What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing, or online marketing, is the practice of promoting products and services using digital channels. 

In contrast to traditional marketing—think billboards and print media—digital marketing mostly happens online. Using internet-connected technologies and online marketing tactics.

A digital marketing strategy is the backbone of many modern businesses.

Why?

Because it’s quick and cost-effective. And allows for granular targeting.

The aim is to reach and engage potential customers to drive brand awareness and sales.

Digital marketing includes a wide range of online marketing tactics. Like social media, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and more. 

Why Is Digital Marketing Important for Business?

The purpose of digital marketing is to reach your brand’s existing customers. And connect with potential prospects.

Traditional marketing still has its place, but digital marketing has exploded since the onset of the digital age. Experts predict digital advertising and marketing will be worth $786.2 billion by 2026. 

What’s one of the fastest-growing, most in-demand job skills in 2024? Digital marketing. 

For businesses big and small, a solid digital marketing strategy could be the difference between success and failure.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Your online audience can be massive. And you can reach them virtually anywhere, anytime. Unlike offline or traditional marketing, digital marketing offers you borderless access in real time.

Audience Targeting at Specific Buying Stages

Digital marketing allows for precise targeting of your audience at scale. Depending on where they are in the buyer journey. 

Contrast how you reach customers with traditional marketing. Advertising in local newspapers? Paying for billboards? Getting a slot on local radio stations? 

The above methods might reach a lot of people. But will everyone be interested in your services? Probably not.

There are three stages of the modern customer journey.

In the awareness stage, the consumer becomes aware of their problem and starts to research. 

At the consideration stage, they know their specific problem and start looking for solutions. 

Finally, the decision stage, where the consumer knows how to solve their problem. And looks for the best available solutions.

Using digital marketing, you can create content for each stage of the buying journey.

Engage blog visitors (awareness stage) with educational content and videos. Or retarget product viewers (consideration stage) with special offers across other sites they visit.

Plus, through paid digital marketing channels, you can achieve even more precise targeting. 

Using paid search ads, you can show ads only to search engine users looking for your product or service. Paid social media advertising lets you target people with specific interests, job roles, income levels, and more.

The goal? Get your message in front of the right people at the right time. 

Start by identifying your target audience. The group (or groups) of people most likely to be interested in and benefit from your products or services.

Your target prospects share common characteristics, needs, and preferences that make them the prime recipients of your marketing messages. 

Next, build an ideal customer profile (ICP). 

An ICP describes your ideal buyer. Their profile explains who they are, what they like, what they need, and how they act.

With clear information, you’ll better understand how your target market thinks, feels, and acts. 

To create your ICP, gather data through:

• Primary research through online surveys and focus groups
• Analysis of internal marketing and sales data to understand existing customers
• Social listening to identify trends and challenges prevalent among your audience

Polling tools like SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics can help your primary research. Semrush’s customer profile template helps you organize and visualize your data.

Cost-Effective Scaling

Digital marketing lets you target and grow your specific audience efficiently and cost-effectively. By putting you directly in front of potential customers interested in your offerings.

For example, an online bakery could advertise to people in its area interested in baking, cake decorating, etc. You can target your message based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.

Digital marketing allows you to start small and scale up your budget as you generate returns.

Which means you don’t waste money reaching irrelevant audiences.

Measurability and Adaptability

Digital marketing offers detailed, real-time tracking of your campaigns’ performance. So you can adapt and optimize your digital strategy immediately. 

How? 

See exactly how many people viewed your online ad, clicked on it, and took action. Giving you instant feedback to improve your campaign.

In contrast, traditional advertising methods like newspaper ads provide limited data. 

Although you know how many subscriptions or sales a newspaper has, you can’t tell how many readers have actually seen your ad. The lack of precise metrics makes it difficult to measure effectiveness and adjust strategies quickly.

Real-time tracking and data-backed optimization is invaluable. 

Leverage a variety of tools to monitor and analyze your digital marketing data. Free platforms like Google Analytics and Google Search Console show you how users reach your website and interact with it.

Say you run an ecommerce store selling outdoor gear. You launch a new paid social media ad campaign promoting your latest line of hiking backpacks.

Here’s how Google Analytics’ real-time data tracking can help you:

The tool gives you instant visibility into key metrics. Like website users, traffic sources, engagement levels, and geographic locations.

You learn that ‌social ads are driving traffic from targeted locations, but your backpack product pages have low engagement times. And indicate poor landing page performance.

Maybe the product descriptions or images don’t resonate with your audience. Next, you can make quick adjustments. Like tweaking the ad copy or updating the product content on your site. 

Then, monitor your analytics to see if those changes have had a positive impact on metrics like bounce rate, engagement rate, etc.

9 Types of Digital Marketing (+ Examples)

Broadly speaking, there are nine types of digital marketing. Let’s explore them. 

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO-driven digital marketing increases your business’s visibility in search engines like Google. By optimizing your site and content to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

In general, the higher your rankings, the more organic (non-paid) traffic your website will receive. Because users tend to click on search results that appear at the top of the SERP.

In fact, the first five organic SERP links receive 53% of all clicks.

There are several techniques for optimization, including: 

• On-page SEO: Making your web pages search engine-friendly and user-friendly. The process involves optimizing title tags, internal links, and URLs for search intent.
• Off-page SEO: A set of actions taken outside of your website to boost its authority score. Or how trustworthy and valuable search engines consider your site to be. Sites with higher authority tend to rank better in search results. One example is gaining high-quality backlinks (links from other websites to your site).
• Technical SEO: Your website should be well-organized, mobile-friendly, and fast-loading. To make it easier for search engines to understand, find, and store.

Further reading: SEO Basics: How to Do SEO for Beginners

Use Semrush’s suite of SEO tools to optimize your digital marketing efforts. Start with the On Page SEO Checker.

The tool will help you understand what steps to take, why they’re important, and how to implement them. 

Sign up for a free Semrush trial to get started. 

Enter your website’s URL in the tool’s search bar. Click “Get ideas.”

The tool will then ask you to select your target location from the drop-down menu to begin its SEO analysis. 

Select the device you want to optimize for. In this example, “Phone” under “Device.” 

The tool will collect ideas based on the pages you want to optimize. Select auto-import if you’re using it for the first time.

Click “Collect ideas.” 

The tool will deliver an overview. From there, toggle to the “Optimization ideas” tab for actionable SEO tasks. 

Say you want to see suggestions for the keyword “cool math games.” Click on the button to the right. 

From here, start optimizing your website. For example, in the “Content” column below, the tool suggests making the content more readable and avoiding keyword stuffing in the body tag. 

Click “Why should I do this?” for a more in-depth review of the suggested changes.

These actionable steps can help you diagnose your website’s weaknesses—and fix them. 

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategic digital marketing plan for creating and sharing valuable content online. 

The goal? 

To attract, engage, and retain your target audience.

Content marketing has many forms, like:

• Blogs
• Whitepapers
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Ebooks

Audiences want relevant, consistent content that’s entertaining and informative. Over time, this can increase your brand’s authority. And put your brand top of mind when prospects are ready to buy.

A solid content marketing plan can grow your business and drive profit. The key is to provide what your audience wants and needs.

Which starts with understanding your audience. And which digital channels they use most.

As well as who your competitors target. 

Let’s say you’re an online retail store and one of your top competitors is Walmart. 

Open Semrush’s Traffic Analytics. In the search bar, type “walmart.com.” 

A drop-down menu will appear with a list of other suggested competitors. Select up to five. 

Next, click “Analyze.”

The tool delivers an “Overview” report packed with valuable insights to inform your digital marketing efforts. Here, explore your competitors’ key metrics compared with yours. Including: 

• Unique visitors 
• Average visit duration
• Visitors by devices
• Bounce rate (how many visitors leave after viewing one page without taking further action or interacting with the site)

Toggle to the “Audience Overview” tab to get a deeper understanding of your competitors’ website visitors. 

In this section, review key demographic information and data regarding user behavior.

Including:

• Age and gender distribution of the audience
• Countries and cities where visitors are located
• Devices used to access the site (desktop vs. mobile)
• User interests

Use this data to determine who your competitors are reaching. And how their audience compares to yours. Refine your digital marketing strategy based on these insights.

Why?

To make sure you’re targeting the ideal audience for your business. And optimizing your content for the devices they use the most.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing uses social media platforms to connect with your audiences, build your brand, and grow your business. 

Of the 5 billion-plus people who use social media worldwide today, 90% follow at least one brand on their social platforms. 

Your social media presence is like having a stall in the world’s largest open-air market. Where 90% of visitors are already customers of other stalls. 

The potential to build relationships and drive engagement is huge. Even if only a fraction of these visitors connect with you.

For example, Duolingo’s social media presence combines quirky humor with current internet trends to draw attention to its language learning app. 

This memeworthy approach aligns with Duolingo’s mission of making language acquisition less tedious. Focusing on fun and accessibility.

The leading social media marketing platforms are:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• WhatsApp
• LinkedIn
• Youtube
• X (formerly Twitter)
• TikTok

​​These platforms provide excellent opportunities to engage and grow your audience. Using various content formats like text, images, videos, and digital ads.

Social media marketing has two key tactics:

1. Organic: Builds an audience over time
2. Paid: Drives quick conversions

Busy digital marketers need the right tools to manage their marketing initiatives. Use Semrush’s host of social media tools to optimize your efforts. Including:

• Social Poster to automate your post scheduling across your chosen channels
• Social Analytics to analyze audience engagement and post performance
• Social Tracker as a way ofmonitoring your competitors’ behavior on their social media platforms

Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing: Strategies & Tips

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a technique where brands essentially pay for the chance to convert a user into a customer. 

Ads on search engines, like Google Ads, are the most common type of PPC advertising.

To see PPC in action, perform a quick search on Google (or Bing) and check out the sponsored results at the top of the page. 

Like this:

Other digital platforms where you could run PPC ads include:

• Social media platforms (e.g., Facebook and Instagram)
• Banners on websites
• Videos on YouTube
• Marketplaces (e.g., Amazon)

A PPC ad may be a simple text ad, a display or banner ad, a product listing, or even a video ad. Because it’s so versatile, PPC works well for both social media and search engine marketing (SEM).

A well-executed PPC campaign can deliver a remarkable return on investment (ROI) of 200%. $2 for every $1 spent.

Improve your cost per click (CPC) and return on investment (ROI) by fine-tuning your ad creative, bid strategy, and targeting. 

Further reading: Find out how to set up an effective Google Ads campaign with our step-by-step guide and best practices.

The first step to launching a successful PPC digital marketing campaign? Find the right keywords to target.

Use Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to easily research keywords for your campaign.

Start by entering a seed keyword. This is an initial term to help the tool identify a set of related, relevant keywords. In this example, our seed keyword is “water bottle.”

Next, click on “Search.” 

Keyword ideas will appear in seconds.

Toggle between “All Keywords” and these four keyword types:

• Broad Match: Keywords containing variations of your seed term with the words in any order
• Phrase Match: Keywords including your exact seed term with the words in any order
• Exact Match: Keywords showing your exact seed term in its specified word order
• Related: Keywords that show similar search engine results to your seed keyword

To get keyword suggestions specific to your website, type your domain name in the “AI-powered” search bar.

“PKD%”, or Personal Keyword Difficulty, is unique to your site. It assesses how difficult it might be to rank for a specific keyword—based on your current SEO performance. 

Overall Keyword Difficulty (“KD%”) is a general ranking difficulty score for all websites.

Compare both metrics to identify the keywords with the highest ranking potential for your site. 

For instance, a PKD% of 60% and a KD% of 80% indicates a generally difficult keyword that your website could rank for. 

Choose keywords that balance PKD% and KD% for your next PPC campaign. 

Tick the boxes next to the terms you want to target. Hit the “+ Add to keyword list” button. 

Next, click “Create new empty list.”

Name your keyword.

The tool will collect all the keywords you’ve selected from the list. 

The tool allows you to “Export” and download the keywords in your list in CSV or Excel format.

Plan new content or optimize existing pages on your website around the keywords you’ve identified. 

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing digital marketing method. 

Here’s how affiliate programs work.

Companies partner with affiliates—bloggers, YouTubers, and other influencers—to market their products and services via their regular content. 

Affiliates act as digital salespeople, promoting your brand to their followers. Every time they generate a lead or sale, they earn a cut.

Like in this example from Cosmopolitan:

This model is a win-win for both parties. 

Why?

Because your brand gets increased exposure, traffic, and sales. And your affiliates get paid to push products or services they trust.

The best part about affiliate marketing? You pay only when you get results. 

Meanwhile, you can tap into a wider market, track qualified leads better, and enjoy low-cost advertising. Here’s what makes it a cost-effective option:

• No upfront for creating ads or content
• Affiliates only receive a cut when they generate sales or leads
• Custom commission rate based on your goals and budget 

Find potential affiliates is by joining an established affiliate network that connects brands with a pool of potential promoters.

Some popular affiliate programs include:

• Amazon Associates
• Semrush Affiliate Program
• Elementor’s Affiliate Program

The affiliate links you create have built-in tracking. So you can see exactly how your promotions perform.

Further reading: Check out the 12 best affiliate marketing programs we recommend. To find potential opportunities and markets you can tap into.

6. Email Marketing

A personal and measurable form of digital marketing, email marketing uses email to promote your product or service. 

According to a Zero Bounce survey, 88% of participants use email every day. Your target audience could be a click away. 

In fact, a dollar spent on email generates an average ROI of $36. 

Some examples of email marketing include:

• Newsletters
• Promotional offers
• Event invitations
• Product updates
• Content like blog posts or ebooks

Here’s an example by cat food company Smalls: 

Image Source: Really Good Emails

Email marketing include tracking open and click-through rates (CTR), segmenting your contact list, and sending targeted messages. 

For example, a skin care brand could segment its audience by skin concern—like acne, aging, or sensitivity. Then send targeted emails with product recommendations, skin care tips, and articles customized for each segment. 

The goal? 

Personalize messaging to increase customer engagement and loyalty.

7. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a modern twist on affiliate marketing. You partner with social media stars who have loyal fans. 

Influencers can be celebrities or niche experts. But they all have one thing in common: their followers trust them.

An activewear brand like Fabletics could partner with fitness influencers to reach your target audience. Like this:

Sixty-nine percent of consumers reportedly trust influencer recommendations when making purchases—and even repeat purchases. Partnering with influencers lets you tap into their audience and leverage that trust. 

8. Video Marketing

Video marketing uses video content to inform, engage, and convert your audience. This type of digital marketing relies on the power of sight, sound, and motion. 

Its purpose? 

To create an engaging, immersive experience. 

YouTube has over 2.5 billion monthly users hungry for video. 

Semrush’s YouTube channel is a real-world example of video marketing. Its subscriber numbers and views highlights the potential.

What makes video content an effective digital marketing format? 

The ability to forge an emotional connection with your viewers. In a way that text simply can’t match.

Semrush’s YouTube Analytics helps you understand viewer demographics, watch times, and engagement metrics. So you can tailor your marketing efforts and reach your target audience effectively. 

Further reading: Video Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for 2024

9. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing uses smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices to reach mobile customers. With advertisements, content, and user experiences designed for smaller screens. 

Here’s an example from Semrush: 

The layout fits a smartphone screen with a single column, large touch-friendly buttons, and concise content. A prominent call to action (CTA) to “Create a free account” is sized for easy tapping. 

Why mobile marketing? 

Two words: massive reach.

Ninety-seven percent of U.S. adults own cell phones. Fifty-five percent say they’ve never gone longer than 24 hours without one.

Mobile marketing includes a variety of tactics:

• SMS
• Push notifications (from websites and apps)
• Mobile-optimized website and email content
• Mobile apps
• Location-based marketing

To succeed, ensure you understand your target audience. Their mobile habits, preferences, and needs. 

Use it to optimize your mobile marketing strategy to:

• Inform your content strategy: Mobile users generally prefer shorter, more digestible content
• Guide your ad spend: Place more money on mobile ads if that’s where your audience is
• Improve your customer service approach: High mobile device usage might indicate the need for mobile-friendly support options such as chat and SMS

Tailoring your mobile marketing strategy to your audience’s digital habits could increase engagement, conversions, and overall campaign effectiveness.

Use a tool like Google Analytics to learn which device types people use to access your website. 

Now that we’ve covered digital marketing basics, let’s dive deeper. Distinguish between B2B and B2C digital marketing. And address online marketing challenges, automation, performance tracking, and budgeting.

B2B vs. B2C Digital Marketing

A B2B (business-to-business) digital marketer targets customers acting on behalf of businesses. For example, an industrial equipment maker would target construction firms.

A B2C (business-to-customer) digital marketer focuses on individuals who purchase for themselves. For instance, a sustainable fashion brand that targets eco-conscious millennials.

The category your business or ecommerce site falls into will shape your digital marketing strategy. Like this: 

In general, B2B customers needs more personalized nurturing. B2C customers can self-serve as long as you give them relevant content.

Further reading: 6 Types of Ecommerce: Business Models, Marketing, and More

Digital Marketing Challenges

Sixty-three percent of all shopping starts online, even if customers complete the purchase offline later. Making digital marketing essential for business success.

But why is reaching the right people at the right time such a challenge? 

Here are a few reasons.

Constantly Changing Trends 

Keeping up with digital trends, new technologies, and the latest tools is a constant demand. But a necessary one.

But how do you know which trends to invest in? Do you go all in on the latest social media craze or stick with tried-and-true tactics? A wrong choice could mean lost time and money.

Stay on top of new platforms, but evaluate them according to your target audience.

Take TikTok. The social media upstart has gone from a niche app for lip-syncing teens to a marketing powerhouse.

Chipotle’s #GuacDance challenge proved successful in the U.S. The six-day campaign recorded 430 million video starts and over 250,000 video submissions.

Although it’s best not to jump on every marketing trend, stay open to new platforms and strategies.

Here are some useful tips:

• Research where your target audience spends their time
• Make small experiments on new platforms to get an sense of what works
• Follow up closely on results and scale up successful initiatives
• Maintain a balance between new trends and proven strategies

Global Competition 

Today, even small businesses compete globally. A level playing field has its advantages. But it also means you’re up against the big marketing budgets of deep-pocketed competitors.

To stand out, smaller companies must get creative. Fast. 

Develop a powerful content strategy to connect with your target market. The right strategy can help small businesses compete even against bigger competitors by:

• Creating cost-effective, valuable content that’s often more affordable than paid advertising campaigns
• Publishing regular, relevant content for the target audience to boost SEO rankings
• Investing in the long-term value of high-quality content that works long after it’s published. Unlike paid ads, which run for a limited time.

Measuring ROI

It doesn’t matter how good your marketing strategy is if you can’t prove its worth. Measuring ROI is crucial. And challenging. 

Calculate ROI using the following formula: 

The number of metrics and channels makes it hard to know where to focus your efforts. To start: 

1. Consider your metrics in relation to your business goals. If you’re trying to increase sales, track conversion rates and revenue-related metrics. 
2. Focus on a core set of KPIs that relate directly to your objectives. Rather than tracking every metric possible, focus on those that provide the most value for your strategy. 
3. Analyze your metrics regularly and adjust them as your goals and strategies change. Semrush’s tools provide comprehensive data-driven insights to optimize your marketing efforts.

The Impact of Automation on Digital Marketing

The wave of digital marketing automation offers easy, hyper-targeted messaging at scale.

Which means: 

More data-driven decisions: AI-powered platforms like SAS Customer Intelligence 360 provide marketers with deep insights into campaign performance and market trends. So you can do more of what works well.

Personalized marketing campaigns: Twilio’s CustomerAI customizes marketing messages based on a user’s stage in the buyer journey. Customers with high intent receive detailed information, while new leads receive engaging content and incentives. This personalization seeks to increase engagement across segments.

Automated social media management: Semrush’s Social Media Poster helps you track your social media presence by scheduling posts and tracking engagement. Like this:

Measuring Digital Marketing Success

Monitoring isn’t a one-time task. It’s a continuous process of fine-tuning.

To measure the success of your digital marketing efforts, track these six key performance indicators (KPIs) as relevant:

1. Traffic by source: Analyze your traffic sources (e.g., direct, paid search, display, affiliates) to identify which digital channels generate the most qualified leads
2. Returning visitors: Keep track of the number of repeat visitors to your site. Which indicates the quality of your user experience and the relevance of your marketing efforts.
3. Average session duration: Check the average duration of a visitor’s session on your site. Longer sessions indicate engagement and a higher conversion rate.
4. Exit rate: The percentage of sessions that ended on a particular page. Bounce rate only measures visits to one page, whereas exit rate accounts for visits across multiple pages on your site. Assess pages with unusually high exit rates to identify marketing issues or areas that need improvement
5. Bounce rate: High bounce rates can indicate poor user experience or irrelevant content
6. Conversion rate: Monitor how many visitors complete desired actions (e.g., sales, subscriptions, signups, downloads) to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts 

For instance, use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to see how well your SEO efforts are working for your targeted keywords. Across organic and paid results.

Analyze the data to see what topics and themes resonate with your audience. Double down on subject areas that generate the most engagement and conversions.

Say you want to boost website traffic through paid search ads. 

Open the “Traffic acquisition” report in Google Analytics. Analyze whether paid search sessions are trending up or down, and how they compare to other channels.

Your campaign might need some TLC if the needle doesn’t move or traffic drops off. 

Further reading: 16 Marketing KPIs You Need to Monitor in 2024

Digital Marketing Costs and Budgeting

Budgeting for digital marketing is a balancing act. Spend too little, and you might not achieve your goals. Overspend, and you risk taking money away from other things.

First, get crystal clear on your overall business goals.

Are you trying to increase brand recognition, drive sales, or keep existing customers happy? How much you should invest depends on your goals.

To allocate marketing budgets, consider using a percentage of your revenue. Many companies spend between 5% and 15% on marketing. 

Make decisions based on your industry as well as your company’s size and growth stage.

This graph shows how businesses spend their digital marketing budgets in the UK, Germany, France, and North America:

Image Source: Statista

Need a more accurate budget estimate? 

Check out your competitors’ digital marketing budgets. This shouldn’t entirely inform your budget allocations, but it can provide perspective. Consider how much each campaign requires. 

Leave wiggle room in your budget to account for variable costs. Some digital marketing channels require more cash upfront. Like social media ads.

Suppose your influencer marketing campaign goes viral, boosting sales. This is great for your brand’s growth. But remember, you’ll have to pay your influencer for their standout performance—even if it’s above budget.

Master Digital Marketing with Semrush

Digital marketing examples span search (SEO and paid ads), social media advertising, email marketing, content marketing through blogs and videos, and more. 

The benefits of a solid online marketing plan are clear, from granular targeting to global reach. 

The Semrush toolkit can help you streamline your digital marketing efforts. And measure and fine-tune their performance.

Start building an online business you’re proud of. Sign up for a free Semrush account to plan, deploy, and enhance your digital strategy.