Do you want to learn more about digital marketing? This guide will cover everything you need to know to get familiar with digital marketing.

Why Digital Marketing Matters

I have memories of billboards. When I was a child in India, my experiences from the back seat of the car were primarily divided between asking my mother when we would arrive at our destination and pointing out a McDonald’s sign whenever we spotted a 10-foot billboard on the side of the road.

Since I was raised by Indian parents, the answer to both questions was usually, “not yet.”

On occasion, major companies would engage in a friendly billboard war, like the one between Audi and BMW, which elicited plenty of laughter.

In 2015, many of my clients spent hundreds of millions of dollars on billboard advertising.

Today, most companies have moved to online marketing. 

That’s because Google and Facebook generate more revenue than any traditional media company. After all, they control more eyeballs. That’s why digital marketing matters; it’s where the attention is.

The reason why billboards, like the ones above, will die, is because the future of driving will look like this:

Despite the existence of driverless cars, drivers still need to remain attentive. However, as technology advances, passengers will no longer be required to pay attention to the road.

Take a moment and glance at the passenger seat the next time you offer someone a ride. You’ll most likely find them staring at their phone. If no one is looking at the road, who will see those ads?

Moreover, with a growing number of people spending more time on electronic devices and print advertising continuing to decline, it is critical to grasp digital marketing.

Almost 5 billion individuals around the world use the internet for shopping, learning, entertainment, and even work. Therefore, digital marketing is essential if you want to connect with these people.

You may assume that since you have a local store, you don’t need to worry about digital marketing. However, according to Google, 88 percent of people who use their smartphones to conduct local searches visit a related store within a week. If you’re not online, you’ll miss out on that traffic.

Digital marketing also offers access to more data and analytics about your customers, their purchasing journey, and preferences. To thrive, it is necessary to comprehend and learn how to employ digital marketing techniques for your business.

The History of Digital Marketing

Although digital marketing gained popularity in the early 2000s, it has existed for much longer than that – approximately 100 years longer, to be precise.

In fact, the first digital marketer in history can be traced back to even earlier times.

Here’s a picture of that individual:

His name was Guglielmo Marconi, and he was born in 1874. 

In 1896, he was the first human to demonstrate a “public transmission of wireless signals.”

He invented the radio.
Shortly after his demonstration in England, Morse signals were transmitted across open water.

While it would take another 10 years for the radio to reach the general public, it sure didn’t take the creators long to realize they could use it to sell stuff.

The first live broadcast was from an opera performance at the Met and guess what people did after it?

They bought show tickets!

Digital marketing was born.

Online Digital Marketing Overview

Online digital marketing refers to the practice of promoting products or services through various digital channels, such as websites, social media platforms, search engines, email, mobile apps, and other digital media. The goal of digital marketing is to reach potential customers and encourage them to take action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service.

There are several types of digital marketing techniques, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and mobile marketing. Each technique has its own benefits and is used to target specific audiences and achieve different objectives.

Digital marketing offers several advantages over traditional marketing methods. For one, it is more cost-effective and provides a wider reach. Digital marketing campaigns can also be easily tracked and measured, allowing businesses to adjust their strategies in real-time for better results.

Overall, online digital marketing has become an essential component of any business’s marketing strategy, as more and more consumers are turning to the internet to research and purchase products and services.

The 2 main pillars of digital marketing are online marketing and offline marketing. That said, since I’ll talk about online marketing in a separate guide, I’ll only mention the different areas of online marketing here for the sake of completeness.

The 9 big categories of online marketing are:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Search engine marketing (SEM)
3. Web Development
4. Content marketing
5. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
6. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
7. Affiliate marketing
8. UI & UX 
9. Email marketing

Intro to Digital Marketing

There are five main categories of digital marketing: 

• enhanced offline marketing 
• radio marketing
• television marketing
• phone marketing
• QR codes

Enhanced offline marketing is a form of marketing that is done offline but enhanced with electronic devices.

For example, if your restaurant uses iPads for your customers to place orders, then the offline experience of eating Thai food is enhanced with this electronic device.

People have been using digital media to enhance their marketing for decades. 

Next, there’s radio marketing. The next time you hear an annoying, over-enthusiastic car dealer shout every word of his or her commercial, thank Mr. Marconi.

Of course, we can’t forget television marketing, which has been around for more than half a century. 

Phone marketing is the biggest and fastest-growing area of offline marketing, with admittedly many flops, busts, and failures as well.

Enhanced Offline Marketing

What’s the difference between a billboard somewhere in the desert of Arizona and a billboard in New York City’s Times Square?

The size? The product?

Three letters: LED. Light emitting diodes.

All of the billboards in Times Square are electronic!

All of the billboards in Times Square are electronic!

Why? Because in the desert of Arizona, no one’s competing with you for people’s attention. If you have a billboard at all, you win.

In Times Square, attention is probably more valuable than anywhere else in the world, with more than 360,000 visitors each day.

If you want to be distracted, there are buses, taxis, promoters shouting, and then, of course, electronic billboards. Some of them are even interactive, showing live feeds of the people on the square or pictures of customers.

Renting a billboard space on Times Square for just one day can set you back over $50,000. 

Here’s another example. 

What do you see when you walk into an Apple Store these days?

People lean over iPads, Macbooks, and iPhones.

Product demos should be an important part of your digital marketing strategy if you have any type of electronic product.

Another example is those free trial CDs that AOL sent out in the early 90s—you may remember those were everywhere at one point. All those CDs may have been annoying, but they are likely a big reason for AOL’s early success.

Radio Marketing

In fact, it’s thriving: 

• Nearly 244 million Americans listen to the radio each month.
• People spend an average of 99 minutes per day listening to radio content.
• Radio ad spend is predicted to hit 11 billion USD. 

In recent years, radio made a smart move: having the hosts read out advertising sponsorships at the beginning of shows.  

To create a sponsorship, find your local radio stations with a quick Google search. Find a station whose audience reflects your company’s target demographic; radio stations should be able to provide you with the data that helps you select the right fit.

For example, if your company sells maternity products, you want to find a radio program whose average listener is a female between the ages of 24 and 40.

If you go the traditional radio advertising route, the key is to be entertaining and catch the listener’s attention.

Cadillac and Dairy Queen are two brands that come up with solid radio commercials on a consistent basis.

You can listen to some examples here.

TV Marketing

Television marketing is so huge, it’s unlikely ever fully to go away. However, it is changing as consumers move away from traditional television in favor of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. 

Some fast facts about TV marketing:

• 122.4 million households in the US have a television.
• cable providers lost 6 million subscribers a year between 2019 and 2021.
• 85 percent of US households have at least one streaming service.

Though cable TV ads are harder to target the right audience, have a low ROI compared to other forms of digital advertising, and generally seem irrelevant in the digital age, there is one type of television ad that may still be worth it; but it will cost you big. 

Remember I mentioned renting a billboard in Times Square can cost $50,000 a day? 

A 60-second commercial aired during the Super Bowl costs $5.6 million.

The often viral and memorable commercials still pay for themselves thanks to their cross-pollinating effect.

Roughly 10 percent of all TV commercial-related shares on social media come from Super Bowl ads. 

So do about 8 percent of all views on Youtube that go to TV commercial videos.

If your commercial makes it to the blacklist (commercials the network decides can’t be shown on TV), the viral effect is usually even stronger, like the infamous Carl’s Junior ad that couldn’t be shown in the 2015 Super Bowl.

What’s more, these commercials become online assets, generating millions of YouTube views over time.

Sadly, the hype of the Super Bowl commercials is probably more of a remnant from a success period that’s about to fade.

The $27 billion companies still annually spend worldwide on TV commercials may not always be the best investment moving forward. Television advertising, in the form we know it, is changing to make way for the more custom-tailored experiences we are already getting used to.

So, if you plan on doing offline digital marketing, I suggest focusing on a marketing platform or channel of the future—which in the case of television marketing, means streaming services. 

Phone Marketing

Nearly 75 percent of Americans own a smartphone, and more people access the internet from their phones than via a desktop PC or laptop.

Mobile marketing is here to stay. In 2015, the amount spent on mobile ads exceeded that spent on desktop ads for the first time and the market continues to grow.

Let’s look at some offline ways to market your products using phone marketing.

Calling and Texting

Cold calling is the act of calling a person with no prior contact in an effort to make a sale. 

Cold calling can generate an average of three sales per day, so it doesn’t have the scalability of social media or email. Still, it can be a valid method of marketing in some industries. 

What works better is marketing via texting, an “app” available on every phone.

Online or offline, a text message is almost a guaranteed read.

While you should definitely get permission first, for example, by having your customers text a certain word to a phone number, several providers offer text marketing at scale.

There are several ways to leverage text message marketing.

Restaurants can increase their customer base and encourage repeat business by offering special deals, coupons, and discounts to attract walk-ins and turn them into regulars.

For more examples of successful restaurant text messaging campaigns, you can refer to this resource.

Using text reminders for customer service, as many pharmacies do, can also improve your mobile marketing efforts.

By notifying customers when their prescriptions are ready for pickup, you can provide better service and increase customer satisfaction.

Creating a loyalty program is another effective strategy, where you can text special deals and giveaways to participating customers.

QR codes are a type of barcode that can direct users to a specific web page or app. For instance, the QR code provided here leads to the English home page of Wikipedia.

You used to have to download a specific app to use QR codes, but now all you need is the camera on your smartphone to scan and open the site. 

They can be used to deliver ads, send users to a video, or even combined with other forms of enhanced offline marketing, like in this Burger King television ad:

How to Set Up an Offline Digital Marketing Strategy

Ready to set up an offline digital marketing strategy? Here’s how to do it in four easy steps.

1. Develop an enhanced offline marketing strategy: This includes creating ads optimized for digital billboards, providing digital product samples, and giving product demonstrations.
2. Create a radio marketing strategy: Approach local radio stations to sponsor ads or create traditional ads that incorporate humorous voices, local celebrities, or trending topics.
3. Engage in television marketing: To achieve a decent return on investment, purchase ad time during popular events watched live, create ads that go viral through controversy, emotion, or humor, or generate ads that can be reused across multiple advertising channels.
4. Implement phone marketing: Smartphones present unique advertising opportunities. Utilize modern software to cold call or send ringless voicemails to targets, send texts with promotions to subscribed customers, or use QR codes.