Digital Marketing Explained: A Curious Learner's Peek Behind the Curtain

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of those online ads or social media campaigns? As someone who used to work alongside marketing professionals, I often found myself pondering, ‘What exactly do they do?’ While I’m no expert, I’ve delved into this field to gain a better understanding. Join me as we explore the key steps that transform ideas into online campaigns.

Digital marketing involves all marketing efforts conducted on digital platforms. To market effectively in the digital realm, businesses need to master five key steps:

1. Understanding audience: Build personas to ensure your marketing efforts are focused on the right people and their needs.
2. Setting goals: Define clear objectives, such as boosting sales or increasing brand awareness.
3. Strategizing: Develop a plan outlining content and channels.
4. Executing: Implement campaigns across chosen platforms.
5. Reflecting: Analyze results to gain audience insights and improve their strategies, or their personas and goals if necessary.

An Example

Sarah, a small business owner selling custom cakes, wants to grow her business online. She begins by understanding her audience through building personas—busy parents, event planners, and health-conscious millennials. Knowing their needs helps her tailor her marketing.

Next, she sets clear goals: boost website traffic by 30% in three months and increase birthday cake orders by 20%. With this in mind, she moves on to developing a strategy. Sarah plans to focus on Instagram and Facebook for social media, write blog posts on cake trends, and run email campaigns featuring seasonal promotions.

Once her strategy is in place, Sarah executes her campaigns. She posts photos of her cakes, offers limited-time discounts, and sends out birthday reminders to customers via email.

After three months, Sarah analyzes the results. She finds that Instagram drives the most traffic, while her email campaigns are converting well. She refines her strategy, doubling down on Instagram and tweaking her blog content to better match customer interests. This continuous improvement helps Sarah increase both sales and brand awareness.

Deep Dive - Step 1 Understanding Audience - Building Personas

Understanding your audience is the cornerstone of effective marketing. If this foundation is shaky, all subsequent steps will be misaligned. Understanding your audience requires learning who they are and what they need. This can be achieved by building personas. A persona is a semi-fictional representation of a business’s ideal customer, based on research and data. Below is an example persona for Sarah’s cake business. The “goals” and “challenges” sections are particularly crucial as they reveal the audience’s needs, answering the question, “Why should I buy your product?”

An Example Persona - Event Planner

• Demographics:
  • Age: 32
  • Gender: Female
  • Occupation: Event Planner
  • Income: $60,000 per year
  • Location: Urban, Metro Area
• Background:
  • Owns a small event planning business, specializing in kids’ birthday parties and weddings.
  • Has a busy schedule and needs reliable, high-quality cake suppliers for her events.
• Goals:
  • Deliver visually stunning and delicious cakes to her clients.
  • Ensure timely delivery and easy communication with vendors.
  • Build long-term partnerships with cake suppliers.
• Challenges:
  • Tight deadlines for large events.
  • Need for customization in designs and flavors.
  • Managing multiple vendors for a seamless event.
• Values:
  • High-quality ingredients and flawless presentation.
  • Customization options for different types of events.
• Preferred Channels:
  • Website and social media (especially Instagram for cake designs).
  • Email for formal communication and order tracking.
• Marketing Message: “Your reliable partner for show-stopping cakes that impress clients and make your events unforgettable.”

Deep Dive - Step 3 Strategizing - Selecting Channels

With personas and goals in place, it’s time to develop a strategy that outlines what content to deliver and through which mediums. A channel is one such medium—examples include social media, email, and search engines. The digital world offers marketers a vast array of channels to choose from. I’ve often found myself overwhelmed by the myriad of marketing terminologies. To simplify this complexity, I’ve attempted to list and categorize the common ones by themes, such as social media and email marketing.

1. Search Engine Marketing
   • SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Enhances website visibility in organic search engine results through on-page and off-page optimization.
   • Paid Search (PPC - Paid-Per-Click): Allows businesses to appear in search engine results by bidding on relevant keywords for ads, like Google Ads.
2. Social Media Marketing
   • Social Media Organic: Engages with users on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn by sharing content without paid promotion.
   • Paid Social Advertising: Targets users through paid ads on social platforms like Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads, to reach specific demographics.
   • Influencer Marketing: Collaborates with influential individuals on social media to promote products to their audience.
3. Content Marketing
   • Blogs: Produces informative or entertaining articles to attract and engage target audiences, driving traffic and building authority.
   • Videos: Uses platforms like YouTube or Vimeo to engage audiences through tutorials, product demos, or entertainment content.
   • Infographics: Creates visually appealing content to present complex information or data in a digestible format.
   • Podcasts: Delivers audio content to audiences on topics relevant to their interests and industry.
4. Email Marketing
   • Email Campaigns: Sends targeted messages to subscribers to nurture leads, promote products, or build customer relationships.
   • Drip Campaigns: Automates a series of emails to guide users through a sales funnel or onboarding process over time.
5. Display and Native Advertising
   • Display Ads: Uses banner ads or rich media ads on websites to reach broad or specific audiences.
   • Native Ads: Creates ads that blend seamlessly into the surrounding content (e.g., sponsored posts on news sites or social media).
6. Affiliate Marketing
   • Affiliate Programs: Encourages third-party affiliates to promote your products or services in exchange for a commission on sales or leads.
7. Remarketing/Retargeting
   • Remarketing Ads: Targets users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your brand through ads, encouraging them to return and convert.
8. Mobile Marketing
   • SMS Marketing: Sends text message campaigns directly to users’ phones to promote offers, updates, or alerts.
   • Push Notifications: Uses mobile app notifications to engage users with timely and relevant messages.

Closing

In wrapping up, digital marketing might seem complex, but breaking it down into steps makes it manageable. Fundamentally, it revolves around addressing the target audience’s needs through well-crafted content and appropriate channels. Whether you’re a small business owner like Sarah or simply curious about digital marketing like myself, I hope these insights offer a helpful overview of the field.

If you have any comments on this article, you can either comment in this Medium post, or simply drop me an email.