10 Types Of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of channels, from SEO and content marketing to social media, email, influencer, and video. Understanding each type and how they work together is the foundation of any effective marketing strategy.

Know Your Options Before You Dive In

The digital marketing team at Portland Production Services makes the success of your business its number one priority. No matter the scale and budget, we give maximum effort to thoroughly research, strategize, and implement a digital marketing approach for each of our clients that will provide the greatest return on investment.

But before you dive into a full-scale digital marketing campaign, it's important to know what your options are and the various platforms available. That way, you can align your digital marketing strategy with the strengths of your company. HubSpot's marketing research consistently identifies the businesses that see the strongest ROI as those that begin with a clear understanding of the channels available to them before committing resources.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a very broad concept in the digital space, as it comprises many different types of marketing. And while it offers tremendous advantages in terms of engagement and branding, it's also one of the most difficult to pull off successfully, because it takes a long-term commitment to start seeing results.

Examples of popular content marketing campaigns include newsletters, blog posts, white papers, case studies, industry deep dives, infographics, eBooks, tutorials, documentaries, video highlights, and more. Social media campaigns are normally built around content marketing. Basically, anything that involves creating original pieces or informative series involves content. In order to be successful, your audience needs to rate the content as valuable and meaningful. Otherwise, it will be ignored.

2. Search Engine Marketing

SEO is one of the most important marketing approaches, and also one of the most difficult. Every company wants to rank at the top of Google searches, but each search term can display at most ten suggestions on the first page. So the competition is fierce.

The best way to rank well is through a consistent and long-term content marketing campaign that provides value to your customers. But it's also possible to work with the right marketing agency that really understands how SEO works. The bottom line is that a successful SEO campaign will require time, consistency, and money, but the rewards can be immense. Google Search Central publishes detailed documentation on how search algorithms evaluate content quality, making it an authoritative starting point for any SEO strategy.

3. Display Ads

Digital advertising is very different than traditional print advertising. In the old days, businesses would run ad campaigns in magazines, newspapers, and other physical publications, and hope that they would be seen. The closest thing to analytics was circulation numbers and surveys.

The good news about modern display ads is that marketers have much more information and feedback at their disposal. While some people will tell you that display ads are not as effective as print ads were historically, the sheer wealth of information, such as impressions, click rates, and conversions, means you can track almost exactly how valuable they are to your company.

4. SMS Marketing

When it comes to local advertising, SMS marketing is a growing category that offers many attractive benefits. Because of the geographic factor, text campaigns often achieve better response rates, which justifies the higher cost.

Geo-fencing allows you to directly target consumers located in a specific geographic location. If you run a storefront business, you can target mobile users as they pass through your neighborhood, offering them a coupon or announcing a special deal. It's essentially the digital equivalent of hiring someone to wave a sign outside your business.

5. Social Media Marketing

A maxim in advertising is to go where your customers are. In 2024, that means advertising on social media platforms. Whether we're talking Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter, these digital gathering places are immensely popular and have created advertising networks that are highly effective at targeting exactly who you want.

The amount of personal data that these companies have is truly staggering. Marketers are able to target consumers based on their actual buying habits and demographics, making social media marketing campaigns highly effective. For the right kind of product or service, social media marketing is a no-brainer. Our guide on social media video strategy covers how to structure a video-first approach to social that drives real engagement.

6. Email Marketing

When reputable marketers talk about email marketing, they are referring to opt-in newsletter campaigns that people actually have to consent to receiving before messages end up in their inbox. Effective email marketing is one of the best digital marketing categories for this very reason. You are directly communicating with people who have agreed to receive content from you.

A lot of businesses entice email signups by offering discounts or a free gift in exchange. When offering a promo code for use at checkout, you not only gain a current customer, but hopefully a continuing one as well. According to Statista's email marketing data, email marketing consistently delivers one of the highest ROI figures of any digital channel.

7. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is growing in popularity, and while social media is often where you will connect with influencers, it's not the only way. Any kind of celebrity testimonial is a form of influencer marketing.

Some of the common influencer-business relationships are obvious: sports equipment or apparel companies that sponsor popular athletes, or food and beverage makers that work with a celebrity chef. If you sell digital gadgets, offering them to popular YouTube reviewers is a great way to get your product seen by a lot of people. But no matter what industry you are involved in, there's almost certainly a group of influential people who would make excellent marketers for your company.

8. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing doesn't apply to every industry, but if it fits in with your business, you definitely want to take advantage of it. One of the most basic examples of affiliate marketing is when popular websites promote links to products in exchange for a tiny percentage of the sale. Anytime you can rely on your network of sellers, distributors, or users to push your products to more customers, it's a form of affiliate marketing.

9. Audio Marketing

While traditional radio may be changing, audio content has never been more popular, thanks to the rise of streaming music services and podcasts. Because they are now digital in nature, it allows marketers a lot more information about the effectiveness and reach of their advertising investment, making audio marketing a growing category for digital specialists.

It's possible to approach individual podcasts popular in your area or industry. You can also advertise through podcast networks that will disseminate your message across many channels. Platforms like Spotify and Pandora also offer popular advertising networks. Spotify for Podcasters publishes detailed audience and advertising insights that can help you evaluate whether podcast advertising is a good fit for your brand.

10. Video Marketing

At Portland Production Services, one of our specialties is video marketing. As a sub-category of content marketing, video can be incorporated into pretty much any of the above types of marketing. It's very effective at boosting your website's SEO and is a great way to engage with your audience.

Whether you want to market new products, promote events, or document information for your audience, video has an integral role to play. Our event production and commercial production services are both built around helping you get maximum value from video across all ten of these marketing channels. Make sure you partner with an experienced video production team to get the most out of your investment.

Video Is the Engine Behind Your Entire Digital Marketing Mix

Digital marketing is not a single strategy. It's an ecosystem of interconnected channels, each with its own strengths, audience expectations, and ROI profile. The businesses that perform best are those that understand each channel well enough to combine them strategically, rather than treating each one in isolation.

For most businesses, video sits at the intersection of several of these channels at once. It powers content marketing, boosts SEO, performs on social media, enhances email campaigns, and makes paid advertising more compelling. That cross-channel versatility is why video is consistently cited as the highest-ROI content format available to marketers today.

Portland Production Services helps businesses build video strategies that work across all of these digital channels. Get in touch today and let's talk about how video can amplify every part of your digital marketing mix.

Want to know which digital marketing channels are right for your business? Talk to our team today!