Aug 19, 2024

What is Digital Marketing? The Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

Many companies and businesses are devoting a significant portion of their resources to digital media marketing, and as the old saying goes, “If you’re not there, you don’t exist.” If you’re not yet promoting yourself on digital channels or simply not doing it properly, now is the time to understand exactly what it means and how to do it right. We’ll talk about the differences between regular and digital marketing, the benefits of digital marketing, additional marketing channels you can use, and a variety of other important topics.

Let's start from the beginning.

The history of digital marketing begins in the early 1990s, with the advent of the Internet and the first search engines. In 1993, the first click-through Internet ad was launched by Global Network Navigator, which many marketing experts consider to be the beginning of digital advertising in the world. In the late 1990s, search engines such as Yahoo and Google emerged, revolutionizing the way businesses could reach customers through organic promotion (SEO) and paid promotion (PPC). In the 1990s, the email marketing channel also developed significantly, and businesses began to take advantage of this opportunity to communicate directly with their customers. In the 2000s, another major advance occurred with the rise of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which essentially opened up a new industry of promotion in a variety of channels such as sponsored ads, viral videos, and marketing through groups and communities. Starting in the mid-2000s, with the rise of smartphones and mobile internet, there was another huge leap in digital marketing as advertisements found their way to us in various ways in more or less every possible media. Today, digital marketing is a critical component of the business strategies of companies around the world, and an important channel without which it is impossible to grow and develop from a business perspective.

What does digital marketing include?

Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of strategies and techniques used to promote products, services, and brands through digital media. Here are some examples:

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) and improving website visibility in search engines
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, paid online advertising as seen on Google
Creating and marketing valuable content to attract potential customers
Social media marketing and business promotion on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more
Email marketing and sending newsletters and promotions to potential and existing customers
Affiliate marketing and collaborations with other businesses and entities to promote products and services
Influencer Marketing – Working with social media influencers and content creators to reach a large, targeted audience
Mobile marketing through apps and SMS messages

What is the difference between regular marketing and digital marketing?

Digital marketing and traditional marketing differ primarily in where they operate and in their advertising approach. Digital marketing uses electronic channels such as social media, search engines, email, and websites to reach and engage potential customers. Ideally, this also includes real-time data analysis and developing targeted strategies to tailor messages to specific target audiences. Traditional marketing uses offline methods such as print ads, billboards, television, radio, and mail. While traditional marketing relies on raising brand awareness and reaching as wide an audience as possible without targeting, digital marketing focuses on interactive communication, ongoing analysis and measurement, and precisely tailoring messages to each audience.

The benefits of digital marketing

Digital marketing has many advantages, the most important of which is the ability to precisely address each target audience and create messages accordingly. The results of digital marketing can be measured and analyzed in real time, which allows changes to be made and optimizations to be made that optimize advertising over time. Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing is also usually a more cost-effective investment that pays for itself more quickly. Digital marketing also allows the target audience to interact with customers, which helps to connect with the audience and strengthen brand affinity and awareness. Along with all of this, with digital marketing you can reach as far as possible, recruit customers from all over the world, and strengthen brand awareness in a way that has never been possible before.

Common digital marketing channels

Let's move on to talking about some common channels used for digital marketing:

Landing pages

Landing pages are an excellent tool for digital marketing. These are web pages that provide concise marketing information with a call to action and a link to make a conversion (payment for a service or product, a form to leave details, purchase a digital guide, etc.). The advantage of landing pages is that you can embed them anywhere – on social networks, on Google, send them on WhatsApp or by email, or in any way you want.

Organic promotion

Organic promotion is the way in which digital assets are promoted in a non-funded manner. Organic promotion on Google or other engines requires building a convenient and accessible website, entering relevant content, creating links, and more (here you can read more about proper promotion on Google to improve your site's ranking in the search engine). Similarly, there are steps for organic promotion in other channels as well, for example, organic promotion on Facebook.

Quality content

Quality content is an excellent promotional tool, and if you have good and interesting content, you can reach large audiences and increase brand exposure. Marketing can be done "on the go" organically or simply with advertisements integrated into the content. Quality content can be an article, a video, a photo gallery or anything else, and it requires a lot of investment and some creativity to create engaging content that will interest viewers.

Social networks

Social media is a whole world, and there are many ways to market through them. This can be sponsored promotion with promoted ads or organic content depending on the platform – Facebook posts, Instagram releases, TikTok videos, and more. Another option is promotion through groups and communities, which is very accurate and effective if you manage to build a large and strong community.

Podcast

Podcasts have taken the world by storm in recent years, and the number of people listening to recorded programs from Israel and around the world is only growing every day. It's quite easy to segment the target audience that listens to podcasts and tailor precise advertisements to them.

Marketing – not just for young people!

One of the misconceptions that business owners and brands have about digital marketing (mostly common among those born before this era) is that it is not a necessary channel, and that it is mainly suitable for young people. So, although young people under the age of 30 are the main content creators on the Internet, what needs to be understood is that consuming digital content today is an action that everyone does, at any age, in any sector and almost anywhere on the globe. Ultimately, the equation is simple: anyone who does not invest in digital marketing as a central marketing channel will have a very difficult time increasing exposure for their brand and earning more, and this is true for almost every business in Israel and around the world.

Connectivity

Another common mistake made by businesses and promoters is to ignore the link and connection between marketing in the various channels when each asset stands on its own – an app, a social network profile, a website, and more. For example, if you decide to develop apps for a brand, you can't launch them without a convenient connection to the social network or the brand's website. When you know how to do it properly, you make all the options accessible to surfers in a convenient way.

Data analysis

Digital marketing today offers advanced capabilities and measurement tools such as Google Analytics, important social media insights, and email marketing metrics, which will provide you with real-time data on campaign performance. These tools allow for precise targeting, audience segmentation, and message personalization, which leads to improved engagement and effectiveness of advertisements. Compared to traditional marketing, digital promotion is more cost-effective, allows you to reach a larger audience, and most importantly, allows you to know if the steps you are taking are really working and how they can be improved.

Marketing strategy

With all the important benefits, you should always remember that for digital marketing to work and be a worthwhile investment, it needs to be really good and effective. The most basic part of success is creating and defining a clear marketing strategy: first of all, what is your brand, how it sounds and speaks, and how it appeals to its audience. Then you must understand exactly who the potential audience is, learn and get to know them in depth, and understand where they are and spend their time, what their average age is, what their preferences are, and so on. Only after these details are clear and understood can you start creating appropriate messages and sending them out.

Meet the competitors

Another very important principle for effective and high-quality digital marketing. Without in-depth knowledge of your competitors, their language and methods of operation, their advantages and disadvantages, it will be very difficult to produce high-quality marketing that will be able to provide a solution where others are unable to do so. When talking, for example, about the application characterization process , a central and important part is a complete mapping of all competing applications. In the end, you have to remember that people are exposed to a huge amount of information, and if you don't know how to bring them something different and set yourself apart from the competition, it is likely that they will simply browse on to the next provider.

Building a budget

Another important and inseparable part of effective digital marketing is the precise construction of the marketing budget. It is very important to clearly define the budget available to you, first for creating the digital assets (i.e. website, advertisements, etc.) and then the monthly marketing budget. Moreover, it is very important to plan the return on investment and try to predict how much each marketing channel will bring in for you. As you move, you should analyze the performance and make adjustments if necessary. Good digital marketing is one that is considered an investment, meaning that the financial expenditure ultimately pays for itself and increases revenue.

Choosing partners for the journey

So how exactly do you do it right? If you ask us, it all starts with choosing the right partners. Business owners think that all they need is to appoint a talented person within the company to be responsible for digital marketing. While that is certainly true and important, it is simply not enough on its own. Good partners are a team of digital marketing experts who know how to offer the full package with professional services for building websites and e-commerce stores, designing and developing applications, establishing information systems, and ongoing and professional advertising throughout the process. Our experts at WeDev know how to offer exactly these services, and provide support to businesses not only during the establishment of digital assets, but also later on with ongoing optimization, tips, and help on a regular basis. Make sure you choose the right partners to save yourself a lot of money, time, and energy.

The bottom line

Digital marketing is a whole world, and what is certain is that in order to succeed in the competitive business market, you must invest a lot of effort in it. Doing it alone is a full-time job in itself, and this is not always the right step for business owners who need to invest effort in developing their products and services. Anyone who knows how to choose the right partner for such services will take a lot of the burden off themselves and reap the fruits of digital marketing in a short time. Want to know more? WeDev's experts are available to you at every stage and will be happy to answer any questions.