Are you trying to navigate in the endless digital marketing terms? You’re in the right place.
This ultimate guide covers digital marketing channels and their definitions. Additionally, I have included useful links for more detailed information on every channel defined below.
Original marketing term referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. Now traditional marketing is the field of study.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is the process of moving product concepts to customers using digital technologies.
Main medium is the Internet, but it also can be mobile phones, display advertising, and other digital platforms.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Digital Marketing
2. HubSpot Blog, What Is Digital Marketing?
3. Neil Patel Blog, Digital Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide
Digital Marketing Channels – the definition:
Digital marketing channels are systems that transmit product value from producer to end-user via digital networks.
As the internet and digital media evolved exponentially, so did the digital (online) marketing. Now it has many sub-categories and methods.
Let’s dive into the available Types of Digital Marketing Channels:
Affiliate Marketing
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing in which a business rewards affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
Types of Affiliate Marketing programs are:
- Pay Per Sales (PPS)
- Pay Per Lead (PPL)
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Pay Per Performance (PPP)
For each type, the publisher (business), pays a pre-determined compensation to the advertiser (affiliate marketer).
Affiliate marketer usually brings customers via search engines, social media, an email list or other channels. Customers are tracked using cookies.
Many online companies use Affiliate Marketing as an integral part of their digital marketing channels.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Affiliate Marketing
2. Investopedia, Affiliate Marketing
3. CoursesGuide (our) article on 15 best Affiliate Marketing Courses for beginners.
Influencer Marketing
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is involving endorsements and product placements on social media platforms. It can sit as a sub-category under Social Media Marketing as well.
Influencers are people and organizations that own an expert level of knowledge or social influence in their respective fields.
Influencer content sometimes is framed as testimonial advertising. Influencers play the role of a potential buyer themselves, or they may be involved as third parties.
The majority of the influencer army currently online is focused on consumer markets. The minority is business-to-business (B2B) influencers.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Influencer Marketing
2. Merketing-Schools.org, Influencer Marketing
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service.
Social networking websites enable individuals and businesses to interact with each other. When using social media users usually can submit a post or another type of content – this is called user-generated content (UGC).
Most social media platforms have built-in data analytics tools. You can track the progress, success, and engagement of ad campaigns.
Major social media platforms:
- Youtube
- Snapchat
- Tumblr
+ (Periscope, Flickr, Vine, Slideshare, Ning, Xing, Deliciour, Digg, Foursquare, Yelp, Quora… etc)
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Social Media Marketing
2. Buffer, What is Social Media Marketing?
3. CoursesGuide (our) review of 20 best Social Media Marketing courses.
Video Marketing
What is video marketing?
Video Marketing intends to drive audience engagement around a given video.
Social video marketing is an integrated part of Social Media Marketing. YouTube is the second largest search engine (after Google). This underlines the importance of video content creation.
Social video marketing benefits from a halo effect driven by the influencers.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Social Video Marketing
2. Backlinko, Video Marketing: The Definitive Guide.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
What is Search Engine Marketing?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEM is achieved via SEO and paid advertising. SEO is the process of improving rankings in organic search results. While paid part in SEM is all paid advertising, where main sub-category is Pay-per-click (PPC).
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Search engine marketing
2. HubSpot, The Ultimate Guide to SEM
PPC
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click (PPC) is also known as cost-per-click (CPC). PPC is a digital advertising model used to drive traffic to websites.
In PPC, an advertiser pays a publisher (search engine, website owner, or networks) when Ad gets a click.
Pay-per-click is usually associated with first-tier search engines, such as Google Ads and Bing Ads. With search engines, advertisers bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.
Pay-per-click is considered advantageous over cost per impression as the way of advertising. The reason is that it has clearer metric for measuring advertising performance.
PPC Formula
PPC = Advertising Cost / Number of Clicks
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Pay-per-click
2. WordStream, What Is PPC? Learn the Basics of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
SEO
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing the content for increased visibility in SERPs. SERPs are search engine results pages.
The SEO process is usually divided in many ways:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO (Promotion & Reporting)
- Link building
- Competition Analysis
The optimizations process will usually involve the change of content, adding the content, technical changes to website, search engine related tasks.
Search Engines provide certain guidelines they expect a website to follow. The SEO tactics that follow these guidelines (e.g. Google guidelines) are called “white hat” SEO and tactics that don’t are called “black hat” tactics.
“Black hat” SEO aims to improve rankings using disapproved tactics, like hidden texts, paid link building and using pf private blog networks (PBN).
Read more:
1. Ahrefs Blog, What is SEO? How to Optimize for Search Engines Like Google.
2. Wikipedia, Search Engine Optimization
3. CoursesGuide (our) article on 10 best SEO blogs to follow.
Content Marketing
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a defined target audience online.
Content marketing is used to:
- Attract traffic and generate leads
- Expand customer base
- Generate or increase online sales
- Increase brand awareness or credibility
- Engage an online community of users
Content marketing attracts prospects, converting them into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content.
Content helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty. This relatively new form of marketing does not involve direct sales. It builds trust and relationships with the audience.
Currently, the content can be video, podcasts, web posts, infographics, e-books and more.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Content Marketing
2. Content Marketing Institute, What Is Content Marketing?
Email Marketing
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the practice of reaching potential and existing customers via email. An effective email marketing campaign converts prospects into customers.
Usual email marketing messages include welcome email, newsletters, promotional campaigns and event announcements.
The process of funneling customers using email marketing can be very complex, depending on the final goal. Here is a sample process of 5 email-chains to newly subscribers:
Sample Process – Onboard > Update > Nurture > Promote > Confirm
Email marketing in comparison to other digital marketing channels is cheap.
Read more:
1. Optinmonster, Email Marketing Made Simple: A Step by Step Guide
2. Wikipedia, Email Marketing
3. Backlinko.com, Email Marketing Guide
Conversational Marketing
What is Conversational Marketing?
Conversational marketing is the use of Chatbots, Live Chat, Instant Messaging, and similar tools during real-time conversations with customers.
Conversational Marketing was born with the rise of new marketing technologies. Modern communication channels enable businesses to have one-on-one discussions with customers.
Brands use conversational marketing to improve engagement, loyalty and nurture relationships with their customers. Ultimately driving them into optimized conversion funnels. Conversational digital marketing channels are rapidly evolving with the use of Artificial Intelligence.
Read more:
1. NGDATA.com Blog. What is Conversational Marketing?
2. HubSpot Blog, Conversational Marketing: How a Messaging Strategy Will Grow Your Business
Live Chat
What is Live Chat?
Live Chat is an online service that allows businesses to have instant conversations with their customers.
Originally Live Chat was defined as online customer service with live support, help desk, and web analytics capabilities.
It used to be horrible, but in the current age, it’s the fastest method of customer service.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, LiveChat
2. LiveChat Blog, What is Live Chat for an Online Business
Chatbots
What are Chatbots?
Chatbots are software programs designed to simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner.
Chatbots use AI and language processing to automate communication and create personalized customer experiences at scale. They are quickly becoming one of the important digital marketing channels for businesses.
As of today, some chatbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems. Many simpler ones scan for keywords within inputs and reply with the most matching keywords from a database.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Chatbot
2. OpenSource.com, Chatbots: Conducting Intelligent Conversations with Customers
Instant Messaging
What is Instant Messaging?
Instant messaging is a chat that offers real-time text exchange over the Internet.
Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat & Viber – are the biggest messaging apps that have billions of users.
Businesses have actively started using messaging apps for external conversations. For example, businesses already actively use We Chat in China and WhatsApp in Latin America.
Instant messaging has several times higher open and click rates compared to Emails. Social Media engagement, on the other hand, is constantly declining over the last few years.
It’s easy to understand why messaging apps present a great opportunity as a new marketing channel for businesses.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Instant Messaging
2. TechTarget, Essential Guide: Unified communications technology basics, Instant Messaging
Display Advertising
What is Display Advertising?
Display advertising is advertising on websites, apps or social media with banners or other ad formats. Ads can be made of text, images, flash, video or audio.
Usually, display advertising is aimed at general advertisements and brand messages. However, it can be used for other Advertising or PPC purposes.
Google’s display campaigns are the largest in the world. Facebook and Twitter also have a decent share of display advertising.
Ads can target specific audiences on the Website, App or social media.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Display advertising
2. Webopedia, Digital Advertising
Behavioral Advertising
What is Behavioral Advertising?
Behavioral advertising, also known as behavioral targeting, is a form of advertising directed towards audiences with certain traits.
Customer traits can be demographic, economic status, sex, age, level of education, income and employment. Or based on the consumer’s values, personality, attitudes, lifestyles, and interests.
The main focus of advertising campaigns here is to target the most relevant potential customers, thereby increasing conversions.
The companies use all the user past data they can get access to. The data segmentation tat advertising campaigns use for behavioral targeting includes, but is not limited to:
- Web searches
- Purchase history
- Sites visited
- Time spent on the website
- Apps downloaded
- Games played
- Analysis of different vertical (User’s similar interests, past interests, etc)
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Targeted Advertising
2. Howstuffworks, How do advertisers show me custom ads?
Contextual Advertising
What is Contextual Advertising?
Contextual advertising is a form of display advertising appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile browsers.
What is the difference between contextual advertising and behavioral advertising?
Major difference is that behavioral advertising places ads based on user past behavior, while contextual ads content will be fit to the website. There are many similarities between two, as both use some form of intelligence and both are dynamic.
Example to see a difference – Let’s say you were researching leather bag and came to read John Doe’s Art & Craft blog:
- Behavioral targeted ads will show leather bag Ads.
- Contextual Ad will show – art & craft related Ads.
In contextual advertising, the ads are selected and served by automatically, depending on the identity of the user and the content displayed, like in Targeted Advertising.
A contextual advertising system scans the text of a website for keywords and displays the Ads on the webpage based on those keywords.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Contextual Advertising
2. PCMag, Contextual Advertising
Native Advertising
What is Native Advertising?
Native advertising is a type of digital advertising, that matches the look and function of the platform where it appears.
Often, native ads function like an advertorial. Ads are displayed as a video, article or editorial. The word “native” refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appear on the platform.
Native ads are often found in social media feeds or as recommended content on a web page.
They look different compared to display ads or banner ads. The aim of native advertising is for ads to fit in the editorial flow of the page.
Read more:
1. Outbrain.com, Native Advertising
2. Wikipedia, In-game advertising
Mobile Advertising
What is Mobile Advertising?
Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, that focuses on the users of smartphones, feature phones, and tablets.
Mobile in-app ad revenue is expected to be around $6.8bn by the end of 2019.
There are many types of mobile ads, here are some of the common types:
- Click to Download Ads
- Click to Call Ads
- Click to Message Ads
- Banner Ads
- Push Notifications
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Mobile advertising
2. Techopedia, Mobile Advertising
SMS Marketing
What is SMS marketing?
SMS Marketing is a mass sending of ad messages via SMS (Short Message Service). With an SMS you can send up to 160-character message to another device.
SMS marketing became popular in the early 2000s in Europe. Businesses collected mobile phone numbers to send off wanted or unwanted content.
SMS marketing is still popular and in use. Usually, SMS marketing campaign is arranged via bulk SMS providers. These SMS campaigns use real-time reporting, link tracking, and delivery guarantees.
Read more:
1. Neil Patel Blog, Why SMS Marketing Doesn’t Suck Anymore (And How to Use it to Generate New Revenue).
2. VerticalRail, What is SMS Marketing & How Does it Work?
Push Notifications
What are Push Notifications?
Push Notification is a message that pops up on a mobile device.
It is the delivery of information from a software application to a computing device. Push notifications can be delivered at any time, without any request from the client or the user.
They were first introduced by Apple with the Push Notification Service in 2009.
They look like SMS notifications but they are reached only the users who installed the app.
Read more:
1. Airshop, What are Push Notifications?
2. Wikipedia, Push Technology
In-game Mobile Marketing
What is the in-game Mobile Marketing?
In-game Mobile Marketing is the featuring of brand or product in mobile games. Advertisers pay to have their product or brand name featured in mobile games.
Promotional messages can be delivered within mobile games. Usually, advertising is in the form of header or footer banners or pop-up ads.
Some games are even funded by brands. This practice is known as mobile advergaming.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, In-game advertising
2. Merketing-schools.org, In-game Marketing
Online Public Relations
Define Online Public Relations?
Online Public Relations (E-PR) is a practice of managing the spread of online information between businesses and the public.
E-PR facilitates positive comments about the brand, its products, services, and news. At the same time minimizing undesirable comments.
Online Public Relations cover:
- PR Outreach
- Reputation Management
- Buzz Marketing
The rise of online internet and digital marketing has changed the traditional game of public relations, where the main channels were TV, radio and printed press. Online public relations now is viewed as an integral part of the general digital (online) marketing strategy.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Online Public Relations
2. Smart Insights, Online PR
Viral Marketing
What is Viral Marketing?
Viral Marketing or viral advertising is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product.
“Viral” refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people in their social networks. It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.
The marketers’ goal in viral marketing is to create messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential. This leads to a high probability the campaign will spread fast.
Viral marketing may be in the form of video clips, games, software, images, messages, or web pages.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Viral Marketing
2. PracticalEcommerce, The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing
Buzz Marketing
What is Buzz Marketing?
Buzz Marketing is the process of maximizing word-of-mouth potential of a particular marketing message. It uses specific customer interactions that can amplify or alter the original marketing message.
Usually, buzz marketing is in use around the events, to maximize the impact. Due to its similarities, we attributed it to Viral Marketing.
Common tactics to create buzz include build-up around a launch or event. Creating a controversy, or reaching out to bloggers and social media influencers.
Buzz marketing often uses early adopters and influencers to create emotion, excitement, and anticipation. This can be used for branding, product, service or any marketing event.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Marketing Buzz
2. TechTarget, Buzz Marketing
Referral Marketing
What is Referral Marketing?
Referral marketing is the method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually via word of mouth using the existing customers.
Sometimes referrals are spontaneous, but businesses can encourage this behavior with relevant strategies. The marketeers aim to influence this process so that more people will share the message (or product, service).
The advertisers aim to spread the word about products or services using the existing customers.
The most common way businesses use is the form of incentive or reward given for referring new customers. Referral marketing was used in traditional marketing (offline) for a long time.
Many companies and industries have employed some form of referral marketing in the past, including sectors like Retail, Automotive, Travel Agencies, Hotels, Health Sector, Medicine, Banks, and Restaurants.
Read more:
1. Wikipedia, Referral Marketing
2. Oberlo.com, The Ultimate Guide to Referral Marketing
Here’s The Next Step
Which of the channels did we miss?
Or maybe you have a question or comment.
Either way, let us know below.
