the “Customer Journey” we can track potential customers to re-impact them with remarketing or retargeting.

Direct And Interactive Marketing: The Forerunner Of Digital Marketing

“The most knowledgeable say that direct marketing is that form of marketing whose objective is to seek answers and establish long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with the client”.

Direct Marketing is a strategic vision of marketing. The client uses all available means of communication and advertising. The goal is to identify prospects and foster response and relationships between the company and the customer. In this way, we approach what we define as Digital Marketing.

In fact, Direct Marketing found a great ally on the Internet, reaching its peak with new technologies. Without a doubt, this was the starting point for the development of digital marketing. Also, the ability to measure and the possibility of creating personalized services tailored to the client but at a low cost.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

Due to the characteristics that the Internet brings to Digital Marketing, we can clearly attribute the following advantages:

Global: Once your product is positioned on the internet, anyone from anywhere in the world will be able to access it.

Interactive: The Internet is a two-way communication channel therefore Digital Marketing is also. In this way, communication between companies and consumers has been maximized, especially since the emergence of the RRSS.

Perfectly measurable: The data is no longer based on market studies, slow to carry out and expensive. Now, they are collected immediately through the monitoring of the actions that the user performs directly on the Internet. It allows obtaining personal data, preferences and usability that, properly analyzed and managed, allow the creation of more efficient actions.

Hyper Segmentable: Thanks to a large amount of information collected about Internet users, it is possible to diversify marketing actions much more. We can aim for more and more outlined and defined objectives. Today, we segment campaigns by incorporating new geographical and time variables and depending on the access device.

Strategies And Tactics In Digital Marketing

For me there are three key activities in digital marketing: The first thing is to attract qualified traffic to the web, which is done by the traffic manager or digital trafficker. The second thing is to convert that traffic into actions that are normally worked on by the trafficker, also with knowledge of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), although in large teams it is in the hands of the UX Product Design team. And finally, there is the function of the digital analyst or web analyst, which measures and identifies where the opportunities are and where the problems are. This circle of work is essential in digital marketing but, in addition, there are many other disciplines in which we work to generate digital marketing strategies and tactics:

• SEO or Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the natural positioning in search engines like Google. It consists of making optimizations to appear as high as possible on these pages.
• SEM or Search Engine Marketing: In this case, it is also positioning our page in search engines or directories but paying for it. It has become one of the most important tools of Digital Marketing because the consumer uses these mechanisms at the end of the purchase funnel.
• Inbound Marketing: It consists of inverting the marketing pyramid. Instead of looking for customers with advertising, what it does is make it easier for them to find you and get to know you.
• Email Marketing: It is like the old postal mail but electronic. Widely used as a communication tool with clients and also to look for new clients.
• Social Media Marketing: Brands now have a digital identity and voice. Now Social Networks are its greatest exponent.
• Affiliate or partner marketing: The best way to grow is through agreements and collaborations with third parties. On the one hand, there are networks that concentrate on affiliates and, on the other hand, there is business development work with alliances.
• Remarketing or Retargeting: The ability to re-impact people who have visited your page, business or app.
• Native Advertising or Native Advertising: It is advertising integrated into the media in such a way that it does not even look like advertising.
• e-Commerce: It is the transfer of traditional commerce to the digital world. It involves transnational websites or apps where the online purchase or service takes place.
• Programmatic advertising: It is a way of buying audiences through technologies such as a DSP that allow you to segment the people you want to reach, changing the purchase model in traditional advertising. In this way, you bid for the middle where it is cheaper to hit them. One of the most typical ways of buying is through “Look Alike” audiences, which are users who are most similar to those who buy my product or service.
• Web Analytics: It allows to measure and know how the user behaves through graphs and data.
• UX/UI Design: It is about designing the interfaces with which the user interacts. Your experience with the use of the website and the app must be friendly and satisfactory.
• Customer Experience: It is about building experiences from start to finish on the journey map of a potential client until they become a client both on social networks and on the web or app.
• CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) or conversion optimization: We use heat maps and data to measure and test new proposals throughout the chain to improve flow and funnel.

Digital Marketing Tools

There are countless digital marketing tools on the market. Some paid but many of them totally or partially free with which we can achieve the best results. We are not going to see all of them, much less, but we are going to share the ones you are going to need

• Web Analytics Tools: Without a doubt, the best example is Google Analytics, which is also free.
• Digital Advertising Tools: Today any individual or SME has access to true work suites that allow sophisticated advertising and 360 digital marketing strategies. The most important are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
• Design and prototyping tools: Design tools like Canva are essential, and prototyping and designing websites and apps with tools like Balsamiq is much easier.
• Marketing intelligence tools: Also in this case, Google Data Studio offers a very complete and easy solution to connect with Google Analytics. In addition, Power BI or Tableau offer more complete solutions for more complex analyzes
• Email Marketing and CRM Tools: Although we hear more and more about CDPs, it is still essential to have a good CRM and a good email sending system. They will usually be integrated with solutions like Salesforce or SugarCRM or simpler ones like
• Inbound Marketing Tools: Many of the CRMs have their own inbound marketing tools, but there are some very specialized ones such as HubSpot or Infusionsoft. Here is a list of the best inbound marketing tools.
• Market research and SEO tools: From the free Google Ads keyword planner to tools that allow us to investigate the competition and the trends of what people are searching for, such as SEM Rush and how much traffic they receive, such as Similar Web, they are fundamental in your digital marketing kit.