What Is Digital Marketing? A Comprehensive

What is in this article?

Who Is a Digital Marketing Specialist?
- What Are a Digital Marketing Specialist's Job Descriptions?

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the process of planning, applying and carrying out promotional activity through digital channels — and at the same time developing products, services and ideas — in order to reach a company's goals.

Digital marketing is the communication process carried out using interactive platforms such as the internet, social media, mobile, e-commerce and email newsletters, in order to build, define and apply a company's digital communication strategy and communication plan.

Above we have explained digital marketing with two different definitions, the first in a broader sense. That is enough to convey the essence of the subject.

Digital marketing's core matter is not technology but people. The focus should be on communication and behaviour.

A common mistake: there are sources using the phrase "more advantageous than traditional media" in the definition of digital marketing. Because "advantage" means benefit, and whether benefit will come from traditional media or from digital marketing can vary depending on the particular job, that phrase is used incorrectly.

What those sources mean by advantage is measurability. Digital marketing is more measurable than traditional media.

Digital Marketing's Other Names

Digital marketing is also named with the following headings. Its common, settled usage, though, is digital marketing.

Interactive marketing,
Online marketing,
Internet marketing,
E-marketing
Web marketing
Online business development

Digital Marketing's Four Elements (Steps)

Just as marketing has its 4 Ps (its mix — its elements), digital marketing has its core elements too. Although some have added various further steps to these four elements (steps), this is how it appears in the marketing literature.

We can define these four elements' purpose as the roadmap, or process, to be followed in the digital marketing and communication process. This flow is also called the digital marketing conversion funnel.

Let us explain the digital marketing steps a little further using the conversion funnel diagram. Every kind of activity you carry out in these steps is defined as digital marketing strategy. "Digital marketing acquisition strategies", for example.

Acquire: the processes carried out to deliver the traffic that needs to be drawn to the relevant channel (a website, for example) in order to promote products and services. Activity that will increase our website traffic, website content, social media communication, ad clicks.
Convert: the processes carried out so the traffic acquired achieves the goals set.
Sales, forms, time, reading, watching, sharing, engaging, recommending
Measure & optimise: digital marketing's greatest advantage is being measurable. This is the process of making the data acquired more efficient by optimising it mathematically.
Retain & grow: this refers to the work you will do to turn the customers or readers you have won into loyal customers or readers.

1. WEBSITE – MOBILE APP

The website forms the foundation of digital marketing. Because it provides you with a dedicated platform where you will share information about your products, your services, your brand, your ideas, your career and your hobbies, a website is an indispensable digital marketing channel.

Your website is your shop, or your address, in the digital world. Whatever the size of your company, it guides you in communicating with your customers, reaching more potential customers and even developing your business by examining your website data. The content you upload to the website makes the potential customers who encounter you in users' search queries grow exponentially.

Among the digital marketing channels, a business should invest most in the website and should make it its aim to improve customer experience further by developing the website continuously. Digital marketing activity should not be started before the website is fully ready and coherent in terms of user experience, technical metrics and the other digital marketing tools.

2. CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing: the process of producing and spreading content that adds value in order to reach your audience, engage with them and move them towards achieving a goal.

Consumers resisting sales-focused content, and that content falling short at persuading, has led brands to give more weight to content marketing in their strategy. At the same time, consumers being able to reach more detail about a product, user reviews and video content with a few clicks thanks to developing internet technology has also increased content marketing's importance.

Content marketing should not be opening a blog or writing a few more pages about products. It consists of all the text, video, audio recordings, visual graphics and so on you will produce in answer to the questions: once we have defined the audiences at the foundation of marketing communication, how can we engage with them, how can we catch the audience's attention?

Take a look at this content of ours to read content marketing's most important benefits.

3. SEO – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

SEO is the abbreviation of "search engine optimisation". SEO is the process of gaining "free", "organic" or "natural" traffic by appearing in users' queries in search engines.

The working logic of search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex is that they record content on the internet such as text, images and video at particular intervals. When users make search queries, they try to put the most fitting, highest-quality content in front of them. Because their revenue model is the ad impressions in those results, they have developed their technology and algorithms day by day to give better results.

Search engine algorithms make the decision about which content will get more impressions than other content in search queries. These algorithms assess content with dozens — in fact hundreds — of assessment criteria. SEO specialists analyse many criteria such as search engine behaviour, the content ranking at the top and competitors, and thereby ensure more fitting content is created.

4. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)

SEM is the abbreviation of "search engine marketing". Very widely used, SEM is paid advertising using a search engine network.

The result appearing as "Ad" in the holiday recommendations search query below is an example of search engine advertising.

Let us also explain SEA — "search engine advertising". SEA can be used in place of SEM. There are subtle nuances between the two; we could return to that subject in a separate article.

5. DISPLAY ADS

Display ads: the advertising model based on visual content such as images, animation and video placed in particular sections of a website. They are called banner ads. Google's display advertising is called GDN (Google Display Network), the Google display advertising network.

Display ads generally contain a striking image, short text, a call to action (CTA) button and the brand logo. When clicked we are directed to the landing page.

Although display ads come in many different sizes, there are standardised dimensions. Animated or interactive moving banners catch more attention.

Digital Marketing

6. VIDEO ADS

Video ads are video adverts displayed on an internet-connected device.

Although YouTube, social media and other networks have various standard video formats, we can talk about two types of ad format.

a) In-stream ads

The ad type that appears during or at the end of a video while you watch, as on TV.

b) Out-stream ads

Video ads that have a space like a standard display ad (banner). They have sub-types aimed at catching more of the user's attention and engaging with them. There is also a video ad type with no visual space that opens when the mouse cursor hovers over targeted keywords.

7. SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING (SMA)

SMA is the expansion of "social media advertising". Social media advertising (SMA) is using social media platforms for advertising purposes towards goals such as promoting your brand, bringing visitors to your website, increasing your sales and reaching potential customers.

Because social media platforms analyse user demographics and user behaviour very well, these platforms are an excellent advertising channel.

Frequently used social media advertising channels

The main social media advertising platforms (the frequently used ones)
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat.

8. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING (SMM)

SMM is the expansion of "social media marketing". Social media marketing is the process of reaching your audience through social media channels, connecting with them and increasing engagement, and producing content suited to the channel without straying from the brand line.

Social media marketing is also called "social media communication". As we are all aware, social media channels are highly effective. They have given rise to many new brands, and for many firms that use them effectively they have lifted brand perception considerably, with sales rising in direct proportion.

If you noticed, in digital marketing channels we have covered social media advertising (SMA) and social media communication (SMM) as separate items because they are different processes. Social media advertising deals with performance-focused ads, while social media communication (marketing) deals entirely with the communication dimension.

9. GROWTH MARKETING TOOLS

Growth marketing: the process of analysing outputs by running data-driven tests with innovative approaches in order to improve a targeted metric.

When using growth marketing tools in digital marketing you can simply follow the processes below.

- Deciding the metric to be improved (number of customers, number of orders, reducing the basket abandonment rate and so on)
- Deciding the areas to be improved
- Designing the test processes for the areas to be improved
- Running the tests and analysing the results.

The growth tools used in digital marketing:
live chat, chatbots, product personalisation, personalised recommendations, artificial intelligence approaches, surveys, voice commands, notification automation.

10. EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing is the process of commercial electronic mail communication sent in order to reach a particular audience with an email address and increase customer loyalty or sales, or convey information.

Email marketing is shown by some research as the tool with the highest return on investment in digital marketing. That is because you can reach thousands — in fact millions — of people who already know you and are on your list, at reasonable cost.

If you have not had the chance to discover email's power so far you may be prejudiced, looking at the dozens of emails landing in your inbox. Although that is a reality, do not forget that whether the emails you send get read a little or a lot is entirely in your hands.

Email marketing should not be seen as sending the same email to thousands of people. Although email marketing is the oldest digital marketing channel, it is a communication channel that has adapted to innovation and holds a great deal of technology within it. Personalised, segmented, measurable in detail, curiosity-raising, useful to the customer — well-structured email marketing produces excellent results. And if you build an automation strategy in email marketing, hundreds — in fact thousands — of emails are sent automatically to the audience meeting the criteria you set, which saves a great deal of time.

11. NOTIFICATION MARKETING (Push Notifications, SMS, MMS)

Notification marketing: the short messages sent to customers with whom a connection has been made with particular permission, through mobile phones, smart devices and the internet browser.

SMS and MMS are generally not included in notification marketing, but because messages are also a rapidly consumed communication model like notifications, we can include them in this category. Email marketing could even be assessed under this category. To explain it in more detail and emphasise its importance, I have covered it as a separate item.

Excluding SMS and MMS, the notification types used in notification marketing are basically three.
a) Web push: an instant message that can be sent through the browser
b) Mobile push: an instant message sent through a mobile app
c) In-app push: an instant message sent like a pop-up inside a mobile app.

Who Is a Digital Marketing Specialist?

The specialist who holds sufficient knowledge of the digital marketing channels and manages those platforms in line with marketing strategy, in order to build, define and apply the company's digital marketing communication and plan.

What Are a Digital Marketing Specialist's Job Descriptions?

Determining the needs required to build, define and apply the digital communication and strategy plan
Ensuring coordination with the digital team or agencies,
Carrying out and managing the website's development in line with digital marketing techniques and trends.
Planning and managing digital marketing campaigns,
Planning and managing social media communication strategy,
Managing the company's SEM (search engine marketing) projects,
Developing and applying SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy and checking its results,
Following the company's digital reputation management.

These job descriptions vary according to the firm's size and structure. Some firms work with a single digital marketing specialist and get support from agencies, while in larger firms, or firms whose business focus is digital marketing, the job descriptions vary by digital marketing channel.

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What Is Digital Marketing? A Comprehensive Digital Marketing Guide