Types of Digital Marketing Strategies and How to Use Them

There are different types of digital marketing strategies you can implement to achieve your digital business goals.

They are distinct, but in most cases they intersect, complement each other and even share the same communication channels.

In fact, it currently makes sense to use several strategies together, in order to get the most out of your business.

Before embarking on a new digital strategy, it is advisable to know how to implement a digital marketing strategy and better know your target customer, your competition, the communication channels and how to set goals.

In this article we will understand what types of digital marketing strategies you can implement and which ones best suit the goals you want to achieve in digital . Let’s also get some questions answered.

Types of Digital Marketing Strategies

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Inbound Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Online Advertising
• Advertising Social Networks
• affiliate marketing
• influence marketing
• SMS and Email Marketing
• Push notifications
• Social networks
• Video Marketing
• Lead Generation

Web site

Before we start exploring the different types of digital marketing strategies that you can implement in your company, it is necessary to point out that most of the most successful online strategies converge on the website .

Therefore, this is a tool that you should consider implementing in your strategy and that, despite the advent of social networks, continues to be your business’s gateway to digital.

Preferably a website optimized for desktops, tablets and smartphones. With a good visual, structural and usability experience. And, above all, optimized to appear in the top positions of Google and other search engines, whenever your customers search for terms related to your products.

1. SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is perhaps the digital marketing strategy considered essential for the business of a digital company or organization.

The ultimate goal of any business is to be found, right? If no one knows it exists how will you sell your products or services?

Google is where your audience searches and searches continue to grow.

Being in the first page search results when a customer is looking for a service or a product you sell is a huge advantage over the competition, right?

What to consider when implementing an SEO strategy?

1. Fix SEO mistakes that are hurting your placement. It is essential to analyze your website to correct SEO errors. This step alone is enough to move up positions.
2. Organize your content and structure your website. The way your blog articles are linked, the product and commercial pages are built, and the structuring of your content page itself contributes to SEO optimization.
3. Your domain history. A domain with many years on the web has, if it is worked, a greater preponderance than a recent domain. Google and other search engines use seniority to rank a website’s quality.
4. On-page SEO. On-page SEO is a very important and often overlooked process in building a website. The website title, its content hierarchies, the alt description of its images, internal and external links, the content itself (text, images, videos, infographics) are important for its positioning.
5. Off page SEO. Building backlinks is important for Google to evaluate your website. Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your company’s website. The greater the importance of this reference, the better it is for your positioning. A backlink from a government website, for example, with a high domain authority (AD) has a driving effect on its positioning. But SEO outside your controlled environment also includes social media sharing and interaction.
6. Using SEO tools is essential to monitor your placement and understand if you are moving up positions or not. Google Search Console is, without a doubt, the best SEO tool that you can consult and enjoy.
7. Research intent. Use AI to predict customer intent in your search queries for each stage of the sales funnel. Understand what customers want to do on your website and help them do it!

1. Inbound Marketing

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing or attraction marketing is a digital marketing strategy whose main objective is to understand the doubts and anxieties of your customers and provide them with relevant information that will attract their attention, gain their trust and, finally, obtain your loyalty.

It establishes a very close relationship with the client right from the start, building a dialogue, involving them and, almost always, presenting solutions to their problems.

The constant stimulation of this strategy in different communication channels creates an almost unbreakable bridge in the relationship between company and customer, making the customer see this company as a reference in the matter, an authority, and the solution to turn to when making a purchase. a product or purchase of a service.

Inbound Marketing has been in recent years the privileged strategy for companies to reach their customers. Unlike Outbound Marketing, it is not intrusive and lead qualification is generally much higher.

Outbound Marketing

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is a digital marketing strategy based on active, direct and recurrent prospecting, focused on new customers, according to the characteristics and attributes that make up the target customer.

Inbound marketing is not an opposition to outbound marketing, they are just different types of digital marketing strategy. And, although there are many currents against their joint use, at Abia Digital we have already proven several times that they can coexist in a digital marketing strategy for different types of customers.

Inbound or Outbound Marketing: which strategy to use?

Inbound marketing is based on the construction of content and to be easily found by customers, both on social networks and on search engines.

It is complemented with many other digital marketing strategies, depending on the SEO optimization of its contents, in order to be easily found whenever a potential customer searches Google and other search engines for terms related to your services or products .

It also relies on content marketing and an interaction strategy on social media.

Your leads actively consume the content you produce, but aren’t exactly interested in buying right now. When this need exists, they know where to buy.

Outbound Marketing is based on direct customer contact strategies, such as telemarketing, Google ads, flyers, billboards, billboards, radio, newspaper or television ads.

Your leads have never heard of your solution until now, but have been identified as potential buyers.

You might as well use both at the same time. Some fundamental characteristics to make your decision or base your digital marketing strategy:

Inbound Marketing

• Smaller investment
• Longer implementation time
• Greater qualification of leads
• Customer retention and loyalty
• Ease of upsell

Outbound Marketing

• Faster ROI
• Bigger investment
• More intrusive
• Impulse purchase
• Shorter sales cycle

1. Content Marketing

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a target audience.

Content marketing as a strategy for your company

A few years ago, if I had any doubts about how to spell or find the meaning of a word, I used a dictionary. Today it’s almost unthinkable…I look up on Google.

People search the internet for all kinds of solutions to their problems and needs. The Covid-19 pandemic, since the beginning of 2020 in Europe, has intensified this practice.

There is a huge opportunity to explore thousands of searches associated with your products and services.

Content marketing allows you to position yourself on Google and other search engines when your potential customer is looking for solutions to fill their needs. In fact, it’s more than that.

While positioning is vital (it’s different to occupy the 1st position than the 6th in Google search results for a key keyword or topic for your business – SEO), the way you build your content and the different moments in which he presents it play a key role.

Should you use content marketing in your digital strategy?

It is practically consensual, in most professional activities, that it is.

Content drives traffic to your website, application, YouTube channel or social media page. This is a great principle: bring people to you, recognize your brand, your work and educate them with your content.

Converting these people into customers is another phase of your digital strategy, which may well include Inbound Marketing.

Blog

Your company’s blog is whatever you want it to be. There is no restrictive definition of themes or topics, social media distractions or… your competitors. It is your communication space with your customers.

It also contributes to the positioning of your company’s products and services on Google, increasing your visibility.

Should my business use blogging as a digital marketing strategy?

Using the blog from a business point of view is having another tool that contributes to lead generation, traffic raising, customer retention and loyalty.

This is a channel that, due to its informal nature, strengthens relationships with its customers. It’s great for showing the benefits of your products or services and how they work.

The blog is for you, if you want to expand your digital visibility and have a communication channel through which you can channel more traffic and work these new visitors into new customers through a content marketing strategy.

Community, customer or partner blogs

Using personal blogs, from the community that consumes and talks about your products and services, as well as using blogs from your customers or partners, is always a good practice to increase the audience that consumes your content and, simultaneously, work on the positioning of your Web site.

Remember that we talked in the topic about SEO how important it is to create backlinks to your website, that is, external links that point to some page of your company.

1. Online advertising

Search Engine Advertising (SEA) or advertising on search engines is advertising on Google and other search engines, whose main objective is to present your products or services in a position above the competition, (which is not always the case) whenever the customer searches for products or services that you make available in your company.

Online advertising can also be carried out on networks of advertiser websites, social networks, apps, Youtube, e-mail, Discover, that is, in any public web environment that allows this framework.

There are different types of online advertising, with different formats, placements or platforms. You can take advantage of these specifics to boost your business.

Also check out: Print Advertising Advantages

Cost per click (CPC)

What is CPC?

Cost-per-click (CPC) is the monetary amount charged each time someone clicks on your ad.

The typical CPC ad is one that is created for search engines, such as on Google’s search results page.

Display ads

What are display ads?

Display ads essentially use the power of image to advertise the product/service/company on a network of advertising websites. It also uses text to complement communication.

The largest display network belongs to the largest online search engine and displays your ads on Youtube, Gmail or Discover.

Shopping Ads

What are shopping ads?

The mall provides a more visual experience for the shopper. Allows you to present your products with image, name, price, availability, retailer name and other information in Google search results, display network, Youtube, Gmail and Discover, and also in “shopping”.

Google Shopping is essential for e-commerce stores to boost the sale of products online.

Video Ads

What are video ads?

Video ads allow you to present your video on Youtube or partner websites and impact your audience, according to a goal you have set for your campaign.

Video ads are extremely popular because of their effectiveness in conveying information within seconds.

For video advertising to be effective it is necessary to assess the purpose of the video and the message it intends to convey. Here you can learn more about video marketing.

Retargeting Ads

What are retargeting ads?

Retargeting is a strategy that allows you to present your ads to customers who have visited your website or performed some action you consider valuable on your website. The objective is to recover these customers and lead them, for example, to finalize a purchase or make contact.

Difference between Retargeting and Remarketing

In a nutshell, retargeting uses paid advertising to interact with website visitors and remarketing uses email for the same purpose. The big difference lies in the channel used to communicate with its customers.

1. Advertising on Social Media

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin

Like search engines, social networks also provide a space for advertising.

This social media advertising can be carried out with different objectives (likes, reach, video views, conversion, among others), different formats (single image, carousel, video, forms) and different segmentation (geographic, age, position, interests, between others).

Through your digital strategy, you can choose your advertising to be displayed on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin.

What type of advertising should I use in my company’s digital strategy?

There is no right answer, without first knowing what is the objective to reach and what kind of strategy one intends to implement.

This is a good article to understand a little more about digital marketing goals and strategy. You can also contact us and we will quickly frame the best advertising strategy for your company.

It is important to understand that each type of advertising has its objective and purpose in relation to the final objective: doing business.

For example: through advertising on the search network you will be qualifying your lead faster (you can read later in this article about qualifying leads), as these are people who are searching for your product/service, so there is an intention .

As far as social networks are concerned, the user is impacted by an ad while browsing their social network, which may very well be something they are interested in or not.

1. Affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing?

It’s generating revenue or notoriety through a network to whom you pay a commission if it adds value to your business.

If you have a blog that attracts a lot of traffic to topics that interest a certain brand, which is interested in the same or a fringe of that target audience, you can facilitate a space to promote your products/services, receiving a monetary value in return.

1. Influence marketing

What is influence marketing?

Influence marketing has assumed great preponderance in the last year, giving the idea that everyone and none are influencers, essentially on social media.

The truth is that this type of strategy works, but it is also true that its presence has diminished for several reasons.

At the head are the exorbitant values that some influencers charge brands, sums that are completely impossible for some national brands to establish a marketing plan for communicating their products.

For almost all ailments there is a remedy. And we are witnessing a very interesting trend in other countries of micro-influencers.

What are micro-influencers?

Micro-influencers are people specialized in a certain niche who have great knowledge about that product and a wide capacity of communication, interaction and influence through their digital channels, not having, however, thousands of followers or subscribers.

They are more accessible, cheaper and provide greater interaction with the public. Worth trying.

1. SMS and Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the most popular digital marketing strategies and also the one that has evolved the most over time.

It is practically rooted in most companies. Most of the time without realizing its true potential.

Email and SMS is essential to communicate with your target audience, increase your sales, keep the connection alive and present, feed interests and, not often mentioned, has the effect of keeping the brand present and active on its own platform from the customer: your email inbox.

Raise email and cell phone contacts

In order to communicate with your customers it is necessary that they give you their authorization. Therefore, the first objective of any email marketing implementation solution is to obtain this authorization.

Sending emails, whether in the form of campaigns or newsletters, or even SMS’s to people who do not want to communicate with the brand or are not interested in the products/services is the first step towards an unsuccessful strategy.

Therefore, it is necessary to establish a connection with your customers, in order to cultivate the relationship and, later on, “to be able to grow” in that customer. You can get more information in our email marketing solution.

Build and Segment an Email List

Email marketing is not just about creating an email and sending it to a set of contacts.

It presupposes a process of building an email list and sending relevant content to that list, depending on your needs and wishes.

This list can be segmented using a set of criteria that are relevant to your business. For example: in an e-commerce business you can segment your customer lists that generate high revenue or customers that generate low value revenue and target the appropriate campaigns.

In practice, you are making your messages to these groups more relevant, as there is already a known interest, and you are simultaneously increasing your chances of getting a new customer, a new subscriber, generating a new lead or achieving any other goal the one proposed.

Segmenting an email list is not a complex process, but given the amount of emails that are on your list, it can be quite laborious.

Marketing automation

Automation in marketing is a fundamental tool. In fact, it’s the tool.

When combined with e-mail marketing, it brings advantages in terms of campaign performance, as well as efficiency in time management and speed in work processes.

And when it comes to communicating with thousands of people or maybe millions, depending on your email lists, automation needs to work.

Email Marketing Automation Software

The first step is choosing software to manage and develop this strategy. We strongly advise you to consult a professional, as this is an essential step in any email strategy and should be taken at the beginning of the work process.

There are dozens of email marketing and automation software that you can easily subscribe to on the web. But we don’t consider that there is one that is better than the others or that he adapts to all professional activities.

Email marketing automation

If you want to implement a successful online strategy, you cannot do without the use of this technology.

Whether for lead magnet, welcome emails, sales sequences, abandoned carts, remarketing, abandoned products or newsletters, the applications are vast and allow you to generate enormous value for the business, whatever the professional activity in which it inserts itself.

1. Push notifications

These are the notifications that usually appear on the screen of our smartphones and computers.

They are very useful from an information point of view, but can become annoying and even invasive if used incorrectly.

You can implement this alert on your business website and send notifications (which make sense and not abusive!) to your customers.

1. Social networks

Social Networks are platforms that allow you to share content with a network of contacts (“friends”) and virtual communities.

The rise of social networks was overwhelming for most societies around the world, becoming a center for information, sharing, discussion, dissemination and community. A space that concentrates millions and whose potential obviously does not go unnoticed by companies.

Companies and social networks

Communication, promotion, influence and discussion may well be the main characteristics associated with social networks. Be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Tik Tok or Linkedin.

Note: a company does not necessarily have to be present on all social networks. In most cases it is a waste of internal and external resources and results are meager. It is something that we are always questioned about and it should be made clear. In fact, our recommendation is the professional management of one or two social networks that suit the company’s marketing and communication strategy.

The presence of millions and their growing importance in communication and customer relations have made them indispensable for any digital marketing strategy.

Define a strategy on social media

Social networks make it possible to shape the perception of the brand/company/business in the consumer’s mind as never before has another communication channel allowed it.

Michał Burkiewicz, CEO and founder of Delante, an SEO agency based in Poland says, “An effective strategy on social media is one that generates the results you set in your goals. These goals can be to increase brand recognition, increase sales volume, gain greater notoriety, be recognized as a leader in a certain market, among many others.”

You can read here about how to formulate goals in your social media content marketing strategy

We list the mandatory steps to define a strategy for social media:

1. Establish goals and targets;
2. Define the social networks where you should communicate your brand;
3. Establish a line of communication and image according to your brand/company/business;
4. Create an editorial calendar for your publications;
5. Review the metrics and indicators that match the goals you set.

1. Video Marketing

What is video marketing?

It is the use of videos in your strategy to promote and market your products or services, achieve greater interaction in your communication channels and/or educate your target audience.

Using video marketing in your digital strategy is imperative for multiple reasons.

1. Lead Generation

Lead generation has a direct relationship with business performance, as this is where the company’s revenue comes from in most cases. Therefore, it is mandatory that there is a strategy focused on acquiring new customers.

It’s not exactly a type of digital marketing strategy. It may even encompass all the strategies we’ve mentioned before. However, we decided to include it because of the added importance to any business.

What is Lead?

Leads are business opportunities. They filled out a contact form, called you, sent you an email or message showing interest in a product or service.

Simply put, there are two types of leads: qualified leads and unqualified leads.

Qualified Leads

• Completed the nurturing process with the company
• You know perfectly well what you want to buy
• Have you already researched about the product or service
• Do you have a budget to purchase the product or service
• The probability of the lead generating business is quite high

Unqualified Leads

• Little do they know about the company, its products or services.
• They are unaware of the potential of the solution
• Product or service is out of your budget
• It is possible to convert a Lead into a Customer, but the probability is very low

Conclusion

We hope this article is helpful in selecting the types of digital marketing strategies to use in your business.

We try to make an introduction to each one of them, so that you can implement or even reflect on the strategies that are currently implemented in your company.

Our recommendation is to always use our expertise for a number of reasons:

• Greater efficiency and better results;
• Knowledge and tools;
• Saving resources, money and time;
• Guaranteed monitoring by a specialized team, with experience in digital and prepared to help your company achieve its goals in digital.