A universal guide to the types of digital marketing

Types of digital marketing: a map by goal, not an endless list of fads

Digital marketing covers a huge number of micro-niches and specific types. A large part overlaps with a broader category, communication, but others are segments that can lean toward quite different directions. The different types of digital marketing should be integrated into your marketing plan and complemented by your content strategy to improve communication and engagement with your target audience. Digital marketing is essential to improve your online presence and strengthen your brand. Each type of digital marketing requires prior market research to understand your audience's needs and to measure the ROI of each action. The different types of digital marketing should be measured with the right KPIs and complemented by your website and social media plan to maximize results.

For us, it's a mistake to make a list like:

- Digital marketing
- Strategic
- Influencers
- Relational
...

Since they can all happen at the same time. Working with influencers builds the relationship with your audience, it has to be strategic (otherwise it makes no financial or time sense), and it's done on digital platforms.

That's why we've developed our own list and organizing system.

It's easier to picture digital marketing as a big tree or umbrella with branches or roots spreading out. Marketing is very broad, and "digital" covers almost every component of modern work; so it encompasses a great many things.

Within digital marketing, we have many types of components and several professionals who play different roles in them. Some of the most popular components are content marketing, online public relations, advertising, affiliate marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, and more.

Each component uses different methods and creativity and aims to advance a goal. In each section, we'll explain what the goal is and what you get in return for executing it well.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing boils down to the role a salesperson plays in a company.

Its goal: to close/secure a sale for an outside company and earn a commission on that sale.

This is one of the most widespread types within digital marketing. Mainly because if you have a good grasp of SEO, content, and websites, you can turn audiences into sales. It's one of the most extensive marketing formats on websites, influencer profiles, and newspapers.

It usually works through a discount code, a cookie, or a link to be able to trace / track who secured the sale. From the seller's point of view, it's a fairly useful method for getting a sale with no effort. Since they aren't the one driving the marketing; third parties do that, paid for sales success, not time. The third party only gets paid if the original company sells.

It's a very widespread form of marketing on the internet, with discount coupons, discount links, and so on. It's also heavily used with KOLs / influencers, who also act as powerful social marketing. They're motivated to share (because they get paid if they sell), and on top of that the company can measure how well that influencer performs. The usual strategy is to assign them a discount code with their brand name, and when it's entered at checkout, it's traced.

Amazon, for example, has a program too. They give you a percentage (2-10%) if people buy thanks to one of your links. There are many sites that connect brands with individuals who want to promote through affiliate marketing.

Content marketing

Content marketing consists of creating content (photos, videos, audio, text, and so on) to attract an audience and, indirectly, secure a sale. Content marketing should be integrated into your marketing plan and form part of your content strategy to improve engagement and communication with your target audience.

Its goal: to create content that attracts an audience to it and, indirectly, secures a sale.

Content marketing has changed a lot in recent years. With the internet and daily consumption of digital content, many companies are trying to make use of this kind of strategy.

The origin of content marketing

The first and most studied example is the case of Michelin with its "Michelin Guide." For a tire company, it (at first glance) doesn't make much sense to make a guide to "where to eat well" in a country. Then you realize that driving miles and wearing down tires is the strategy behind their content marketing. Going to seek out those recommended spots in their guide made users travel more and also gave the brand status.

Applications by sector

In the food sector, its most common application is the recipe or video recipe format. You're giving value to your customer (a well-explained, fresh recipe) but the priority is using the products of the company behind the marketing. This type of content is what platforms like YouTube, and we ourselves, call hub content. The main pillar of any brand's content.

Its main appearance is on social media.

Public relations marketing

It can actually be strongly linked to content marketing (since text is content) but the two can be easily distinguished. While content is a medium whose goal can be to attract, inspire, motivate, and so on, the goal of public relations is to interact and work on the brand's relationships. Public relations should be integrated into your marketing plan and improve your communication with your target audience.

Goal: maintain a good relationship with the audience, communicating and helping those interested.

For example, replying to comments is usually seen as public relations, while the photo we posted is content marketing.

Where it tends to happen is in unfortunate events for brands. The reaction and the way events are handled tend to fall under PR. If their service is down, the public relations system handles the outage, communicates it, and helps those affected.

Email marketing

We consider email a form of public relations and content marketing. The access platform, instead of being social media, is your email inbox. It's more personal because it involves a direct conversation, but at times it's one-directional (brand only).

We see it as a function that brands overexploited in the past and that now has reduced relevance.

Advertising marketing

Even though the vast majority of marketing strategies are partly advertising, you can break out advertising as a separate one. Advertising should be integrated into your marketing plan and form part of your content strategy to improve engagement and communication with your target audience.

Advertising marketing is paying for ad space with content from your brand.

Among the types of digital marketing, advertising is the most common. The reality is that it's content marketing, but instead of being organic, it's paid. Since it's paid and "forced" to be seen, it's designed to grab attention and communicate in the shortest possible time.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of advertising where the platform is the influencer's social media and the content is largely decided by the influencer, following a set of brand principles. Influencer marketing should be integrated into your marketing plan and improve engagement with your target audience.

SEO marketing

SEO marketing aims to position keywords in order to bring in traffic from popular searches on those search terms. SEO should be integrated into your marketing plan and complemented by your content strategy to improve your digital presence and engagement with your audience.

In other words, we methodically try to get our brand to appear every time a specific term is searched, "hooking" visitors from other places.