If you are running an online business in Columbus, you need to pay attention to the difference between digital marketing and digital advertising. Both of these activities can help increase your revenue, but they are very different in their approach.
This blog post will discuss some critical differences between the two so that you can choose which one is best for your needs!
What is digital advertising?
Digital advertising is the process of promoting your products and services through online ads. These advertisements can appear on search engines, social media sites, apps, website banners, or pop-ups, essentially anywhere users are likely to visit frequently.
Types of digital advertising
There are three main types of digital advertising: pay-per-click search ads, display ads, and social media ads.
1. Pay Per Click search ads
Pay per click (PPC) search ads appear at the top or right sidebar next to organic results when someone searches for something related to your business on Google or other search engines like Bing or Yahoo!
These PPC sites will set up an ad campaign where they bid against each other for keywords based on how popular those words are in search queries. When you click on one of these PPC ads, the advertiser pays every time someone clicks their ad, which leads to a visitor coming to your website or landing page.
2. Display ads
Display ads are banner advertisements on the internet. They usually appear at the top and bottom of a web page, but sometimes they may also appear inside articles or other content hosted by third-party websites.
These display ad units can be sold as CPM (cost per thousand impressions), where advertisers pay every time their ad shows up to X number of people for Y amount of time or CPC (cost per click), which means you only pay when someone clicks your ad leading them to visit your website.
3. Social ads
Social media advertising allows business owners to target specific audiences with paid posts across networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram based on keywords related to what they’re selling, who their customer base is, and even behavioral data like age range, gender, and location.
What is digital marketing?
On the other hand, digital marketing uses digital tactics to attract, engage, and delight customers for long-term success.
Digital Marketing Columbus is not limited to buying ads or designing a flashy website. It’s much more than that because it’s about creating an overarching strategy to amplify your brand awareness across various channels like SEO (search engine optimization), social media, email marketing, and other paid/organic outreach efforts to drive leads and sales.
Types of digital advertising
Digital marketing is split into two major categories, outbound marketing, and inbound marketing.
- Inbound is attracting customers with helpful content that educates them about your brand before you ever have to hard-sell them on a product or service,
- Outbound is when you market directly to people who are ready for what you’re selling by using cold calls, direct mail campaigns, and TV/radio ads. Outbound is still an essential part of digital advertising because you can use it in conjunction with “inbound” tactics like SEO (search engine optimization) to amplify the reach of your campaign.
The forms of digital marketing include
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
This type of online advertising involves optimizing web pages. Hence, they show up higher on search engines like Google when someone searches for keywords related to what you’re selling or who your target market is.
Search Engine Marketing requires active participation by the business owner, including writing and optimizing website content and building links to your site.
• SMM (Social Media Marketing)
This form of digital marketing involves using social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to interact with customers, spread awareness about new products or services you offer, and build brand loyalty. SMM also includes working with a Columbus digital marketing company who specializes in running highly targeted social ad campaigns on these sites for clients whose target market is already active on the platform.
This type of advertising requires very little input from the business owner after it’s set up. All that’s needed is some fundamental participation, such as responding to customer questions or inputting product information into their profile on the network. Social Ads are more expensive than other forms of digital advertising, but they are also more effective.
3. Content marketing
This is gaining popularity as one of the best forms of digital marketing since it has a very high return on investment (ROI) compared to other types. An essential aspect of this form is that businesses need not set up specific campaigns for it – they can share their content through social media platforms with links back to their sites and continue with their day-to-day operations without having to do anything else.
It’s no wonder, then, why brands are shifting more towards sharing quality content rather than placing ads or boosting posts in an attempt to reach out to potential customers online. Content shared by companies should be relevant, informative, and entertaining so readers will want to bookmark them for future reference making sure these pages show up higher when users search for things related to the topic.
4. Email marketing
This is another type of digital advertising that has been around for a while and requires brands to have an email list where customers can subscribe. The key with this type is consistency; sending out emails on the same day every week or month may not be effective since people tend to get spammed by their inboxes over time, making them unsubscribe if they don’t see any value in what’s being sent out.
5. Online advertising
This is another digital advertising type that requires brands to pay when they want their ads to be placed on various websites. The good thing about this type of ad placement is the ability for users to see what’s being offered right in front of them; however, the risk with these types is click-fraud and fake clicks where people end up clicking something just because it was there leading advertisers into spending money needlessly.
The differences between digital advertising and digital marketing
The difference between digital marketing and advertising can be confusing, especially to new marketers in this field. There is a lot of information on the web, but there still seems to be some stigma that brings these two close together while they’re very different from each other.
• Digital advertising is a subset of digital marketing
Digital advertising is a part of digital marketing. With the advancement of technology, advertising has also evolved and is now done digitally through online platforms for websites or social media sites.
• Digital marketing is a process while digital advertising is an activity
Marketing involves creating awareness about products or services and transmitting information to consumers about those particular items that might interest them. You can achieve this through public relations, influencer identification, and outreach, content creation, etc.
The goal here would be to have these people engage with your brand somehow, whether it’s signing up for emails or following you on their favorite social media platform – whatever works.
Digital advertising, however, takes place after all this work has been carried out, so they are more focused on achieving a specific goal. For example, when you run digital advertising campaigns, the only thing that matters is how much revenue has been generated from these efforts and not necessarily branding or awareness-raising.
• Digital advertising is tactical while digital marketing is strategic
This means that digital marketing is more of a long-term strategy that looks to help you achieve your business goals, while digital advertising can be turned on or off at any time.
Conclusion
The right strategy for you depends on the type of business model and what your goals are. If sales are your goal, digital marketing may be a better option because it’s cheaper in the long run; however, if branding or awareness is one of your primary objectives, digital advertising would work best to get more people talking about you online.
If you need a digital marketing company to help you reach a wider audience, you can search on Google for “digital marketing agency near me,”or “digital marketing agencies near me.”