What is digital marketing
Also known as: online marketing, internet marketing
Digital marketing is the set of marketing actions carried out through online channels, such as search engines, social media, email, websites, messaging apps and online ads. The difference from traditional marketing lies less in the medium and more in measurement: nearly everything can be tracked, from click to sale, which shows how much each customer costs and where it pays to invest.
A physical therapy clinic spent $3,000 a month on flyers and had no idea how many patients came from them. It moved the same amount to ads: $2,000 on Google and $1,000 on Instagram, with every contact arriving by message with its source tagged.
In the first month, Google brought 40 contacts and 12 appointments; Instagram, 10 contacts and 2 appointments. Each appointment from Google cost about $167, and from Instagram, $500. With the numbers in hand, the clinic reshuffles the budget the next month, something impossible with flyers.
The main channels
| What it is for | How it is measured | |
|---|---|---|
| Organic search (SEO) | Being found by people already searching | Clicks, position and conversions |
| Search ads | Showing up at the moment of search, paying per click | CPC, CPA and ROAS |
| Social media | Creating demand and relationships | Reach, engagement and cost per lead |
| Email and messaging | Talking to existing contacts | Opens, clicks and replies |
| Website and landing pages | Turning visits into contacts or sales | Conversion rate |
| Content | Educating and attracting the right audience | Qualified traffic and leads per content piece |
Paid, owned and earned media
A useful way to organize channels is by ownership. Paid media is advertising: fast, predictable and gone the day the budget runs out. Owned media is what the company controls, such as its website, contact list and profiles. Earned media is what others do for the brand: reviews, mentions, shares and links.
The three feed each other. The ad brings the first visit, the site and the list keep the relationship, and a good experience creates the recommendation no ad can buy.
How to build the strategy
- Start with the business goal: sell more, lower the cost of each customer or enter a new market.
- Define the audience precisely: who buys, who decides and what they look for before buying.
- Pick a few channels, the ones the audience actually uses, instead of being everywhere halfway.
- Take care of the page that receives the click; that is where most media money gets lost.
- Set up measurement before investing: conversions, campaign parameters and the source of each contact in the CRM.
- Test with a controlled budget, compare by cost per customer and only then scale.
What to measure
The most common mistake is measuring what is easy instead of what matters. Likes, followers and impressions show activity, but they do not pay the bills. The metrics that drive investment are the ones that reach revenue: customer acquisition cost, return on ad spend, conversion rate and customer lifetime value.
For that, data has to travel from the ad to the sale. Tools such as Google Analytics, the Google tag and a CRM that records each contact's source close that loop.
Digital marketing with AI
Artificial intelligence is already inside the tools themselves. Google Ads Smart Bidding uses machine learning to optimize for conversions in each auction, and Google Search shows AI generated summaries for some queries.
Google says there is no special optimization for appearing in those summaries beyond good SEO practice. What changes is the weight of quality: generic content loses ground to content with first hand experience and original information.
Frequently asked questions
What is digital marketing?
The set of marketing actions carried out through online channels, such as search engines, social media, email, websites and ads, with the advantage of measuring the result of each action.
What are the main digital marketing channels?
Organic search, search ads, social media, email and messaging, websites and landing pages, and content. The right mix depends on where the audience is.
How is digital marketing different from traditional marketing?
The channel changes, but the big difference is measurement. Online, you can know what each contact and each sale cost, and adjust spending accordingly.
Where should I start with digital marketing?
With the goal and the measurement. Define what counts as a result, set up tracking and start with one or two channels where the audience already looks for what you sell.
How much should I invest in digital marketing?
There is no single number. The starting point is how much the business can pay per customer, which depends on margin and customer lifetime value. From there, test with a controlled budget.
Related terms
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Rodrigo Fávaro
Founder of ROO3, a marketing and technology agency in São José do Rio Preto, Brazil. Builds AI products running in production (Tobia, gerar.app, Pense Mercado) and maintains the AI Benchmark, a public ranking of AI models.
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