Mastering Digital Marketing & Advertising

Digital Marketing vs. Digital Advertising: Know the Difference

Today, in the bustling world of online promotion, understanding the difference between digital marketing and digital advertising is paramount.

Digital Marketing: This is your comprehensive strategy to build an online presence. It's the universe of methods that businesses use to promote products, services, or brands through online channels. Think content creation, SEO, social media marketing, and more. While some strategies within digital marketing require payment, many, like organic search or social media engagement, focus on long-term growth and relationship-building.
Digital Advertising: Think of this as a subset of digital marketing, laser-focused on paid promotions and advertisements. Whether it's pay-per-click ads, banners, or video commercials, digital advertising seeks immediate results and targets specific online audiences.

Educate Yourself: Dive into online courses, reputable digital marketing blogs, or insightful books to grasp the fundamentals.

Platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning offer courses on the basics of digital marketing.
Follow reputable digital marketing blogs like HubSpot, Moz, or Neil Patel for ongoing learning.
Here's article we love from our partners at HubSpot: 40+ Best Free Online Marketing Classes to Take in 2023
For a list and description of Essential Digital Marketing and Advertising Terms, check out our blog post: Getting Started with Digital Marketing

Set Clear Objectives: Define your goals. Are you looking to increase website traffic, garner a loyal social media following, or perhaps boost sales? Your objectives will guide your strategies.

Be Practical: Launch a small project – start a blog, a social media campaign, or run small ads to get a feel marketing and tactics.
Take advantage of free tools: Platforms like Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Facebook's ad platform offer free versions or trials. Use these to familiarize yourself with tools professional's use.
- To see a list of suggested websites that provide practical advice to setting up objectives, our blog post "Your objectives will guide your strategies" references 8 reputable articles for a deeper dive.

Develop a Strategy: Understand your audience and create content that resonates with them. Select platforms that align with your target demographics.

Research your Target Audience: Understand who you're marketing to. Create personas of your ideal customers. We have some great articles on how to narrow in on who your target audience is. Are you truly marketing to consumers who truly use your products and services or are you marketing to who you want your target audience to be? Or worse, are you marketing to yourself? Blog, Blog, Great Article from Exposure Ninja on 6 Questions
Content Plan: Decide on the type of content you'll create, whether it's blog posts, videos, or social media updates.
Channel Selection: Based on your target audience, choose the best platforms to focus on, be it Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc.
Digital marketing is all about analyzing results and optimizing. Regularly review your strategies, see what's working, and adjust as necessary.

Stay Updated: The digital realm evolves rapidly. Regularly check in with industry news and updates to stay ahead.

Join online communities related to digital marketing, attend webinars, or participate in local meetups or workshops.

Remember that every brand and market is different. What works for one might not work for another. It's a process of continuous learning, testing, and iterating. As you gain more experience, you'll develop a better sense of what strategies are most effective for your unique situation.

Ready for your digital marketing to start driving brand awareness? Is it falling short on delivering leads? It's time to add Targeted Digital Advertising to your B2C Digital Marketing strategy.

By growing your Digital Advertising, you will instantly reach highly targeted audiences and drive conversions from all of your digital marketing efforts.

Scale Your B2C Strategy with Digital Ads

We have shown you how Digital Marketing builds awareness over time. Paid Digital Advertising generates immediate leads by putting your message in front of your ideal target audience when they are actively searching and browsing online.

Integrating targeted digital ads unlocks benefits like:

Driving high-intent traffic to your site and landing pages
Remotely retargeting previous visitors across channels
Testing messaging quickly with different segments
Scaling reach during sales and events

Essential Digital Advertising Services from Mailbox Merchants

Our comprehensive B2C Digital Advertising Solutions help you connect with the right decision makers at the right time during their buyer's journey:

Search Ads - Appear above organic listings for branded and non-branded searches.
Social Media Ads - Highly targeted promoted posts and ads on LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.
Display & Video Ads - Impactful ads on business sites, YouTube, and targeted to buyer interests.
Audience Targeting - Dial in your ideal titles, companies, interests, and more.
Full-Funnel Retargeting - Remarket across channels to re-engage past site visitors.

Bring It All Together

Digital Ad Type	Target Audiences	Description
Addressable	Households in specific geographic areas, demographics based on data like income, presence of children etc. Consumers near specific business locations like stores, events, campuses, based on mobile location data	Addressable Targeting puts over 126 million U.S. households within your reach at a 90%+ match rate. As the market’s most advanced, household-level targeting technology, Addressable Targeting combines GPS and platline data with geo-fencing technology that lets you customize your targeting down to a specific household address.
CTV	Consumers near specific business locations like stores, events, campuses, based on mobile location data	By leveraging unstructured data, you can identify and connect with distinct audiences of your choice. Your advertising can reach individuals across the country—with pinpoint accuracy and storytelling measurement.
ZTV	Cord-cutting streaming households and consumers watching connected TV. Tends to reach younger and more affluent viewers.	Proprietary zip code ranking algorithms identify the ideal CTV viewers in each designated market area based on demographics, interests, and viewing habits. It enables advertisers to serve ads on a hyperlocal level only to high-priority streaming households, eliminating waste from broad targeting.
Mobile	Consumers actively using smartphones and tablets throughout the day, across demographics.	Combining the power of intent-based advertising with the precision of geo-fencing, Mobile advertising delivers your message where you want, to the audience you want—at stores, businesses, restaurants, events, and more—with foot traffic attribution readily available.
Video	Broad reach across demographics on platforms like YouTube, Instagram etc. Popular for mass awareness.	With four video options—pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, and in-banner—combined with our many targeting tactics to pick from, you can improve your video ad performance. Whether you’re seeking wider reach, higher completion rates, or more engagement, we can help you find the audience you want with tools to measure and report success.
Display	Wide range based on targeting and placements, such as business decision makers on news sites.	Maximize performance with programmatic display ads targeting relevant businesses and consumers based on intent. Image, text and rich media ads on websites and apps. Google search engine marketing (SEM) advertising.
Native	Engaged readers of online publications. Interest or habit-based audience targeting.	A native ad is a responsive ad unit built in real time to match a specific publisher’s content and design. Because native ads offer a better user experience, typical response rates are six times higher than traditional display ads.
YouTube	Massive broad reach, ideal for younger viewers but diversifying. Popular among hard-to-reach audiences like cord cutters.	Reach highly engaged viewers with video ads on YouTube. Gain a competitive advantage with an all-in-one advertising platform built to minimize costs and maximize results. Make cost-effective shifts in ad dollars between programmatic, social, and YouTube campaigns using a performance marketing lens.
Audio	Affluent, educated listeners of streaming music and podcasts. Typically skews younger.	Expand your presence by advertising on premium streaming audio ad spots like podcasts and streaming music apps. audio advertising gives you access to today’s most relevant publishers—including Spotify—so you can serve your audio creative to desired audiences at maximum scale.
Social	Target consumers as broadly or as narrowly as you like to craft the right message for the right person.	Advertising on Social Media allows you to connect with your specific target audience that needs your service or product. If your goal is brand awareness, Social Media offers numerous advertising formats tailored to specific demographics.

Omnichannel advertising leads to more relevant advertising and effective campaign performance. Mailbox Merchants makes that possible by offering a platform capable of combining the powers of programmatic and social media. You’ll gain a holistic view of performance with the ability to optimize toward what’s working best in real time.