Dr. Dave Chaffey, author of Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice explains a process to achieve success by focusing on the 18 most important digital marketing techniques
Simply put, our definition of digital marketing, or online marketing, is:
"Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital media, data and technology."
Within this broad digital marketing definition, there are many vital channels and platforms that we will introduce and share strategies and tactics for in this article, as well as the key digital marketing KPIs and metrics for success.
Our globally acclaimed RACE Framework is a digital marketing structure that enables marketers to plan, manage, and optimize all aspects of their customers' online and offline brand experiences.
In this overview of digital marketing we will cover:
What is digital marketing?
18 key types of digital marketing techniques across 6 media channel
How to achieve the business benefits of digital marketing using the 5Ss
Key…
Digital marketing is more important now than ever. My recommendations on the challenges and opportunities for growth
Where do you start if you want to develop a digital marketing strategy? It's still a common challenge since many businesses know how vital digital and mobile channels are today for acquiring and retaining customers. Yet they don't have an integrated plan to support digital transformation and business growth based on engaging their audiences effectively online.
The importance of digital channels in influencing brand discovery is highlighted by this research from Global Web Insight published in the Datareportal April 2023 Global Snapshot report.
This research shows that if you don't compete by maintaining quality online content to gain visibility within search engines and social networks, then you're missing out on opportunities to reach new customers.
Regardless of the type of business, if your…
E-commerce 2023: The latest data and forecasts for all things online retail growth
It's interesting to look back at e-commerce growth over the last few years and think forward to the future of this industry. As demonstrated by these charts from Statistica, the annual revenues of the US e-commerce industry shot up in 2020 and 2021.
What's more, despite recent growth slowing slightly, Statistica Market Insights estimates strong continued growth in this area in 2023 and beyond.
The reasons for this are two-fold - the rise of revenue from total retail sales, both in the US and worldwide, and also stark growth in the % of the total retail sales being e-commerce.
This constitutes a much larger share than previously to the pandemic, showing that some of the rapid changes to…
7 steps ensure top-down strategic alignment between business strategy and partner marketing
Aligning partner marketing with your organization's overall business strategy and specific strategic initiatives is essential for driving success and maximizing the value that partners bring to an organization.
However, this alignment can often be challenging due to a lack of understanding and buy-in from internal stakeholders.
Before exploring practical strategies to bridge this gap, let's first clarify business strategy.
Harvard Business School defines Business Strategy as
“The strategic initiatives a company pursues to create value for the organization and its stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
This strategy is crucial to a company's success and is needed before any goods or services are produced or delivered.”
Does your organization value partner as part of your overall strategy?
If the answer is “no” or “partly” then it will hinder the effectiveness of any marketing programme. There is a need to establish…
Thinking about your e-commerce marketing plan for 2024? Use the RACE Framework to create a focused and well-structured digital marketing strategy
In today’s e-commerce business landscape, there is no room for a lack of planning.
All e-commerce businesses should plan out the best e-commerce marketing strategies to attract and retain high-value customers online as part of their e-commerce strategy.
Without a well-planned e-commerce marketing strategy, sustainable growth will be inhibited.
An e-commerce marketing plan with quantifiable KPIs should be directly linked to the goals of the business strategy which considers the e-commerce marketing landscape as a whole.
Our most recent survey found that nearly half of companies don't have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy. Of those who do, the majority have integrated it into their overall marketing strategy.
What is an e-commerce marketing plan?
E-commerce marketing planning is about formalizing how you intend…
Selecting the best revenue model options for your digital business
A good revenue model is a proven technique used by digital businesses globally, from startups to global corporations, to generate income from traffic on their website, mobile apps, and via digital channels.
The 10 digital revenue model options explained in this include both ad revenue models and charging for access to a digital service including freemium revenue models where limited free access is provided with fees charged for the full service.
I created this post originally in 2010 to support a revenue model spreadsheet for site owners to forecast their revenue generation. The main parameters you need to set are the variables for each Ad Unit or Container Type (blue fields) and it works out the revenue earning (orange fields) for you!
The site ad revenue model
If you 'plug-in' some average figures for pay-for-performance-based advertising options like cost per click or cost per action…
Examples of essential questions to ask when structuring a digital marketing audit
Auditing your digital marketing activities is an essential technique to start a digital marketing strategy. But they’re also useful for finding opportunities to improve your digital marketing by identifying priorities you need to act on to get better results.
Knowing where to start and what to include can be difficult since although you may have your own area of expertise such as search, social media or business, you may not know about other topics. In this article, we’ll provide a comprehensive checklist you can use for your business based on the Smart Insights RACE Digital marketing framework. Each of the five parts of RACE is broken down into five to give a comprehensive evaluation of digital marketing for which I outline questions in this post.
I developed this framework…
How do the latest updates to ChatGPT including GPT–4, AutoGPT, Plug-ins and ChatGPT Plus boost its potential for marketers?
Since I originally wrote an article on Using ChatGPT for marketing just after ChatGPT launched, there has been a whirlwind of developments from OpenAI and their partners. For marketers who are busy with their day job, this can be bewildering and you can miss some of the key developments, so here I’ll summarise some of the main developments in a brief timeline and how significant I see them to be.
Members can read about other ‘need-to-know’ key digital marketing developments in our regularly updated latest Digital Media updates tracker.
As of May 2023, the main developments since the launch of ChatGPT relevant to marketers and businesses have been:
1 ChatGPT features integrated into Microsoft Bing
This seemed to happen a long time ago now, but was actually in February. I got access to the…
From executive presentations to digital channel spreadsheets, we've got examples of digital marketing plans for early startups through to multinational enterprises
Whether you're starting from scratch, or improving your existing plans, examples of digital marketing plans help marketers see the how, not just the why, of structuring their approach to digital marketing. Because of this, we have always included examples with our templates, regardless of the type of plan.
Sharing examples can also be useful for onboarding your team in the marketing planning process, or getting marketing strategy buy-in from senior management.
In this blog, I'll share examples of different types of marketing plans to help you decide how to scope and structure your own plan.
Marketing plans - the hardest part is knowing where to start
We regularly receive feedback from our members that step-by-step templates and guided examples are useful resources for marketing planning.
For example, our Free Member digital marketing plan template…
Sources to research the importance of digital marketing in your industry sector
Are you investing sufficiently in digital communications? Naturally, digital marketing objectives for founders, entrepreneurs, and leaders of corporations will differ - as does optimizing digital marketing for businesses - but keeping your digital marketing strategy at the front of your mindset when planning for growth is the key to success for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
The Smart Insights RACE framework and growth system involves constantly scanning for new opportunities to help make your business more competitive using both the latest digital communications techniques and reliable, well-established techniques such as search engine marketing, social media and email marketing.
A strong digital marketing strategy means ensuring you're investing wisely and reaching, attracting, and retaining your prime customers.
In this article, I will recommend the best sources to help you review the importance of digital marketing for your business, structured around…
