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“Digital Marketing” Explained So You Can Use It

Difference between Digital Marketing and Web Marketing

With the spread of the Internet and the era of having each smartphone, consumers have taken the time to check word-of-mouth and e-commerce sites before purchasing products and services. In addition, there are an increasing number of cases where people not only go to actual stores and buy from their hands, but also purchase from EC sites while referring to word-of-mouth. Consumption behavior has diversified, and sales promotion at stores and advertising / PR through mass advertising are no longer enough to lead to consumption.
That’s where the idea of omni-channel came into play. Omni-channel is a method of reviewing the strategies and services that were divided between the conventional real and the Web, and providing optimal services and communication to customers on any channel.

In Omni-channel, we will make full use of digital tools such as Internet advertising, email approach, marketing using SNS, as well as mass advertising and sales data at physical stores, to create contact points with customers.

In digital marketing, not only advertising and PR through omni-channel, but also a huge amount of consumer behavior data collected at the same time is accumulated, and the data is utilized and analyzed. As a result, it is now possible to grasp the true intentions of customers, the direction of interests, and purchasing behavior, which could not be seen by marketing methods in the analog era, with higher accuracy.

Differences between digital marketing and web marketing
Web marketing is marketing that takes place through a website.
Creating a website
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Web advertising
SNS marketing
It covers all aspects of user behavior through digital, not just the web marketing mentioned above.
User behavior history through smartphones and tablets
Behavior history through apps such as map apps
Comprehensive data such as usage history of IoT products
By leveraging digital marketing, you can reach out to your customers through a variety of channels.

Background and stats on  digital marketing
According to the Reiwa 1st Year Communication Usage Trend Survey, it was found that the percentage of Internet users increased by 10% from 2018 to the 1st year of Reiwa to 89.8%.
As for the means of access, the ratio via smartphones is increasing, and it exceeds 70% in the age group of 13 to 59 years old. Although the purpose of using the Internet was to send and receive e-mails as in the previous year, SNS increased by 9.0% from the previous year, and the difference is closing. The graph below shows the statistics on the purpose of using SNS.

Survey of communication usage trends in the first year of Reiwa p.19
SNS has the impression that it is a place where people can connect, but while the number of users for traditional communication purposes has decreased slightly, the purpose of collecting information is on the rise.
Through statistics, you can see people who use their smartphones to access the Internet 24 hours a day, whenever they want. As for the means of collecting information, the use of SNS as well as search engines is increasing.
A more comprehensive approach is needed as a way to inform an ever-growing number of Internet users and to stay connected to existing customers. The rise of digital marketing came in response to such changes in the situation.

Purpose of digital marketing
The purpose of digital marketing can be summarized into the following three points.
Increase contact opportunities with your audience
Accumulation of audience data
Providing information that meets the needs of each person

Accumulation of audience data
Digital marketing does more than just provide information and solutions to users. It is also the purpose of digital marketing to collect and utilize user behavior as data. By accumulating digital data, it has become possible to grasp the true intentions and insights of users that could not be grasped by conventional questionnaires.

Giving data that addresses the issues of every person
By utilizing digital data, each user’s problem recognition, actual needs, and latent needs can be grasped in more detail. Through data analysis, it is possible to identify problems that users have and provide information that meets their needs.
Digital Marketing Techniques and Channels
Digital marketing leverages the following channels to connect with customers where they spend a lot of time, online.

Website
Digital advertising
Email marketing
Online catalog
Let’s take a look at digital marketing techniques on these channels.

Digital Marketing Techniques and Examples
The ideal digital marketing is an activity in which individual digital marketing campaigns are clearly organized to achieve the overall goal. Depending on the purpose and need of your marketing strategy, you can also combine free and paid channels to launch large-scale campaigns.
For example, content marketers produce a series of blog posts that help them attract prospects from their recent eBooks. Then, email marketers will create an email campaign that will give more information about your company to those who have downloaded your eBook. A detailed description of each digital marketer will be given later.

Search engine optimization (SEO)
A website optimization process (SEO) that helps your website appear higher on search engine results pages and improve organic search traffic (or free traffic) . Channels that benefit from SEO include:

website
blog
Infographic

Content marketing
Create and promote content for brand awareness and traffic, lead generation, and customer acquisition.
Blog article
eBook and white paper
Infographic
Online catalogs and look books

Social media marketing
Promote brands and content on SNS for the purpose of improving brand awareness, traffic, and lead generation. Channels that can be used for social media marketing include:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Instagram
Snapchat
Pinterest

PPC (click billing)
How to increase traffic to your website by paying the media for the number of clicks on your online ads. Google Ads, the most common PPC, is a service that displays your company’s links at the top of Google’s search results and pays a fee based on the number of clicks. Other channels that PPC can take advantage of include:

Facebook paid ads
Twitter Promoted Tweets
LinkedIn Sponsored Messages

Affiliate marketing
This is a performance-based advertising activity where you can receive referral fees by promoting the products and services of other companies on your website.

There are two main types of affiliate marketing.
Performance-based reward type When addition to product sales, information-related teaching materials and products that add value to products are also covered.
This type pays a reward each time a click-type ad is clicked. The closing rate does not affect the reward. There is also a type of affiliate that combines the click type and the success reward type.
In addition, affiliate marketing channels include:
Hosting video ads with the YouTube Partner Program
Affiliate links posted on SNS

Native advertising
Native ads are content-centric ads that are placed on the platform to blend in with regular, unsponsored content. Buzz Feed’s sponsored articles are a good example, but many consider social media ads (Facebook ads and Instagram ads) to be “native.”

Retargeting advertising
“Retargeting ads” are ads that are tracked and displayed even after the user leaves the site.
Retargeting advertising has the effect of encouraging users who have considered purchasing a product or service but have not made a prompt decision to reconsider.

Marketing automation
Software aimed at automating simple tasks in marketing. There are many repetitive tasks that the marketing department can do that can be automated without human intervention, as in the following example.

Email newsletter
Scheduling SNS posts
Contact list update
Lead nurturing workflow

Campaign tracking and reporting
Marketing automation enables the automation of such repetitive tasks. Companies that lack human resources will be more meaningful to implement.

Email marketing
Email marketing is used as a means of communicating with your audience. In addition to content, discounts, and event promotion, it is also used as a means of guiding people to their own website. The types of emails sent in email marketing campaigns include:

Newsletter for blog subscribers
Follow-up email to the visitor who made the download on the website
Welcome email to customers
Year-end promotion to loyalty program members
E-mail series for customer nurturing (introduction of useful knowledge, etc.)

Online PR
Online public relations refers to activities that aim to become a hot topic in earned media by utilizing content-based websites such as digital publications and blogs . Apart from being deployed online, it’s almost the same as traditional PR. Channels that can effectively deploy your PR activities include:

Disseminating information to reporters using SNS
Engagement with online reviews about your company
Engagement to comments on personal websites and blogs

Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is an online content-based approach to attracting, fostering and satisfying customers throughout the marketing funnel. Inbound marketing strategies can take advantage of all of the digital marketing techniques mentioned.

Summary of digital marketing

Digital marketing is a marketing measure that goes beyond marketing within a website to build relationships with customers by utilizing all online channels and contacts. By integrating customer data and creating a mechanism to advance the customer journey, instead of using websites, emails, SNS, web advertisements, etc. as a single channel, it will be possible to achieve great results.

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