What is digital marketing? Grow with Google
Understanding and analyzing how customers operate is important for converting leads. Using digital marketing allows you to accomplish that from start to finish and at every point in between. Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to outrank the big players through strategic digital marketing initiatives. Digital marketing allows you to identify and target a highly specific audience with personalized and high-converting marketing messages. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique that seeks to improve the ranking of online material on search engines such as Google or Bing. If you have ever searched for something on Google, you’ve likely noticed that even the simplest search can yield millions of results.
Your target audience is the group of people you want your campaign to reach based on similar attributes, such as age, gender, demographic, or purchasing behavior. Having a good understanding of your target audience can help you determine which digital marketing channels to use and the information to include in your campaigns. Direct purchase may not even be a goal of your social media marketing strategy. Many brands use social media marketing to start dialogues with audiences rather than encourage them to spend money right away.
They often work with people in other departments to ensure products and campaigns are supported by promotional content on all digital channels. These paid ads fit seamlessly on the top of search engine results pages, giving instant visibility. When a potential lead is searching for a product or business related to yours, it’s a great opportunity for a promotion.
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Plus, you can improve your marketing efforts with actionable insights that reduce guesswork and make campaigns better over time. With Shopify, you can use one platform to find and sell to the right shoppers, wherever they are. Global luggage brand Samsonite used SEM practices to bring its advertising online. It started by getting a deeper understanding of what its end users were looking for so it could target the right keywords and promote the right message in search results. Consider who you want to reach—25-year-old digital entrepreneurs in New York or working moms who struggle to find time for self-care? The more you hone in on your target audience, the easier it is to know which platforms you can reach them on and what type of message they prefer to receive.
From content marketing to PPC campaigns and more, there are many digital marketing channels you can use to your advantage. Which digital marketing channels you use often depends on your goals, audience, and budget. You may notice that digital marketing isn't just a one-time effort, but a continuous, data-driven process. Consistent effort and iteration across all four stages can help businesses effectively adapt to online trends and continuously improve how they connect with their target audience.
The kind of content you create depends on your audience‘s needs at different stages in the buyer’s journey. Digital marketing is often compared to inbound marketing, but it doesn’t differentiate between ‘inbound’ and ‘outbound’ methods. The biggest benefits of working with influencers with a following count under 100k compared to those with higher? More trust with followers, access to niche and tight-knit communities, and lower costs. PPC drives traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. The purpose is to create something share-worthy in the hopes that it will organically spread across a social media channel.
Common KPIs include traffic, conversions, cost-efficiency, and return on investment. Some of the most effective digital marketing campaigns show how a sharp idea, paired with smart execution, can cut through noise and spark real connection. Brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, and Old Spice have each proven the power of storytelling, personalization, and platform strategy. In social media marketing, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, No Sale Profit System Guide and X (formerly Twitter) serve as channels to share content, engage followers, and run targeted ads.
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Imagine you offer financial services and want to send out special offers to internet users people who have looked at your products. You know you'll get better results if you target the offer to the person's interest, so you decide to prepare 2 campaigns. One is for young families who have looked at your life insurance products, and the other is for millennial entrepreneurs who have considered your retirement plans. When you post an ad online, people can see it no matter where they are (provided you haven’t limited your ad geographically). This makes it easy to grow your business's market reach and connect with a larger audience across different digital channels. Remarketing, or behavioral retargeting, is when you market to people who have already interacted with your brand in some way.
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Internships, freelance projects, or launching your own blog or campaign allow you to apply your knowledge in real-world settings. Follow industry blogs, join webinars, and connect with peers to keep your skills sharp. Track performance using analytics tools like GA4, Semrush, or platform-native dashboards. Monitor key metrics, test new ideas, and refine your approach based on what moves the needle. Digital marketing costs can range from $500 to $50,000+ per month, depending on the size of the business, campaign scope, and chosen strategy. A single viral video kicked off a series of responses tailored to real users, showcasing how agile, conversational content can reshape perception – and convert a new generation of customers.
Because these businesses communicate with different audiences, their digital marketing approaches and needs vary. With traditional marketing, it’s difficult to track whether someone found your business via a billboard, radio ad, or newspaper feature. When you can’t track your marketing efforts, you can’t measure their performance, which makes it challenging to prove marketing’s worth. A proactive approach to monitoring your digital marketing can help you spot and fix issues quickly. Your speedy response time can improve the cost-effectiveness of your strategy because you reduce wasted ad spend or poor keyword targeting. This digital marketing strategy involves identifying important elements of your page, such as your call to action (CTA), and A/B testing them.
A foundational element of digital marketing, SEO is the practice of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results. When your website appears as a top result on Google and other search engines, people are more likely to click on your link, learn about your brand, and perhaps even become customers. This transition to the online world has also changed the way businesses promote their products and services. Like most things, the field of marketing has come to revolve around the web—with website creation, social media and online ads largely taking the place of billboards, cold calls and print ads.