What are the main types of digital marketing?

What are the main types of digital marketing?

Every business will have to develop its own way of marketing itself online. There is a wide range of approaches so companies will have to decide on those that best meet their strategic objectives. As well as that, they must regard their strategy as a series of experiments. They should use the data gathered in one campaign to inform the next.

It is digital marketing’s great strength that it enables businesses to acquire precise information about each customer that is not available in the offline world, making it vital to many companies’ success. So, what the options for businesses?

Search engines and SEO basics

A search engine strategy is key to maintaining visibility online and to any marketing campaign. The aim of the strategy should be for your business to appear high in search engine results pages (SERPs), which means ideally on the first page of search results or soon afterwards. This is achieved by search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques.

SEO is a huge topic so we can only cover the basics here. Most initial contacts to a business come after a search on Google or Bing, so it is crucial to have a grasp of how and why search engines select companies for that all-important first results page. These are some of the key factors;

Keywords

Your site should contain the words people will be using to search for your kind of business, and ideally the keywords should be in headings. Do not overuse them.

Search rankings

Search engines rank for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness so try to project these qualities. Backlinks – links from other sites to yours – help with this, especially if those sites are major ones with a good standing in the marketplace. Do not use AI-generated text or copy and paste from other sites. Original content will aways do better.

Search engine algorithms are very sophisticated and have been continuously refined since they arrived on the scene. They will mark down sites that appear to be trying to game them so unless you think you are smarter than Google’s developers it is not worth attempting.

Images

Do have plenty of pictures and graphics on the site as they may surface in image searches. Do write the alt-text for each of them. This is text that is a brief factual description of the image that’s not displayed on the site and is used by people with sight loss with an audio function. It is also read by the search engine web crawlers that index new pages.

Updates

Do add content regularly. This helps to stop you slipping down the search results as the new page will be indexed by the search engines thus bringing the site to their attention.

URLs

Also known as slug words. These are the words that appear in the address bar (the field where website addresses appear in browsers) and will include your company name. Make sure they are short, are relevant to the page and if possible are search terms.

Functionality

The technical performance of your site is important. If its coding is overcomplicated or faulty or the site has many pictures or videos with large file sizes it will be slower to load and will be down ranked.

Mobile-first

About four-fifths of retail website visits in the UK last year were from a mobile device so make sure your site design is optimised for mobile.

Websites and building your online presence

Anyone setting up a trading business will need a website. This no longer requires any technical or coding skills as free and paid-for site-building services are available.

Two of the most popular providers are Wix and WordPress, which offer 1,000 of templates, with an array of tools and features to suit all businesses.

Many of the tools use artificial intelligence (AI). For example, it can write marketing text based on a few keywords and product descriptions. If you use videos in your marketing, AI can turn them into 30-second trailers that can be used for marketing or shared on your socials.

AI can also benchmark your site’s performance relative to competitors by comparing sales and traffic metrics, and will give you tips on how to improve.

The website builders include SEO software and programs that automatically send posts to social media platforms.

Although you can build a website for no more than the cost of your time, you will need to pay a provider to host it. As well as WordPress and Wix leading players in this market are Bluehost and SiteGround. You also have the option of paying a firm to design and build your website.

Paid advertising and sponsored results

Google offers a range of advertising services, which include:
• Search ads. These are the aforementioned Sponsored results.
• Performance Max. This enables advertisers to access all Google’s ad inventory with a single campaign. The AI-powered service is goals-based and uses smart bidding to optimise conversions.
• Display campaigns. These are visual advertisements that appear across the internet on apps, websites and YouTube.
• Video campaigns. These are ads on YouTube and other websites that appear pre-roll (before the video the viewer has clicked on) or at intervals during the video.
• App campaigns. If your business has an app an app campaign will help you find new users and encourage existing app users to take actions within the app. Campaign objectives could be encouraging sign-ups to the app or encourage in-app actions. Google will create your ad based on the content that you supply and optimise it for its various properties.
• Shopping campaigns. Shopping ads are product listings that appear in search results and on the Google Shopping tab.

Paying to appear in sponsored results is regarded by marketing experts as best suited to short-term campaigns aimed at what are called ‘high intent’ customers: that is those who are likely to buy something straightaway once they have found it.

If you opt for a listing in Sponsored results you will be charged each time someone clicks on your link (cost-per-click or CPC). For a smaller UK business this would be around 50p to £3.50 a click. You decide the most you will pay for a click and will appear above companies that have opted for a lower limit. Companies set a budget, usually monthly, for their total spend on CPC advertising.

Content marketing and social media

Core to any online marketing strategy should be content. This should serve the strategic purpose of attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience. To achieve this it has to address its needs, answer its questions and smooth away its pain points. It should also serve the needs and objectives of the business.

Online marketing can take many forms, from blogs and videos to white papers, infographics and text-based material. It should work across platforms and at different stages of buyers’ journey. A/B testing will optimise campaigns with the support of analytics to make continual improvements.

There are many ways content can be distributed such as ads on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, organic promotion using SEO and social media, and with the help of a public relations agency.

It should be frequently updated and relevant metrics should be scrutinised to find out what is performing well and what needs improvement.

Social media organic

This is the sweet spot of online marketing. At its – admittedly rare – best you can sit back and let the community you have built up around your brand do your marketing for you. ‘Organic’ here means natural, that is people are spreading the word about your business voluntarily. There are some general principles that apply to effective organic marketing; here are some of them.
• Video content should be short, less than 15 seconds for Instagram and no more than 60 seconds on TikTok are recommended.
• It’s better to have a smaller, more engaged community of people who save, share and comment on your marketing rather than a larger number of likes.
• Being part of communities on the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook Groups create a sense of belonging and enable you to communicate directly with brand advocates.
• Content should emphasise human stories rather than facts and figures about the company. Posts by employees are good idea. Try to identify staff members who are good in front of the camera.
• You can’t be everywhere at once so work out which social platforms are the best fit for your business and what you want your marketing to achieve. See Which social media platform is right for my business?

Email marketing

Email marketing is a crucial marketing tool thanks to the favourable return on investment it delivers. It enables businesses to build personalised relationships with customers, nurture leads and convert them into sales with the help of targeted messaging and automation.

By using the knowledge they have of customer segments and behaviour, businesses can create campaigns that are highly targeted and at their best will deliver the right content to the right customer at the right time. Effective uses of email marketing include abandoned cart reminders, loyalty promotions, personalised production recommendations and welcome sequences.

Creating a listing

A Google Business Profile is a key part of any company’s online marketing strategy and despite Bing having far lower search numbers it is worth setting up an account on its Places for Business listings, as Bing is the default browser on PCs.

The listings are what you see when you click on a company name in Sponsored results or results in Google or Bing. They are free to set up and the first opportunity many people have to find out about your business. In many case they will not click through to your website so the profile must have all the information – including reviews – that you want customers to see. As your main online shop window it is vital a listing performs as well as it can in terms of pictures, copy, reviews, contact details and useful information.

When setting up the listing take great care with choosing categories and keywords so that they match up with people’s likely search terms. They are unlikely to be searching for your company by name.

Companies should also make sure they appear on general business listing sites such as Yell.com and Thomson Local. While these do not receive high volumes of traffic, being on them adds authority to your site and the backlinks boost companies in SERPs.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing uses partner networks to increase sales. The affiliates – who include influencers – can be anyone from individual content creators to large publishers that promote your products and services in exchange for a commission on any resulting leads or sales.

Care needs to be taken in setting up affiliate relationships in particular with regard to commission rates, generating good quality marketing materials for the affiliate to use and making sure tracking systems are accurate.

Digital marketing: next steps

To learn more about online marketing please look at Finsbury Robinson’s other articles on the subject.

• How do I list my business online?
• SEO: Ten tips for topping search results
• Creating your first website? DIY or agency
• Will a social media strategy help my business?
• Which social media platform is right for my business?

And if you would like to take advantage of Finsbury Robinson's tax, accounting and business advisory services, please contact our friendly and highly experienced team on 020 8858 4303 or via email at info@finsburyrobinson.co.uk.