Digital marketing can be defined as “achieving marketing objectives by applying digital technologies” (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick 2012). It emphasises the importance of aligning digital technologies to business and marketing objectives and involves 3 key stages;

• Acquisition – driving your target audience to your website through various communication channels using tactical tools such SEO, PPC, E-mail, Social Media, online adverts, sponsorship, partnerships or affiliates and traditional off-line marketing campaigns.
• Conversion – getting the customer to execute a CTA (call to action) such as a purchase, clicking to a particular webpage, downloading a pdf and so on. Techniques to achieve conversion include email marketing, content marketing (i.e. content creation and management), design (i.e. site usability and accessibility), social media and mobile marketing.
• Retention – getting the customer to repeat the act which helps to grow the business. Techniques to achieve retention include email marketing, social media, value proposition development, customer personalisation and loyalty programmes. Retention is achieved through improving our customer knowledge (of their profiles, behaviour, value and loyalty drivers), then delivering integrated targeted communications and online services that match their individual needs.

All digital marketing activities should be based on customer insight developed by researching their characteristics, behaviour, what they value and what keeps them loyal. This information allows for tailored digital correspondence and the application of e-CRM activities that supports the different customer personas and customer digital interaction that facilitates interaction, enquiries and ultimately sales.

Social media marketing involves activities that will engage with existing and potential clients in a relaxed and informal way thereby allowing the delivery of marketing resources through this interaction on an individual basis. It is important to identify your customer segments which in turn will identify the social media platform(s) that apply to your business model. Commonly used social media platforms include LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, TicTok, Pinterest, Reddit, Quora and Google Maps and the following approaches should be adopted;

• Identify which social networks your current and potential customers use by monitoring your analytics to see which social networks are driving the most relevant traffic to your website.
• Ensure your website’s virtual presence is easy to share on social media.
• Promote offers and your website's CTAs through social media.
• Make your social activity more that just about your products and services.

Each social media platform should be used as a communication channel to drive users onto your website to determine its effectiveness through Google Analytics. This concept relates to paid media versus owned media where paid media is where a firm pays a fee (contact details or money) to the social media platform to leverage a communication channel and is akin to building on rented land.

Search Marketing ensures that potential clients can find the firm’s website and social media platforms by encouraging click through when the user types a specific keyword phrase. Search marketing divides into two distinct categories;

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – buying traffic through paid search listings and usually involves pay per click (PPC) which are advertisements charged by the number of clicks arising from the listing.
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – earning traffic through unpaid activities in the natural or organic listings by ensuring your virtual presence is set up to maximise the search engines’ algorithm (i.e. Google’s algorithm in 99% of cases).

We apply organic SEO best practice on all our websites as standard. The fact that organic SEO is natural in that the users’ specific search input generates the listing (due to relevancy) means that it is more powerful than paid listings that appear as advertising to the user. Consequently SEO should be exhausted before engaging in paid placements or sponsored links because pay per click (PPC) is competitive and cost per click (CPC) inflation can lead to higher costs than other media. If natural SEO is possible then it will almost always deliver a lower CPC.

Email is one of the most effective e-tools and is the glue that holds together the entire digital marketing infrastructure. Research from the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) found “73% of consumers’ state email is their preferred marketing channel”, trumping eight other channels, including social media, text message, online (e.g. web banners), face-to-face, messenger apps and phone.

Every promotional email should present the user with a landing page. The landing page is what the user clicks onto from the received email and can be a page on your website, a custom landing page or a microsite. The objective should be to create email correspondence that enhances user satisfaction by ensuring these communications contain the following traits;

• Temptation – a campaign that customers feel compelled to engage with
• Relevancy – making sure that your email campaigns are targeted
• Clarity – is ensuring your message gets straight to the point

Email marketing a key marketing tool for customer acquisition and retention with an average open rate of 18.0% in 2020 according to a Campaign Monitor report.