What Is Digital Marketing Advertising? 10 Popular Types

Digital Marketing advertising covers a wide variety of online marketing formats such as SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, and more. With this approach, businesses don’t need to spend a huge budget, yet the results are outstanding and reach potential customers more effectively. However, achieving the results you expect still takes a long process. So how do you build a Digital Marketing campaign aligned with the right direction?

The term Digital Marketing is no longer unfamiliar to people working in the marketing and communications industry. But do you really understand what this form of advertising is? When did it first emerge? The following content will answer all of those questions. Let’s join The7 Marketing Services Company in exploring in more detail what Digital Marketing is in the article below.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing can be simply understood as digital marketing. This concept encompasses a wide range of activities for marketing products, services, and brands with clear objectives. Results can be measured through user engagement.

At its core, Digital Marketing is about leveraging the unique characteristics of digital platforms to deliver product, service, and brand messages to the right target audience in order to drive purchasing behavior. There are 3 factors that influence Digital Marketing, including:

• Making combined use of digital media.
• Reaching potential customers within the Digital environment.
• Creating engagement with users on the internet.

When you work with The7, your business will truly be satisfied with a detailed, practical Digital Marketing advertising strategy that delivers real conversion results in just 4 weeks.

When Did Digital Marketing Begin?

The origins of the Digital Marketing industry are traced back to 1896. This is when Guglielmo Marconi researched and demonstrated the effectiveness of transmitting public wireless signals.

Ten years later, radio was born and reached the public. In 1897, Marconi founded The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company. The very first live broadcast was an opera performance at the Metropolitan.

By the year 2000, major online shopping platforms began appearing one after another, such as Alibaba, eBay, Amazon, and more. From then on, the e-commerce sector rose to a whole new level, and the term Digital Marketing also became more widespread around the world.

10+ Popular Digital Marketing Advertising Formats and Detailed Information

According to experts, digital marketing includes both Online and Offline components. Among these, Online Digital Marketing plays the dominant role. It keeps evolving and expanding with new concepts and solutions. Each specific format will be shared in detail in the following section.

Search Engine Optimization

One of the online digital marketing methods worth mentioning is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It helps your business’s image appear naturally in front of customers by improving your website’s ranking on Google. However, ranking in the top 10 search results is far from simple. Here are a few ways you can start:

SEO Formats	Details
On-page SEO	This method relies on useful content based on the target audience’s behavior and search keywords. By choosing high-search-volume keywords combined with engaging content that keeps customers on the page longer, it generates more engagement and boosts your website’s ranking.
Off-page SEO	Off-page SEO includes optimization activities that take place outside of your own website. The site owner uses backlinks to boost the credibility and ranking of the page they own. Much like a satisfied customer recommending your product to friends and family, in SEO the higher the quality of the links pointing back to your site, the better.
Technical SEO	Based on technical elements ranging from website coding to structure and data, optimizing the user experience, and meeting search engines’ scoring criteria the right way.

This form of Digital Marketing advertising requires businesses to carefully create quality content and plan thoroughly before using it. This is especially true for B2B companies, where the target audience tends to search extensively on Google, making SEO a “key” tool for driving results.

The most notable strength of SEO is its long-term effectiveness. While it may take considerable effort producing content at first, over time, compelling, excellent content will keep generating organic leads even when your business isn’t running ads.

>>> See also: Online Advertising Services (Online Advertising) – The7

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Similar to SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is also a form of Digital Marketing based on search keywords, but a paid one. Using this method, businesses can proactively secure a spot on Google’s first page.

While investing in SEO content might mean waiting 6 months to a year before it catches your target audience’s eye, with SEM that process can be shortened to just overnight. The effectiveness of an SEM campaign depends on the following 2 factors:

• Ad quality score: Based on how well what the target audience is actually searching for matches the ad content and the destination landing page.
• Bid price: To appear in the top 3 positions, the lower the quality score, the higher the bid price needs to be, and vice versa. Naturally, this also costs the business a significant budget, while the chance of climbing into the top 3 remains extremely difficult.

According to experts, SEM is a form of marketing based on customers’ actual needs, which is why its conversion rate tends to be higher than other formats. Specifically, research shows that 52% of customers tend to click on SEM ads displayed at the top.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing works like a way of connecting brands with customers through useful content. At the same time, this tool also affirms and reinforces a business’s position. In essence, Content Marketing isn’t purely a form of Digital Marketing advertising, since the content it uses can originate from and exist in any format, such as: video, images, text, and more.

If you think of a brand as a person, Content Marketing represents the way that brand communicates and attracts its audience. This format plays an important role in a Digital Marketing advertising strategy. Specifically:

Role of Content Marketing	Details
Increasing Traffic	When a business plans and consistently produces valuable, consistent, and useful content, it also means growing its appeal. That appeal can come from many sources, such as: partners, new customers, returning customers, and more. If your content strikes the right chord with users, prospects torn between your product and a competitor’s will certainly be easily drawn in and quickly convert.
Expanding Brand Reach	Building a complete Content Marketing strategy right from market entry has been done by many startups. It’s an effective, fast way to promote your business’s image. In particular, when content gets an extra “boost” it can easily go viral. It can deliver success beyond expectations in just one night. With this approach, you can reach potential customers across a wide range of platforms such as: websites, television, social media, radio, and more.
Building Brand Credibility	Making users recognize your business by name isn’t hard, but getting them to have a good impression and genuine trust in your brand is far from easy. This requires marketers to build it up using a wide range of resources. Only once you truly grasp the importance of credibility will you be ready to commit to reforming your own business. At that point, the information you provide can’t just be useful, it also needs to be delivered continuously, consistently, and with a clear purpose. Build sustainable growth instead of chasing quick wins. It’s that genuine dedication that creates the kind of value that earns customers’ trust and long-term loyalty.
Increasing Sales	Engaging content, combined with the tools in a Digital Marketing advertising strategy, drives customers toward conversion. Of course, content isn’t simply an ad about features or a promotion, it’s much more than that. Building a proper content strategy helps your products and services stand out. Businesses don’t just increase sales, they also build a massive base of loyal customers.

Social Media Marketing

This is a form of Digital Marketing advertising through social media such as: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and more. This digital media channel is extremely effective and can easily go viral in a short amount of time. People typically use social media to socialize, make friends, and keep up with trends. However, marketers need to do much more than that, with specific strategies and ways of reaching customers.

By applying Social Media Marketing, you can tap into a massive user base. Facebook, for example, has over 1.9 billion users worldwide. Depending on each channel’s characteristics, the user base is clearly segmented. You just need to research carefully to come up with the right approach.

In addition, social media channels like TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and others allow you to filter audiences by demographic characteristics. Thanks to that, converting social media users into paying customers is no longer such a distant goal.

However, the downside of social marketing channels lies in their constantly changing algorithms. These platforms are always experimenting to find new solutions for businesses. But this is also why quite a few ad campaigns that were performing well suddenly “vanish into thin air.”

Digital Performance Marketing

Performance Marketing is a digital marketing approach focused on optimizing conversions. Its ultimate goal is to pursue the best possible performance by combining paid platforms such as Google Ads, social networks, and more.

This advertising format is measurable, optimizing every dollar spent to generate the highest possible return. Especially when combined with a CRM system for collecting and processing data, it delivers fast, stable results.

Email Marketing Automation

When talking about digital marketing advertising, we can’t skip Email Marketing Automation. This format involves sending bulk emails to customers. The entire process runs automatically based on a pre-set schedule and the recipient’s engagement actions. Because of this, deploying an email marketing campaign requires support from a CRM system. Based on the data collected on the habits and engagement behavior of each customer group, a tailored program is created.

Email Marketing is like a company “nurturing” and taking care of potential customers without spending extra time or manpower. This way, it boosts the conversion rate from leads into actual paying customers and narrows the gap between them and the brand.

In addition, marketing via email also helps businesses build close relationships with their service users. Based on the content they engage with, marketers can easily adjust their strategy promptly to better meet their needs and expectations. You can look at the email marketing strategies of some brands in Vietnam such as: Vietnam Airlines, Manulife, VPBank, Lazada, and more.

Inbound Marketing

One of the most popular marketing formats is Inbound Marketing. This method integrates all 6 formats shared above to naturally draw the world’s attention toward your business. Specifically:

• Make Content Marketing the centerpiece for rolling out all content across SEO, email, and social media advertising.
• Attract customers with genuine needs through SEO and SEM.
• Expand brand reach and boost initial website traffic with Social Media.
• Drive up lead capture rates with Performance Marketing, and through that, collect important data that becomes the basis for an automated marketing strategy.
• Nurture customers who’ve already left a lead with Email Marketing.
• Filter out the most promising leads using a CRM system to boost conversion rates and close sales right away.

An Inbound Marketing strategy delivers long-term effectiveness even after you’ve stopped running ads. Especially when combined with multiple tools and systems, it helps businesses recognize the “ripe moment” to pick up the phone and call a customer.

Mobile Marketing

The 21st century has marked a powerful transformation in the smartphone industry. The number of smart mobile device users keeps rising at a dizzying pace. According to statistics from Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications, as of Q3/2021 Vietnam had 123 million mobile phone subscriptions. Of these, smartphone users aged 15 and up numbered 53.5 million, reaching 84.6% and placing Vietnam among the top 10 countries with the highest number of smartphones.

These figures show that Mobile Marketing advertising is fertile ground for businesses. This format uses mobile devices as a close, direct communication channel between brands and users. Some popular mobile marketing methods you can consider are: SMS Marketing, MMS, in-game mobile marketing, QR codes, push notifications, and more.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing focuses on building a relationship between the seller, an intermediary marketer, and the customer. In this marketing method, a manufacturer partners with an individual or an intermediary company to promote and distribute their products or services. This relationship ensures consistency and a win-win value for both sides.

This form of Digital Marketing advertising is widely applied on e-commerce platforms such as: Amazon, eBay, Lazada, Shopee, Tiki, and more. Your products will appear on their websites. When revenue is generated, partner units automatically receive a commission at a set rate.

Influencer marketing

A Digital Marketing advertising method that’s been trending recently is Influencer Marketing. Companies partner with influential individuals, such as: popular mom bloggers, experts, and more, people who are trusted by a large community.

Typically, influencers promote a business’s products to their “fans” on social media platforms such as: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more. Naturally, the celebrity’s reputation serves as an implicit endorsement of the product or service quality.

Why Should Businesses Implement Digital Marketing?

As shared above, Digital Marketing advertising can be implemented through many formats. But not everyone knows why businesses should adopt digital marketing. So right below, we’ll reveal the key reasons for you.

A Modern Marketing Trend

According to statistics from Digital, the number of internet users in Vietnam as of June 2021 was nearly 70 million. Every day, they spend close to 7 hours engaging in internet-related activities. Even that basic domestic figure alone is enough to show today’s societal demand. While it may affect family relationships, this is fertile ground for businesses to tap into.

The growth of digital media has brought better user reach. While traditional methods are limited in terms of reach and time, Digital Marketing advertising solves that problem in the blink of an eye.

Instead of handing out flyers or relying on word of mouth, digital marketing leverages the power of Facebook Advertising and Google Ads to attract potential customers by location, age, gender, and more. Alongside that, you can combine it with LED billboards to catch the attention of passersby.

So, Digital Marketing is the modern marketing trend that every company and business needs to adopt. It keeps pace with user habits, improves communication effectiveness, and optimizes costs.

Easy to Manage

Managing promotional results with traditional marketing takes a considerable amount of time, requiring you to compile statistics over many days, and it’s quite difficult even with offline marketing. But Digital Online Marketing is different, it uses specific channels and measurement methods. This lets marketers easily analyze and break down a campaign in an instant, in real time.

Using the data collected on purchasing behavior, marketing results, conversion rates, and more, marketers can evaluate and build an optimal marketing strategy. In addition, you can also make timely adjustments if any issues arise during the rollout.

Optimizing Your Budget

Compared to traditional marketing, Digital Marketing advertising tackles the budget problem effectively. You can start with a low cost, even just tens of thousands of VND. For example, a Facebook Advertising strategy costing only about VND 40,000 can already give you the chance to reach hundreds of potential customers.

Simply put, with online digital marketing, marketers don’t need to spend on fixed costs such as: renting a location, staffing, printing, and so on. Instead, you can easily customize and control the budget allocated to each advertising format.

Reach More, and Get Closer to, Potential Customers

Applying Digital Marketing advertising in your growth plan helps businesses get closer to potential customers. Today’s network platforms, from Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, and more, are closely connected with one another.

Just search for a service keyword on Google, and when you open Facebook, you’ll easily see related ads. That’s the magic of digital marketing. Sometimes it makes users feel like they’re being “watched.” But no, it’s all part of the Digital game plan. This lets marketers reach each user more deeply, “following” them everywhere they go.

Highly Interactive

There’s no denying the internet’s outstanding ability to connect. It lets businesses chat and exchange with customers anytime. This makes it easy for marketers to grasp customers’ thoughts and wishes in order to improve the quality of their services and products.

In addition, today’s online communication tools operate 24/7 with great flexibility. This lets you stay close to and better take care of your potential customer base. Of course, through attentive guidance and support, you’ll already be scoring points in their hearts.

Guide to Building an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

While Digital Marketing advertising is becoming increasingly popular, that doesn’t mean it’s simple. For a smooth launch, you need to follow the basic processes correctly. The specific steps will be shared right in the next section.

Step 1: Identify Your Potential Customer Group

Identifying potential customers has a direct impact on your entire future direction. That’s why you should thoroughly research demographic information: Who are they? Their age? Gender? Geographic location? Consumption habits, and so on.

In addition, marketers need to know how to make flexible use of technology to narrow down potential audiences. Once you’ve accurately sketched out a persona for that customer group, it becomes much easier to propose the right solutions.

Step 2: Define Goals and a Measurement Strategy

In the next stage, make full use of your customer data. This helps your business pin down their personality traits and gives you an overall view of their shopping habits. It also reveals the clearest possible goals and measurement strategy.

The key metrics to pay attention to include:

• Reach, number of clicks,
• CTR (click-through rate),
• Engagement rate,
• Conversion rate, and more.

In addition, don’t forget some supporting metrics such as:

• Return on ad spend (ROAS),
• Return on investment (ROI),
• Customer lifetime value (LCV).

Step 3: Make Use of Digital Tools and Popular Advertising Channels

Applying technology to marketing is a long, challenging journey, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. However, to stay confident against your competitors in a Digital Marketing advertising campaign, you need to prepare:

• A Data Management Platform (DMP),
• A Supply-Side Platform (SSP),
• A Demand-Side Platform (DSP).

In addition, if your company is currently running things the traditional way, adjust your operating processes. At the same time, you need to communicate the realigned goals to your entire staff. That’s the only way to ensure everyone works in sync, with your team always ready to get familiar with new advertising channels.

Step 4: Launch, Monitor, and Optimize

Digital Marketing plays a role in attracting, nurturing, and building customer loyalty. Beyond that, this marketing approach is also the key to positioning your brand in the market.

Through digital marketing campaigns, marketers can determine their company’s position relative to competitors in the same industry. Beyond that, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to become the most successful “pack leader.”

Distinguishing Digital Marketing from Online Marketing

In reality, Digital Marketing and Online Marketing are often confused or misused when implemented. To clarify these two terms, take a look at the following information:

Digital Marketing

Online Marketing

Digital marketing includes the devices and platforms used to build, promote, and deliver messages to users. Digital Marketing is not limited to the internet environment at all; instead, it includes many different tools and approaches. At its core, Digital Marketing includes online marketing, SMS, WebTV, e-books, games, content, video, mobile marketing, and more. Simply put, it encompasses everything that operates on a digital platform.

Online marketing is just one part of Digital Marketing. To carry out this activity, you need an internet connection. Among these: website, SEO, SEM, and display advertising, are typical methods. Online Marketing develops in step with technology.

Among SEO, SEM, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, and more, which digital marketing format works best for your business? If you’re still not sure how to build a structured, unified strategy, connect with The7 today!

The7 is known as one of the leading online marketing service providers today. We have successfully built and rolled out marketing plans for many large and small brands across industries such as: real estate, electronics and home appliances, beauty care, F&B, travel and resorts, and more.

Depending on the client’s scale and goals, the company applies strategic thinking, creativity, and data-driven direction to deliver an overall Digital Marketing solution. Businesses can reach the right audience, build brand reach, and improve sales performance. When you work with The7, your business will truly be satisfied with a detailed, practical Digital Marketing advertising strategy. In particular, we commit to hitting the KPIs set from the very start.

If you need to build a Digital Marketing advertising strategy, connect with The7 via Hotline: 082 246 7979 – 028 3899 7377 for the most detailed consultation.

Learn more about Marketing through these articles:

• Outbound Marketing: what is it? How is Outbound Marketing different from Inbound Marketing?
• 6 Most Effective Ways to Advertise with Online Marketing in 2023