When it comes to digital marketing, it’s important to note that not all marketing is created equal. There are several distinct types of marketing that practitioners should know about, and mastering the differences between them can help you create more effective campaigns.

One of the most popular distinctions made within digital marketing is the one that separates marketing from sales. Marketers typically fall into one of two camps: marketing researchers or marketing practitioners. Market researchers excel at gathering information about consumers and analyzing that data to forecast consumer behavior. Practitioners, on the other hand, use that data to drive marketing decisions like advertising and landing pages.

While both play an essential role in digital marketing, practitioners should always remember that their primary objective is to drive business outcomes like sales and leads, not just engage with consumers through marketing activities.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at each type of marketing and their associated tasks, objectives, and tools.

1. Brand marketing.

In the digital marketing world, brand marketing is most commonly associated with advertising. But, as you may have guessed, that doesn’t mean all forms of brand marketing fall under the umbrella of digital marketing. In fact, there are numerous sub-types of brand marketing, including:

• Visibility marketing: This form of brand marketing focuses on creating buzz or brand awareness around a product or service through paid ads, content marketing, and social media.
• Affiliate marketing: This type of marketing involves getting other businesses to promote your product. When a business promotes your product, you earn a commission for that sale. You can find an affiliate program for just about any product or service you can think of.
• Product marketing: This form of brand marketing promotes specific products or services. You can find product marketing experts to help you reach your target audience, develop products, and measure the results of your campaigns.
• Triggered marketing: This type of brand marketing uses information from a variety of different sources to create personalized marketing messages. The goal is to target individuals based on what they’ve already learned about you, and what you have to offer. For example, if you sell health and fitness products, but the users on your site have specific health problems, then you might want to send them an email about your products.
• Content marketing: Content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract, engage, and convert customers. Think of content as something akin to an editorial published on a news website. It’s usually long and involves a variety of different styles, such as a how-to guide, an explainer video, or a long-form narrative.
• Social media marketing: This form of marketing involves promoting brands through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
• E-commerce marketing: This type of marketing promotes products and services associated with an online store. The goal is to drive website traffic to a store and put that store’s products in the consumers’ hands.
• Retail marketing: This type of marketing promotes products and services offered by a physical shop, like a grocery store or restaurant. The goal is to drive customers to a store to either buy a product or consume a service.
• Marketing research: Marketing research is all about getting information about consumers that you can use to improve your marketing activities.
• Content strategy: Content strategy is all about creating and distributing compelling content to achieve specific business goals.
• Measuring success: Measuring success is all about tracking the results of your marketing activities and analyzing them to determine what you need to do next.

2. Marketing research.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably interested in marketing research. Let’s briefly discuss the differences between marketing research and market research.

• Marketing research: Marketing research is all about getting information about consumers that you can use to improve your marketing activities. Typically collected through online surveys or phone interviews, marketing research helps you understand things like what types of messages are most effective (e.g., using A/B testing), how different demographics respond to certain stimuli (e.g., using user testing), or what products or services are most desired (e.g., using focus groups).
• Market research: Market research is closely related to marketing research but has a more narrow scope. Market researchers typically gather information about a single product or service and its competitors, and sometimes focus on a particular audience (e.g., millennials, or adults in the Middle East).

The main difference between marketing research and market research is that the latter is typically more qualitative in nature and often relies on an expertise of an individual (i.e., a market researcher) to interpret the results.

3. Advertising.

Advertising isn’t often thought of as a form of marketing, but it is. There are several different sub-types of advertising that fall under the broad category of digital marketing. Let’s explore some of them.

• Digital advertising: This form of advertising works online and uses paid advertisements to draw attention to content or products. Typically, this type of advertising is associated with digital marketing because it occurs online but doesn’t necessarily have to. TV advertising, radio advertising, and newspaper advertising are all considered forms of digital advertising.
• Traditional advertising: This type of advertising is similar to radio advertising and newspaper advertising, but instead of using those platforms to reach customers, marketers use billboards, bus shelters, and magazine spreads to reach potential consumers.
• Display advertising: This type of advertising is associated with digital marketing because it occurs online but is often delivered through those traditional advertising platforms (i.e., the yellow pages or a local billboard).
• Social advertising: This type of advertising involves getting individuals to support your product or service through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
• Video advertising: This type of advertising uses video content to draw attention to a product or service. Typically, video advertising is done online but can also appear on traditional TV screens.
• Web design and development: This involves creating a fantastic looking website that’s easy to navigate and gets the job done quickly. It’s similar to graphic design but on a smaller scale.
• E-mail marketing: This involves sending out e-mails to past, present, and potential customers to promote your product or service.
• Text messaging: This forms of advertising uses text messaging, like a text message or an SMS, to promote products and services. It’s similar to e-mail marketing but is usually less intrusive (e.g., people can usually opt out of text messaging marketing campaigns).
• Mobile marketing: This type of marketing uses mobile phones and other portable devices to reach consumers. Sometimes it’s considered part of digital marketing, but it can also fall under the purview of traditional marketing (i.e., someone calling you on a mobile phone is considered a form of telemarketing).
• Pay-per-click advertising: This type of advertising is associated with digital marketing because it occurs online but is also a form of traditional advertising. Clients typically pay a fee each time someone clicks on their ad. The more clicks, the more they pay.

4. SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about getting high-quality, relevant content to show up in the first few results of a search on a search engine. There are several different approaches to SEO, but the general idea is to optimize a website or blog for a keyphrase (i.e., a word or phrase that when combined with other words or phrases, can describe a product, service, or concept).

The first step in any SEO campaign is to determine the main keywords or keyphrases that you should target. For example, let’s say your product is an organic mattress and you want to target people searching for information about organic mattresses. Your first instinct may be to simply type in “organic mattress”, but you’d be better off targeting people searching for information about “green mattresses” or “natural mattresses”. Choosing the right keywords is critical, and choosing too few keywords may result in your content not being found when a user types in the right keyphrases. Too many keywords may result in your content being buried in a sea of similar content.