In the past decade, digital marketing has become a vital component in

organizations' overall marketing strategy. It allows companies to tailor

messages to reach a specific audience, making it possible to market directly
to people who are likely to be interested in their product. Digital marketing
encompasses a wide variety of marketing tactics and technologies used to
reach consumers online. Two academic team members from Southern New
Hampshire University (SNHU) spoke about how digital marketing aligns with
traditional tactics and shared information on some of the types of digital
marketing in practice now.

A senior associate dean of business programs, Dr. Mark Hobson, said

although digital marketing seems like a new world, in fact it is based in many
of the principles familiar to traditional marketers and requires both
foundational marketing knowledge and technical know-how.

Dr. Jessica Rogers, associate dean of marketing programs, said the two
disciplines serve to connect with distinct groups of consumers. “… Traditional
media is a great way to reach a broad consumer base, whereas digital media
has the ability to reach very specific audiences,” she said “A key point is that
depending on the target audience, some channels are more effective than
others.”

Types of Digital Marketing

Rogers talked about some of the most popular types of digital marketing,
providing a brief overview of each:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The goal of SEO is to get a business to rank higher in Google search results,
ultimately increasing search engine traffic to the business’s website. To
accomplish this, SEO marketers research words and phrases consumers are
using to search for information online, and use those terms in their own
content. According to leading SEO software company Moz's "Beginners
Guide to SEO," SEO encompasses many elements, from the words on your
web pages to the way other sites link to you on the web to how your website
is structured. An SEO specialist can make around $59,000, according to
Salary.com.

So, what are some things that can improve a site’s SEO? It’s important to
understand that one of the things that makes SEO challenging is that the
answer to this question always depends on Google and its most current
algorithm. Keeping that in mind, here are a few of the most important things
for SEO strategists and marketers in general to understand about how SEO
works today, from Moz's Beginners Guide to SEO:

 Content indexing – It is important to allow search engines to clearly

“read” what your site content is, by doing things like adding alt text for
images and text transcripts for video and audio content.
  Good link structure – It is important that search engines can “crawl”
your site structure to easily find all the content on your site. There are
many things that an SEO specialist can do to properly format links,
URLs, and sitemaps to make them most accessible to site crawlers.
 Keywords and keyword targeting – Properly deploying your
keywords – i.e. the search terms you want your site to be found for—in
your content and headers is one of the fundamental building blocks of
SEO. It is no longer good practice to “stuff” your content with as many
keywords and keyword variations as possible. Writing high-quality
content that uses keywords in the headers and a few times in the
crawl-able page content is now considered better practice, and will
make pages rank better in search results.

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click refers to paid advertisements

and promoted search engine results. This is a short-term form of digital
marketing, meaning that once you are no longer paying, the ad no longer
exists. Like SEO, PPC is a way to increase search traffic to a business online.

Pay-per-click can refer to the advertisements you see at the top and sides of a
page of search results, the ads you see while browsing the web, ads before
YouTube videos and in ads in mobile apps.

One of the other things that differentiates pay-per-click from SEO is that you
only pay for the results. In a typical PPC model like a Google
AdWords campaign, you will pay only when someone clicks on your ad and
lands on your website. You can spend just about any amount of money on
pay-per-click advertising. Some companies may see results from investing
just a few hundred dollars, but plenty of large companies spend tens of
thousands a month on pay-per-click.

How much it costs to run an ad or promote your search results will depend
primarily on how much competition there is for your keywords. High
competition keywords (i.e. keywords that many people are searching for and
that many sites are trying to be found for) will be more expensive and lower
competition terms will likely cost less.
When you set up a pay-per-click campaign, you will also be able to choose
whether you want your ad or promoted results to be shown to users all over
the world, or only within a specific geographic area. If you are marketing a
brick-and-mortar business, this ability to tailor by location helps you not waste
ad dollars serving ads to users who don’t live anywhere near your business,
according to Google.

Social Media Marketing

This includes everything a business does via social media channels. Just
about everyone is familiar with social media, but marketers must approach
social with an integrated and strategic approach. Social media marketing goes
far beyond simply creating posts for social channels and responding to
comments.

To be effective, efforts must be coordinated

and consistent rather than an afterthought. To help keep posts consistent,
there are many online tools available to automate and schedule social media
posts, although marketers only should use automation as a tool, not a “set it
and forget it” solution. Users will figure it out quickly if there is no real person
behind the posts.

Social media marketers should not be in a silo separate from other marketing
functions. Social marketers need to work with the company’s wider marketing
team to coordinate their message across all platforms, online and off, so that
every part of the brand is telling the same story.

A crucial part of social media marketing is analytics: Social media marketers

must also be savvy at analyzing the performance of their posts, and creating
strategies based on that data. Another reason for marketers to be consistently
measuring and tracking their campaigns is that this data allows marketers to
demonstrate to business leadership that their efforts are driving users to
engage with the brand and eventually converting users into customers,
therefore providing value to the company, according to Forbes
contributor Jayson DeMers.

In other words, social media marketing is a lot more complicated than

managing your personal Facebook or Twitter profile. It requires a blend of
creative thinking and objective, data-driven strategy, and may be a great fit for
professionals who enjoy blending these two disciplines. A social media
analyst with a bachelor's degree can earn about $63,841, according to
Salary.com.

Content Marketing

Content marketing uses storytelling and information sharing to increase brand

awareness. Ultimately, the goal is to have the reader take an action towards
becoming a customer, such as requesting more information, signing up for an
email list, or making a purchase. “Content” can mean blog posts, resources
like white papers and e-books, digital video, podcasts, and much more. In
general, it should first and foremost provide value to the consumer, not just
advertise the brand or try to make a sale. Content marketing is about building
a sustainable, trusting relationship with your customers that can potentially
lead to many sales over time, not just making a single transaction.

Content marketing works in symbiosis with

other types of digital marketing: It is a way to incorporate SEO search terms
into fresh website content, and the content created can be shared as social
media posts and in email marketing publications. Looking at the analytics for
your content marketing can tell you a lot about your customers: what are they
looking for when they land on your site? What kinds of content make them
stay on the site longer and keep looking around? What kinds make them lose
interest and navigate away?

Unlike a method such as PPC, content marketing is a long-term strategy.

Over time, marketers build up a library of content (text, video, podcasts etc.)
that will continue to bring users to the site via search engines, according
to Marketo, a marketing automation company. This content library also helps
promote knowledge of your brand and increases your profile as a resource for
information. And, if users are visiting your site for information, ideally they will
remember you as an authority when it’s time to make a purchase.

Content marketing is a great avenue for people who enjoy writing and/or video
and audio production. But as with digital marketing in general, it also calls for
strong strategic and analytic skills.

Email Marketing
Even with the emergence of social media, mobile applications and other
channels, email is still one of the most effective marketing techniques, Rogers
said. It can be part of a content marketing strategy, providing value to
consumers and over time convert an audience into customers. Email
marketing pros not only know how to create compelling campaigns, they also
understand optimal audience outreach and are skilled at analyzing customer
interactions and data, and making strategic decisions based on that data,
according to the American Marketing Association. 

Email marketing software can offer many

different analytical measures, but two that marketers are always striving to
improve are the open rate –the percentage of recipients who opened the
email – and the click through rate – the number of recipients who opened the
email and clicked on a link in the email. According to leading email marketing
software company Constant Contact, there are many things marketers can
do to make their emails more appealing to users and more likely to be
opened. These include:

 Create a Sense of Urgency – Writing email copy that lets your

recipients know that time is running out to get a special deal or that
there are only a limited number of the offer available, can increase the
number of people clicking through to your website.
 Personalize Your Email – Setting your emails and subject lines up to
incorporate the recipient’s name is a proven way to increase open and
click through rates. (A sample subject line: “Katie, a special offer just
for you.”)
 Let Recipients Set Their Preferences – Allowing users to specify how
often they want to hear from you can help keep some of your email
subscribers subscribed to your list and clicking on your emails.

Mobile Marketing

This digital marketing type is this focused on reaching your target audience on
their smart phone or tablet. Mobile marketing reaches people through text
messages, social media, websites, email and mobile applications. Marketers
can tailor offers or special content to a geographic location or time, such as
when a customer walks into a store or enters an event.
 According to a recent TechCrunch article,
consumers in the United States now spend five hours a day on their phones.
This represents a 20% increase from the fourth quarter of 2015. Users are
also spending much more of their time in apps rather than on mobile
browsers. In 2017, users are spending much more time with apps than
watching television. 15% of that app time is spent with entertainment apps like
Netflix and Hulu, 19% of it is spent on Facebook’s mobile app, 12% on other
social and messaging apps, and 11% in gaming apps, according to the
TechCrunch article.

Retail Dive reports that 45% of all shopping always or frequently involves a

mobile device in some way, whether it’s used to do research, compare prices
or make a purchase. For a majority of Millennials (defined the Pew Research
Center as people born between 1981 and 1997), that number is 57%.

Marketers know that you need to take your message to where you customers
are, and in 2019 it is very clear: your potential customers are on their phones.

Marketing Analytics

One of the major advantages of digital marketing is that it is highly trackable

and measurable. Once, the only trackable marketing pieces were coupons
and similar direct mail offers. If a customer used the coupon, you knew the
message resonated. Today, analytics allow marketers to track user behavior
at a highly detailed level: how many times they click on a link, how much time
they spend on a web page, how often they open emails, and much more. But
the vast amount of information available about digital marketing performance
can feel like drinking from a fire hose, and marketers must be able to truly
understand what the data mean and how they should inform strategy.
 Not only does this allow marketers to learn
what is successful with consumers and adapt their marketing messages
moving forward, it also means they can demonstrate their value to the
company. Understanding all of this data and using it to make strategic
decisions is an important part of a digital marketer’s work, and one that sets
them apart from their traditional counterparts.

There are many tools available for measuring the success of digital marketing
campaigns, and many marketers will use some combination of these tools,
depending on their needs and their audience (Fortune magazine reported
that many marketers are using over 100 applications in their total marketing
process.) One of the most used tools for marketing analytics is Google
Analytics, which can be customized in nearly endless ways to measure how
your site is performing, which keywords are bringing users to your site, how
users are navigating through your website, and much more.

Having good, accurate analytics and the know-how to interpret them can help
marketers “fail fast,” quickly cutting campaigns that aren’t working and
building better campaigns around concepts that have a proven track record of
success. Over time, you won’t just be using analytics to measure your
campaigns – the analytics will also inform and improve your campaigns.

In a digital marketing degree program, you'll study a wide range of issues

pertinent to your marketing career, including marketing plans and strategies,
branding, mobile marketing and digital advertising.

The job market is growing for advertisers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and
Statistics (BLS) predicts a 9% increase in the number of advertising,
promotions and marketing managers. In 2018, the median salary for those
positions was $132,000, according to BLS.

Digital Marketing Skills

Digital marketers support the wider marketing team and the strategic goals of
the whole company by rolling out marketing strategies in the online
environment, Hobson said. Digital marketers strive to be a voice for the
customer and how they want to interact with a brand digitally, Rogers said.
“(Marketers) strategically approach the brand’s channels to maximize
investments, drive traffic and conversions, as well as manage integrated
digital content,” she said.

The need to be where the customers are at all times means that digital
marketers have a significant responsibility to be attuned to changes in
technology, social media and software.

Technology changes quickly; the hot social media app of today may be all but
abandoned by next year, but many of the foundational principles of marketing
remain the same.

Today, many employers are requiring experience in Google Analytics, Google

and Facebook Ads, HubSpot and Hootsuite, according to Rogers. In
a master's in digital marketing program, you'll learn the foundations of
tools such as these, exploring and applying them through coursework. They
are also looking for candidates who are proficient in Adobe Creative Suites
and have a working knowledge of SEO and keyword research.

However, some important pieces of the

marketing puzzle have not changed since the days when companies primarily
advertised in print, radio and TV. All marketers need strong communication
skills and a strong basis in marketing principles.

Employers include these soft skills with the technology-related proficiencies in

job posting requirements, according to Rogers. 

"A basic tenant of marketing is communicating a marketing message to a

target audience," she said. "... Not only must we communicate with our
teammates, but we must be able to communicate to customers, executives
and more. These folks are our target audience and without strong
communication skills, messages will not be received in the way in which we
intended."

Since digital marketing is a rapidly changing space and it is imperative for

companies to stay up to date on new and emerging strategies, Hobson said.
There are many ways that companies do this, some of which are the
responsibility of digital marketers and some of which is done by other
departments.
“Staying ahead of the competition has never been more important,” Rogers
said. “The landscape for businesses is changing so rapidly, that is has
become a key strategy to include looking to the competition to help inform
your own digital strategy.”