What is Digital Marketing and How to Create the Ultimate Digital Marketing Plan

Digital marketing is defined as a form of direct marketing that connects the seller and consumer using any digital platform.

In other words, it's the promotion of a product or service that takes place on social media, websites, emails, search engines, applications, or any new digital channel.

With roughly 4.66 billion people, almost 60% of the global population, around the world using the internet at the start of 2021, you can understand the power of digital marketing.

Digital marketers have developed countless effective techniques for getting their offer or brand in front of the consumer without them even realizing it.

To become a digital marketer, you'll need a digital marketing strategy.

This is your plan of action to market your business or offer through digital channels.

Without a plan, it becomes very easy to get lost with no map to guide you through the process of digital marketing.

So, it's crucial that you plan your strategy thoroughly to give yourself a better chance of reaching your destination.

Here are some things to keep in mind that will help you build an effective strategy.

Digital marketing has been around much longer than you think.

The first-ever digital marketing tool was invented by Guglielmo Marconi in 1896 with the creation of the radio.

Radio marketing falls into one of two categories of digital marketing — online and offline digital marketing.

Online marketing focuses on the marketing that takes place over the internet which includes social media, email, search engine optimization, and content to name a few.

Offline marketing is a bit more traditional and takes place over channels where the internet is not required, such as telemarketing, radio, television ads.

There's also an important term in offline marketing — enhanced offline marketing.

Enhanced offline marketing takes completely offline content and enhances it with electronic devices.

An example of this is electronic billboards — think Times Square where the normal billboard experience has been entirely enhanced by its electronic features, turning it into a global landmark.

However, more and more people are hanging up on telemarketers, skipping through the TV adverts, and streaming their music rather than listening to the good-old radio.

That’s why we’ll be focusing on online marketing strategies in this article.

But, don’t forget about the offline methods — being aware of as many marketing strategies as possible will only play to your advantage, especially if you can combine both offline and online strategies.

Another way to categorize digital marketing is by B2B and B2C.

“Those sound like Star Wars droid names! What do they have to do with marketing?”

Indeed they do, and they have everything to do with marketing!

B2B stands for business to business and refers to any transaction between two businesses.

B2C stands for business to consumer and refers to businesses selling products and services to consumers where the consumers are the end-users.

In B2B marketing, the focus is on the offer and its features.

The approach is more logical and uses little to no emotional decision-making.

This is because you aren’t selling to an individual, but an entire company where decisions are made by what is most practical, effective, and financially efficient.

So, effective B2B marketing strategies have the purpose of highlighting the features of your offer and explaining every detail.

B2C marketing takes a different approach where the focus shifts more to the consumer.

With mostly only one person making the decision, it's much easier to entice the consumer into making a purchase.

That's why B2C marketing strategies are centered around catering to the consumer.

This is achieved through persuasive techniques and by getting straight to the point — the reason they must buy your offer.

In understanding the difference between B2B and B2C marketing, you can better cater to your audience, depending on whether it's a business or a consumer.

With a basic understanding of digital marketing, you can now begin the journey of becoming a digital marketer yourself.

The majority of the developmental stages of your digital marketing strategy is research.

So, be prepared to dive deep into the research rabbit hole.

You can spend all your time and money creating a marketing strategy, but unless it’s directed to the right people, it'll be useless.

The first step you need to take is identifying your target audience.

Your target audience is a group of people that have the potential of purchasing your offer.

They often share some sort of characteristic or interest that'll help you craft your strategy to perfectly suit your audience.

But, first, identify who they are:

1. Look at your present customers:

By analyzing your current customers, you can get a better understanding of the type of person that's interested in your offer.

This is where you take those shared characteristics and interests and put them together to create a profile that reflects the trends within your audience.

You can gain this information from:

Trying to research anything to do with marketing, you'll most definitely stumble across Neil Patel.

Starting his first website at 16, Neil Patel has gone on to found and co-found multiple successful marketing businesses that offer all sorts of optimization tools such as Neil Patel Digital, Quicksprout, Crazyegg, and Kissmetrics.

Decorated in accolades, Neil Patel is a New York Times bestselling author and was named a top 300 new entrepreneur under 30 by former President Barack Obama as well as a top 100 entrepreneur under 35 by the United Nations.

He's one of the leaders of the digital marketing industry, so he's a necessary stop on your journey.

Particularly when he's invested in sharing his knowledge through his busy blog.

“The interesting thing about averages is that they hide the truth very effectively.”

Avinash Kaushik is the place to go to learn anything about web analytics.

Co-founder of Market Motive Inc and Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik has made a name for himself in the digital marketing world.

He's particularly known for his analytical style that takes a more philosophical approach that is centered around customer-centricity.

Avinash Kaushik shares incredibly useful information about the web to help you to take your marketing strategy to the next level.

To start, here are five Avinash Kaushik blog posts every digital marketer should read.

Starting in the late ’90s, Gary Vaynerchuck managed to convert his parent’s wine business into a multimillion-dollar company by effectively using the new and underrated email marketing strategy.

If he’s not a natural-born digital marketing expert, then who is?

Since then, Gary Vaynerchuck has founded the dominant advertising agency, VaynerMedia, built the impressive holding company called VaynerX, written five New York Times bestselling novels, and serves on multiple other boards.

With “Hustle” as his main mantra, Vaynerchuck can offer you the straight-to-the-point, behind-the-scenes look at a successful digital marketing strategy.

You can find his precious resources at his blog, his daily-updated Youtube channel and newsletter, Hustler’s Digest, and his popular podcast, The GaryVee Audio Experience.

Digital marketing expert. Content expert. Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Keynote speaker. Writer. Journalist. The Chief Content Writer of MarketingProfs.

Ann Handley does it all.

Co-founding Clickz, a digital marketing bible website in 1997, Ann Handley made the switch from journalist to marketer, establishing herself as a pioneer in the industry.

Though Hadley can share the secrets on all aspects of digital marketing, content marketing is her specialty.

As the author of Wall Street Journal bestseller “Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide for Creating Ridiculously Good Content,” as well as co-author of the bestseller "Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business," she definitely knows her way around a blog or two.

By cherishing her content writing hacks, you can guarantee a successful content marketing strategy.

To find out more, you can check out her brilliant blog.

Jump headfirst into this research and develop your own list of digital marketing geniuses to befriend and keep close to your side throughout the marketing process.

There are also extremely helpful resources on the internet to help you such as templates and examples.

From your customer journey map, you can craft a conversion funnel where you make intentional decisions about your customer journey to help it reach optimal effectiveness.

This'll only benefit you when planning your digital marketing strategy.

With all this new knowledge on the inner workings of digital marketing, it's time to start planning your own digital marketing strategy!

A few things to remember before you sprint off the starting line:

There's no need to explain the influence social media has over the world, including the business world.

Here are some of the most popular social media platforms:

Instagram has also incorporated features that have made it a marketing madhouse — here are a few important ones:

Email marketing was one of the earliest creations of digital marketing.

And, though it is old, it's most certainly not dead.

It relies on having a stable and extensive email list to whom you can send all sorts of content, advertisements, and updates.

The first step is building an email list.

Next, you have valuable content — both visual and written — to build a relationship with the customer.

Lastly, you start subtly marketing your offer as the solution to their problems.

As long as you send regular, quality content, creating your email marketing strategy can be quite easy.

To help you, even more, there are countless email marketing tools out there.

Simply put, affiliate marketing is when a business markets its offer through an affiliate who then earns a commission

There are three parts of affiliate marketing:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is something that every online business has come to take very seriously.

Basically, it's the process of getting your site to rank higher on organic (unpaid) search results.

With 93% of online experiences beginning with a search engine, the higher you rank, the more traffic to your site.

There are three types of SEO that you can focus on:

Another digital marketing acronym to know — SEM (search engine marketing).

SEM refers to paid search marketing.

Also known as PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, SEM works where you place an ad online and pay every time someone clicks on it.

To get your paid ad on a search engine like Google, you need first need to go through an ad auction.

This is where you choose the keywords you want and enter the amount you are willing to pay per click for each keyword.

To ‘win’ the auction on your keywords, you'll need a maximum bid and high-quality score, which is a measure of how relevant your ad is.

Once your ad is out there, you're going to need a way to track and analyze its response.

You can use these essential SEM tools to help you.

Content is a fundamental part of digital marketing.

It goes hand-in-hand with social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, and SEM.

This is because, like going to the movies, content is what draws the audience to your website, creating traffic, and your offer is the popcorn that they just can’t resist.

Content marketing takes many forms in many different ways:

Podcasts have become the new radio where people in traffic would rather listen to a true-crime podcast than have the news forced upon them on the hour.

You just need some equipment, quality content, and great guest stars.

The purpose of your podcast, similar to your content, is to inform the audience, even entertain them.

When they start to trust you, your guests, and your business, you start building real relationships.

Podcasting also encourages networking because by making friends with your guests, you also make friends with their audiences.

And, even if you don’t want to make your own, you could always feature on someone else’s.

Either or, being able to use podcasting as a marketing tool is a massive advantage in this evolving industry.