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What is Digital Marketing?
07/05/2024
Digital marketing is more present than ever but first let us take a look at it's roots. "Archie, the first search engine, debuted in the early 1990s, heralding the birth of search. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, quickly followed. The first clickable web-ad banners were introduced in 1994. The first identifiable social media site was launched in 1997, with 3.5 million users." (Monnappa, 2023)
"As of January 2024, there were 5.35 billion internet users worldwide, which amounted to 66.2 percent of the global population. Of this total, 5.04 billion, or 62.3 percent of the world's population, were social media users." (Statista, 2024) The sheer demand for skills in digital marketing is huge today as a result of this exponential growth of internet users. In this blog post we will cover what essentially is digital marketing by definition, show some real life examples of digital marketing being put to use and explain the rationale behind why such examples are effective.
Digital Marketing by Definition
According to experts in the field (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2022) defines digital marketing as "The application of digital media, data and technology integrated with traditional marketing communications to achieve marketing objectives." Another simple way to look at this definition can be explained as how digital marketing is a process of activities that helps achieve business objectives through online efforts. There are number of digital marketing activities that can range from social media marketing to search marketing to email marketing or even influencer marketing, it's hard to cover it all in this one blog post. Here is an overview of the different digital marketing activities;
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Search engine optimization (SEO)
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Search engine marketing (SEM)
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Content marketing
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Social Media Marketing (SMM)
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Affiliate marketing
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Email marketing
So we are going to focus on Digital Marketing in broad terms and also give some granular insights into some effective social media tactics with the given examples. Search marketing is a very effective medium for digital marketers. It entails the use of either paid and organic efforts to achieve objectives set out by a business. Paid search marketing is highly powerful for businesses looking to gain results fast, whereas SEO, a form of organic search marketing, is a longer process but can also yield amazing results for any business who executes it properly by an allocated digital marketing manager.
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Why is Digital Marketing important?
Digital Marketing is crucial for any business if they want to reach more audiences online and drive more revenue for their business. Remember there around 5.35 billion people that use the internet. With tools such as google ads, or meta ads you can target niche audiences, at any time from anywhere in the world to find new customers for your business. You can even foster deeper customer satisfaction and increased profits through creative efforts such as a gamification strategy when digitally marketing your business online.
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The wide scope of analytical tools can guide your marketing efforts and ensure you are not wasting a penny when it comes to paid efforts in digital marketing. With SEO best practices, your business can rank for selected keywords that your customers are searching for without a penny spent on ads if done right. Having a skilled digital marketer as part of a business ensures optimal results when carrying out all these activities.
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Real examples of digital marketing
The first example that will be presented below is a social media ad that ran for Forest Fest in 2022. This was a tactic that was executed as part of a real life digital marketing strategy taking into consideration consumer's preferences by mixing bands from The Stunning to Damien Dempsey. These main acts that were playing that year resonated most with our audience so Peter was responsible for the audio and ensuring the advertisement was mixed to perfection. The main element that Peter attributed to this ad was the seamless & creative mixing of the music tracks that enhanced the performance of the ad, and in essence helped sell out tickets for the first year of the events running.
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Peter had earned a music production for games diploma with Griffith college Dublin in 2022 so his skills allowed him to ensure this ad as well as many others he helped mixed audio for performed optimally when budgets were allocated to these paid social media ads. The digital marketing creative ad shown here garnered 17k views, 51 comments and 197 likes. A SOSTAC report pertaining to this business was created last year and it evaluated many aspects, and social media marketing examples such as this demonstrate how powerful good social media ads can perform when a skilled digital marketer knows how to do it right.
Second real example of digital marketing
For any serious digital marketer it is essential that creative efforts transfuse into real results. So when creating a hypothetical digital marketing strategy for a real estate business in Laois, a series of display banner ads were created to showcase creativity while also trying to deliver on results of spreading brand awareness for this business called Property Properly.
The key factor that underpinned all these efforts was a well thought out buyer persona and in this case it was someone in Laois looking to buy a new home. So if a potential buyer persona sees the display ad through accurate targeting, the click through rate would therefore be much better due to the strategic considerations undertaken throughout the digital marketing process. Here are the examples of the display ad campaign designs that would generate a lot more awareness around the brand by being shown in accurate websites that correlate to the buyer personas internet habits and the websites they visit.
Third real example of digital marketing
The third example that demonstrates a form of digital marketing is a social media marketing advertisement that was posted organically to help sell an apartment for Property Properly. It was created in Canva, using creative designs and hand selected audio to convey the feelings evoked by this modern looking apartment. This example of social media marketing helped make a sale as of today the sale has been agreed from once this post was published in February this year. The price for the apartment was upwards of two hundred thousand euros so it goes to show how effective a social media marketing advertisement can be when executed properly even when no budget is used. This is because creativity matters a lot when it comes to advertising. Here is a link to the sale agreed property on their Daft.ie page.
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Conclusion
With digital marketing there is a lot of planning and thought that underpins many activities such as social media marketing or display ads to other channels such as email. Everything is calculated and that is what separates a skilled digital marketer from the next person who decides to take on the role of managing digital marketing activities. Having the skills is imperative and that comes from having the knowledge and first hand experience.
If you like what you have read and are interested in the power of digital marketing and how these examples provide accurate evidence demonstrating this effectiveness then have a look at this search engine optimised blog page that was made for Property Properly and how it aligns with buyer personas related to wanting to buy a home. Or if you want to learn more about the power of Paid Search in digital marketing, and how it can be applied to visual artists to speed up their career this pillar page was created in Dublin Business School and it accurately details the specifics related to Paid Search for Visual Artists.
Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2022). Digital Marketing (8th ed.). Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited
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Monnappa, A. (2023) The history and evolution of Digital Marketing, Simplilearn.com. Available at: https://www.simplilearn.com/history-and-evolution-of-digital-marketing-article (Accessed: 06 May 2024).
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Statista (2024) Internet and social media users in the world 2024, Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/ (Accessed: 06 May 2024).