Do you have questions about digital marketing that you’ve been meaning to get answered? Digital Media Solutions is here to help. In this article, we’ve answered five of the questions about digital marketing that are most frequently searched in Google. Click on your question below to see the answer.

1. What is digital marketing? 
2. What are the different methods of digital marketing?
3. What is the 80/20 of digital marketing?
4. What are the benefits of digital marketing?
5. Does digital marketing cost a lot?

1. What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is marketing that happens exclusively within the digital space. Consumers view digital marketing via desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones and tablets.

Digital marketing includes both paid digital media channels and earned digital media channels, including paid search, search engine optimization, email marketing, display advertising, programmatic media buying, content marketing, social media, social advertising, lead generation and affiliate marketing.

Digital marketing is often less expensive to execute than traditional marketing, because the creative costs do not include hard production expenses, like printing. Similarly, digital media campaigns can often launch faster than traditional campaigns.

When campaigns are exclusively digital, performance tracking can be more accurate than it is with traditional marketing. Cross-channel attribution within digital marketing allows for the tracking of consumer journeys from impression through to conversion, providing true ROI measurements.

2. What are the different methods of digital marketing?

Digital marketing is comprised of a long and growing list of marketing methods, including:

• Paid search and PPC: Paid search and PPC marketing campaigns include search engine marketing and remarketing. These campaigns efficiently place your brand and direct response ads in front of prospects when they’re on Google and millions of other sites.
• Email marketing: Email marketing is the art and science of building and nurturing prospect relationships to enable better and more efficient transitions along the conversion funnel. Successful email marketing typically includes the deployment of  automated and verified email messages, carefully created to be relevant at the moment received, are deployed utilizing device-agnostic, responsive designs and email best practice guidelines.
• Search engine optimization: Search engine optimization (or SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility, traffic and clicks to a website from a search engine’s natural results.
• Content marketing: Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing unique and proprietary content to connect with your audience by providing them something they value.
• Display advertising: Display advertising includes the placement of advertisements on websites, apps and social media platforms. Programmatic advertising is a type of display advertising that targets defined audiences no matter the website, instead of identifying websites with a high population of a target audience.
• Social media and social advertising: Social media includes a long and growing list of websites and apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and LinkedIn, that allow users to create and share content with and across their networks of friends or followers. Social advertising is the act of paying for placement within a social media website or app.
• Lead generation: Lead generation is the act of acquiring leads, often from third-party sources, of consumers who may be interested in a product or service. Many leads are the result of inquiries from potential consumers.
• Pay-per-call lead generation: Pay-per-call lead generation is the act of acquiring inbound calls, including click-to-call leads for which the prospect clicks to begin the call with a marketer and live agent transfers, sometimes called hot or warm transfers, which are inbound calls generated by a call center.
• Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is a form of digital marketing that typically involves third-party management of publishers promoting an advertiser’s products or services. In most cases, the advertiser pays only for results, on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis.

3. What is the 80/20 of digital marketing?

The 80/20 of digital marketing is a theory that 20% of your digital marketing spend will generate 80% of your digital marketing results.

Digital marketing can be superior to traditional marketing in its trackability. Using cross-channel attribution to track the entire consumer journey from first impression through conversion, digital marketing campaigns can be optimized to reduce some of the ineffective marketing spend, ideally resulting in stronger ROI.

4. What are the benefits of digital marketing?

Because the benefits of digital marketing are endless, we’ve highlighted five key benefits to answer this question:

1. Digital marketing can be very targeted. It can be easy to hone in on specific demographics and geographies with digital marketing, allowing advertisers to target audiences with the highest propensity to convert.
2. Digital marketing campaigns can be launched quickly. Many digital advertising platforms, like Facebook, have streamlined the creative and campaign development processes, allowing digital marketing campaigns to launch with the click of a button.
3. Digital marketing can be fully trackable. Cookies and tracking pixels allow digital advertisers to track digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as impressions, clicks, click-through rates and conversions. Cross-channel attribution, achievable in digital media, is the act of tracking across channels and combining the data to understand a complete customer journey.
4. Digital marketing can be free. Digital marketing includes earned media such as email marketing, social media, SEO and content marketing. Although these methods of digital marketing require time investments, they do not always require media investments, resulting in “free” advertising.
5. Digital marketing is endlessly scalable. There are always more ways to reach your audience through digital marketing. With lookalike advertising, marketers can reach audiences that “look like” their best customers, scaling marketing efforts with a strong probability of maintaining current conversion metrics.

5. Does digital marketing cost a lot?

No, digital marketing does not have to cost a lot. Digital marketing campaign budgets range from $0 to millions of dollars with factors including budget, audience and objectives determining the spend.

Are you in the process of reimagining your digital marketing win?

The team at Digital Media Solutions (DMS) loves helping marketers think outside the box to reimagine their wins. We can help you visualize your victory and elevate your marketing performance to achieve your marketing goals. Contact DMS today to take your digital marketing to the next level.