Marketing changes as consumer preferences fluctuate and change. The flexibility that digital marketing offers appeals to many businesses that are trying to reach target customers and prospects.

Darwill discusses the components of digital marketing and why businesses should leverage it in the new and pre-existing campaigns.

Defining Digital Marketing

Thanks to the development of the internet, a new form of marketing was born. Digital marketing lives online and reaches consumers who are browsing the internet, checking social media on their phones, streaming TV shows or movies to their devices, and more. Digital marketing campaigns are displayed on devices with a screen such as computers, smartphones, tablets, streaming TVs, and other electronic devices.

This type of marketing is great for targeting consumers on the platforms they frequent the most. Digital marketing has the power to get the conversation started. It starts by making the first impression and connection online, imploring the consumer to learn more about a brand by searching for its website or looking at its social media profiles.

Marketing online gained popularity as internet capabilities continued to expand. Now with 83.72% of the world’s population owning a smartphone, it just makes sense to combine digital with existing marketing efforts. Consumers turn to the internet to learn more, find answers to their questions, entertainment, and more, spending, on average, over 7.5 hours per day with digital media. Marketers can leverage this by meeting their audiences on the channels they are utilizing and targeting them with branded content.

What Are Examples of Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing has grown over the years since its creation in the 1990s and comes in many forms. Some examples of digital marketing listed by Hubspot include social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, display ads, online video, search engine marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads, to name a few.

The Advantages of Using Digital Marketing

One of the biggest advantages of using digital marketing is the ability to easily reach consumers and connect with them. Customers and prospects are already using digital whether it be checking emails on their laptop, scrolling through social media, or streaming their favorite TV show. Marketers can display ads in all these places and more to communicate with consumers. Through IP Targeting, Darwill offers the ability to target the right audience with digital ads. In order to accurately target consumers with digital ads, Darwill runs the company’s mailing list through an IP algorithm to determine the consumer’s IP address based on their physical address. Once our system locates the household IP address, targeted digital ads can be served through the modem, router, or IP address as the entry point. Using an algorithm to find an IP address from a physical address is more precise as it incorporates offline data, i.e., registered voter lists, customer databases, modeled data, and direct mail data.

Digital marketing can increase website traffic and sales. But what if a consumer visits the site and does not convert? Digital can be used in this case as well to retarget the individual with personalized ads based on what they viewed on the website. Darwill achieves this with Rapid Retargeting. This service utilizes the IP address collected from the consumer viewing the website. The IP address runs through a “reverse IP append” algorithm to collect information on the active buyer. With the collected information, Darwill can then retarget the consumer with email, social media ads, TV streaming ads, and even direct mail to complete the conversion and gain a new customer for the business.

Digital marketing doesn’t just refer to the ads that are served. It also refers to the business’ website and maintaining its image online. Building informative content on both the website and the business’s social media platforms helps to gain credibility and trust. Publishing worthy content will create brand awareness and a positive reputation. To maintain this, a brand needs to keep its website updated, fresh with content, and respond to consumer questions posed online. Doing all of this strengthens the business's digital presence and builds consumer trust and sentiment toward the brand. Connecting and further educating consumers on services and products offered creates loyal customers.

Additional benefits of using digital marketing include affordability, multimedia capabilities, lead generation, omnichannel marketing, interactivity, trackability, timely communications, and A/B testing with PPC campaigns. Digital has the power to reach people across multiple devices. It welcomes interaction and creates an experience for consumers. Digital also offers the ability to track clicks, views, and more through reporting.

Marketers can get a clear picture of how well a digital ad performed during its lifetime and determine when it’s time to pivot. For example, PPC ads can be tested through A/B testing. This is great for gaining an understanding of what language and imagery perform best. Two ads run at once, a control ad and a test ad. The test ad uses different copy, imagery, call-to-action, etc. compared to the original in order to gauge the difference in performance and engagement. A/B testing can prove to provide many insights on which language or imagery consumers prefer to interact with, leading to more profit.

Build a Digital Marketing Plan

Turn to the marketing experts at Darwill. Darwill creates custom digital strategies to reach and exceed business goals. Reach customers and prospects, spread brand awareness, generate leads, and bring in more sales with digital marketing. Build a digital plan with Darwill today! Get started!