Digital marketing is a channel of advertising and marketing that is still continuously expanding. Most ads that you’re accustomed to seeing in your day to day habits fall under digital marketing. In the new internet age, marketing is no longer limited to print, television, and radio. Now, you have potential to reach your targeted audience through every channel they frequent. Websites, email, social media, and videos are all inventive ways to get your company or brand seen by consumers.
There are many ways to explore digital marketing, with the most common being websites. You can’t go to any websites these days without being exposed to some form or marketing or advertising. Some are self-explanatory; various ad sizes placed through the website. Images portraying happy shoppers and words painted to entice you to click through to their website. Online ads are no longer limited to static images. Ads expand taking over the page and begging for your attention, they disguise themselves as a corner of a page turning at the top of the page, wiggling until you click to reveal what’s inside. They’re animated, showing dogs running around to remind you to buy flea medicine. Digital marketing has become as interactive as stepping foot into your favorite store and talking to a sales person.
Digital marketing has even taken it a step further on your most visited sites. Did you ever wonder why you always seem to see ads for your favorite clothing store while you’re catching up on the news? What about the ad urging you to adopt a kitten when you were just searching for local pet stores last week? It’s called behavioral targeting. Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking. Marketing can be targeted to you specifically because of your online habits.
It works the same way with your location. Geo-targeting makes sure that you’re shown advertising and marketing that was meant for your town, city, or state. It’s the reason you don’t ever see any marketing for Shake Shack when you live on the east coast.
That’s not all digital marketing is limited to. Have you watched any videos lately? Chances are, you sat through a short advertisement, known as pre-roll, before you could watch that cat dressed as a shark on a Roomba.
Social media has become a growing outlet for marketing. From sponsored posts to online contests, your social media account opens a whole new world of advertising and marketing. You’re able to follow your favorite companies and brands with the simple click of a button, and are guaranteed to now see any content they post. You enter contests to win tickets to see your favorite band and now get emails from that concert venue telling you about other upcoming shows. Companies can sponsor social media posts on another company’s social media pages, picking up exposure to a whole new audience.
Digital marketing doesn’t end there. Companies can sponsor contests, furthering exposure to their brand, and usually peaking new interests.
A new form of digital marketing is native advertising. Have you ever been scrolling through your favorite news website and noticed what looked like a story but read like an advertisement? This is a new brand of digital marketing being utilized to attract readers and generate more click through rates than a typical advertisement.
QR codes have taken digital marketing a step further, giving users the ability to use their smartphone to scan a code shown to them at say, Starbucks, to reveal hidden content, videos, or sweepstakes. Most of these contain ads, and push digital marketing a step ahead of ordinary marketing.