The lines between marketing and digital marketing are blurring, as online marketing campaigns become more sophisticated and integrated into business decisions.

From paid search and display advertising to content creation and affiliate marketing, marketing channels and methods grow more sophisticated as well.

Paid Search and Display Advertising

Paid search and display advertising became popular because businesses and marketers discovered the power of bringing targeted customers to the top of the funnel.

These channels allow businesses to effectively reach individuals searching for their products and services, and to show ads on websites where their target audience is most likely to be.

However, with the growth of digital marketing, these forms of advertising aren’t as effective as they used to be. People are becoming more knowledgeable about advertising techniques and click-bait, so they’re avoiding these forms of advertising when possible.

Instead, they want to see relevant content that comes from a trustworthy source.

To encourage users to come back, businesses need to offer them value and engage them in conversation.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is becoming a popular way to attract and engage customers. This type of marketing focuses on creating high-quality content (usually blog posts, infographics, or videos) that is designed to attract, engage, and inspire people.

The most successful content marketers build a following of hundreds or thousands of digital nomads, who trust them to provide the right content for their needs.

Because content marketing is focused on creating and distributing content for maximum reach and to attract, engage, and delight future customers, content marketers must become excellent writers, editors, and marketers.

The best content marketers build their credibility by creating lots of value and engaging with their target audience through strong platforms like blogging and social media.

Email Marketing

While email marketing has always been around, it grew in popularity in the last few years because businesses realized the power of sending individualized emails to customers to follow up on purchasing decisions and to encourage further behavior.

As a form of marketing, email marketing is relatively easy for businesses to set up and manage. And compared to some of the other digital marketing methods, it’s fairly affordable.

The most successful marketers in email marketing build open-loop, or semi-automated, email marketing systems. These are automated processes that send out personalized emails based on customers’ past buying patterns, whether or not they’ve made a purchase, and the products that they’ve previously viewed or purchased.

What this means is that marketers can target individuals based on their previous interactions in the form of click-throughs, downloads, views, and purchases. And because these emails are being sent to users who have given informed consent, it is not considered spam.

Open-loop email marketing is effective because it takes into consideration all of the information available to the marketer, which makes it possible to craft individualized emails that will hit a chord with the recipient.

Display Advertising

Although the lines between display advertising and digital marketing are blurring, display advertising is still considered a more traditional form of marketing.

With display advertising, businesses place ads on websites and other digital properties to have them show up in the streams of content that customers see.

The advantage of display advertising is that it is very cost-effective compared to other forms of digital marketing, and it brings in customers who might not have been reached otherwise. But because it’s so cheap, it can be difficult to track the results of your campaign. In addition, with the vast majority of the population seeing Internet content on mobile devices, it can be difficult to determine how effective your ads are when viewed on a small screen.

The growth of display advertising in recent years has been astounding, especially as audiences have shifted to consuming content on their mobile devices. Just take a look at Google search traffic between May 2018 and April 2019.

Even though search traffic declined by 3% between April 2019 and March 2020, the growth of display advertising was still substantial at 18% compared to the previous year. If you’re wondering why your traffic is declining when your advertising is performing so well, it might be a good idea to re-consider your goals and what you’re actually doing.

Social Media Marketing

The digital nomad’s world of marketing isn’t completely confined to the web. In fact, many successful digital marketers manage their personal social media accounts in addition to their professional ones.

Marketers on social media engage with customers, potential customers, and other online communities to spread the word about their products and services. So regardless of whether or not you have a Web site, you can certainly engage with customers on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

The advantage of social media is that it’s very easy to set up and maintain. You don’t need to charge individuals to use your platform, and you can use free tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to create and organize your campaigns. In addition, you have the opportunity to engage with customers on many different platforms, since most social media networks allow you to set up accounts for businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies.

The downside of social media is that it can be difficult to get consistent quality output from many independent contractors. In addition, many people on social media are very susceptible to marketing pitches, so the more you put out there the more you have to watch out for.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Another way to attract customers to your business is through pay-per-click advertising. With this type of advertising, you only pay for successful clicks. So the more you put in there the more you’ll see returned. Many businesses choose to use platforms like Google AdWords to find customers interested in their products and services.

The advantage of pay-per-click is that it is very cost-effective. You can set up campaigns that will only cost you what you’re willing to spend, and you can always adjust them as necessary to find the right mix of ads and keywords.

This type of advertising is also easy to manage. You don’t need to have a marketing department to oversee all of your online marketing activities. Instead, you can delegate this task to a digital marketer who has experience in pay-per-click. Once the campaign is set up, all you need to do is sit back and watch the money come in.

The downside of pay-per-click is that it’s very dependent on luck and what Google or other search engines decide to display. Since this form of advertising is extremely cost-effective, businesses that choose to use it put all of their hope in what’s called the Google trust signal — sometimes called the “Google badge of honor” or the “Google thumbs up” symbol. This is the search engine’s way of telling users that the information they provide will be legitimate and valuable, so they’re going to give the business high rankings regardless of whether or not the content is good.

In recent years, the search engines have placed more value on content and signals related to content, so if you want your business to stand out, you need to make sure that your content is legitimate and valuable. In addition, you need to make sure that you’re ranking in the right places so that your customers can find you.

Content Repurposing

All of this talk of marketing channels, methods, and platforms brings us to the important topic of content repurposing. Simply put, content repurposing is taking content that you’ve created for one purpose and using it for another.

Sometimes this involves reusing the content in a new way, like changing the layout of a blog post or video to make it more appealing to readers or viewers. Sometimes it involves taking content that was meant for one platform and repurposing it for another. And sometimes it involves taking an entire piece of valuable content and repurposing it into an even more valuable form.

To give you an example, take a look at how HubSpot used to advertise.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the company’s marketing content was mostly found in blog posts, eBooks, and videos. But they also used some ads to attract potential customers, as you’ll see below.

What HubSpot did was take their blog content and turn it into an e-commerce store. They essentially created an entire mini-website within their blog, and used the content from that website within their blog posts, emails, and social media.