Digital Marketing Guide: Types, Tools, & Techniques for 2023

Welcome to Pure SEO’s Digital Marketing Guide for 2023!

The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving. Keeping up with the latest trends and strategies can be challenging. Below, we’ll explore the most effective techniques to help you stay ahead of the curve this year. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting, this guide will provide valuable insights and practical tips to enhance your efforts.

From social media marketing to SEO, email marketing to content marketing, we’ll cover everything you need to know to succeed in the competitive world of digital marketing in 2023. So, buckle up and prepare to take your digital marketing game to the next level!

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes

What is digital marketing?

Search engines, social media, email, and other websites empower businesses to connect with existing and potential customers as never before. Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, encompasses a variety of strategies aimed at reaching consumers through these digital channels. The term encompasses a range of tactics, including everything from multimedia to text messaging communication, to achieve business and marketing objectives.

Why is digital marketing important for your business?

In 2022, Kiwis spent $6.07 billion online. Even if customers aren’t directly buying products online, today’s consumers rely heavily on the internet to research products and services before purchasing. Without a strategy, your business may not be visible to these potential customers. Digital marketing can expand your reach to a wider audience than traditional methods and enables you to target specific demographics and customer segments, allowing you to reach the people most likely to be interested in your product or service. Plus, it’s usually less expensive than old-school advertising. It lets you track your progress daily, so you can change your approach as needed.

What are the different types of digital marketing?

When promoting your business online, digital marketing offers many options. By understanding the various options available, you can determine the most effective strategies to help your business achieve its goals. From search engine optimisation to social media advertising to email marketing, you can connect with your target audience in the digital space in many ways. These are a few different types of digital marketing available to businesses:

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing involves paid and organic methods to improve a website’s visibility in search results. Paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, uses online ads to direct traffic to websites and sales pages. Meanwhile, search engine optimisation (SEO) focuses on optimising a website’s content and structure to rank higher in search results, ultimately driving more traffic and conversions. In addition to increasing website traffic, SEO can help establish brand credibility and connect with the right target audience.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategy that aims to engage potential customers by providing informative, entertaining, and useful content that builds trust and loyalty over time. Content marketing can also act as inbound marketing, naturally drawing customers to your brand. This type of marketing can take many forms, such as blog posts, audio or visual content, and infographics. Content marketing aims to connect with your target audience and position your brand as a valuable resource.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing enables businesses to connect with their customers on popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok. By leveraging these platforms, companies can expand their brand reach, engage with their audience, and drive traffic to their website. In addition, social media marketing can be a powerful tool for keeping customers updated with the latest company news, products, and services.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves partnering with popular social media users to promote a brand and amplify its message to a broader audience. By collaborating with influencers, businesses can tap into new markets and authentically connect with potential customers. Typically, brands engage with online celebrities and sponsor them to promote their products through sponsored and paid partnership posts on social media. Influencer marketing can be highly effective for building brand awareness and driving customer engagement through trusted and relatable influencers.

Email Marketing

Email marketing provides businesses with a direct way to communicate with individuals who have consented to receive marketing messages via email. Companies can collect email addresses through various channels such as their website, blog, and social media platforms. Through email marketing, businesses can attract and nurture both new and existing customers by sharing relevant and timely information. Email marketing is an effective method for building customer relationships and delivering targeted messaging to a receptive audience.

Video Marketing

Video marketing engages audiences through video hosting services like YouTube. Video marketing has become an increasingly popular channel for businesses as it allows them to create highly engaging content and tends to rank high in search engine results pages. By incorporating video into their marketing strategies, businesses can effectively convey their message and establish a deeper connection with their target audience.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is online marketing in which businesses sell their products through third-party publishers, commonly known as affiliates. Advertisers usually provide a personalised referral URL to their affiliates, also called an affiliate link, that they incorporate into their website content, blog posts, social media updates, and email communications. When someone clicks on the affiliate link, the advertiser compensates the affiliate for any leads or sales resulting from that click, according to the terms of their affiliate agreement. This approach enables businesses to expand their reach through the networks of their affiliates while providing affiliates with a commission-based revenue stream.

How to plan a digital marketing strategy for your business?

A digital marketing strategy is essential for businesses to engage with online audiences effectively. Every company’s strategy will differ due to various marketing goals and activities. A digital marketing strategy framework can structure the process, especially with the many moving pieces and collaborators involved. To save time and effort, marketers can model their frameworks from existing ones rather than starting from scratch with each new marketing project. The AIDA model is a great place to start if you need help with your strategy. 

The AIDA model outlines a consumer’s journey before making a purchase decision, comprising four key stages:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

The primary aim of your marketing content during these stages is to capture the consumer’s attention, spark interest in your brand or offering, create a desire for it, and ultimately prompt action towards purchasing.

The first stage, Awareness, aims to build brand recognition and make consumers aware of your product or service. The second stage, Interest, focuses on generating enough interest to encourage the consumer to research further. The third stage, Desire, involves creating an emotional connection with the consumer and moving them from simply liking your product or service to wanting it. The final stage, Action, requires a clear call-to-action to motivate the consumer to take the next step, whether downloading a brochure, making a phone call, or buying a product.

Structuring your website and campaigns with the AIDA model in mind can provide greater control over your prospects’ journey towards a purchase decision. As consumers move through each stage of the model, they should develop certain emotions or feelings towards your brand, which can ultimately drive them to act.

So, how do you apply the AIDA model to your digital marketing strategy? These are some questions you can ask yourself to determine what you need to implement in your strategy:

Awareness

What steps can we take to introduce our products or services to potential buyers? How will we reach out to them? How can we increase brand awareness through our campaigns? Which platforms or tools are best suited for our goals? What type of messaging should we utilise?

This stage generates excitement and promotes familiarity with your brand among potential customers.

Some options for increasing your brand’s visibility and reach can include the following:

• Writing guest posts for niche websites
• Advertising across multiple platforms
• Selecting a recognisable image or symbol that represents your brand
• Crafting a short and memorable slogan or tagline.

Interest

What is our content strategy? Do we have social proof to back up our reputation? How can we make this information easily accessible, and where should we place it? Can we most effectively communicate it on our website, through videos, or via customer ratings?

After successfully raising brand awareness, the next step in the AIDA model is to capture the interest of potential customers by providing valuable and engaging information. This stage is crucial for building trust and demonstrating the relevance of your brand to your target audience. For this stage, content is key! Producing interesting and engaging content, such as videos or infographics, can be a great way to pique interest in your brand or product. 

Desire

How can we create a strong desire for our product or service? How can we build an emotional connection with our target audience? Should we consider online chat support or provide an immediate response to customers on social media? Can we offer valuable tips and advice to our customers to further increase their interest and desire for our brand?

Now is the time to demonstrate why customers need your product or service. Creating content that highlights the benefits of your offering can create a sense of desire. User-generated content is also very helpful at this stage. Seeing real-life examples of how your product or service has helped others can convince potential customers that they want or need what you are offering. 

Action

How can we strategically place our call-to-actions to make it easy for consumers to engage with our brand? Where should we position them based on our marketing channel or platform? For instance, should they be on our website, landing pages, or in our emails? Moreover, how can we optimise our call-to-actions to increase inbound phone calls and engagement across all channels?

It’s important to avoid creating unnecessary hurdles for customers during this stage, as this could result in losing interest. For instance, if the checkout process is difficult, it should be streamlined to ensure a smoother experience. Customers may still be considering competitors at this point, so a competitor that offers more convenient payment methods, for example, could put you at a disadvantage.

Clear and effective Calls to Action (CTAs) that are visually appealing and prominently displayed on your website encourage your customers to convert. A well-crafted CTA can make all the difference in motivating customers to take the desired action. Learn more about crafting effective CTAs on our blog.

19 useful digital marketing tools

The right tools can make all the difference in your digital marketing efforts. Knowing which tools to use can be overwhelming with so many available tools. We’ve compiled a list of useful tools that can help streamline your marketing tasks, improve your productivity, and boost your online presence.

1. GA4: Google Analytics 4 is an essential web analytics tool for tracking and reporting website traffic and user behaviour. This platform provides valuable insights into how users interact with your website, enabling you to optimise your strategies to improve overall performance. By leveraging the data collected from Google Analytics 4, businesses can better understand their audience and tailor their marketing efforts to meet their specific needs and preferences.
2. Google Ads: Google Ads is an essential tool for businesses that want to reach potential customers who use Google to search for products or services online. With Google Ads, companies can target a broad audience of individuals actively searching for what they offer. Google Ads provides a powerful platform for businesses to improve performance and drive meaningful results.
3. Ahrefs: A versatile toolset for search engine optimisation, Ahrefs provides a comprehensive suite of features to help businesses optimise their websites, analyse their competitors, conduct keyword research, generate content ideas, build links, and much more. By offering reliable and insightful data, Ahrefs can help inform a business’s digital marketing strategy, making it an invaluable tool for any organisation looking to gain an edge in the online marketplace.
4. SEMrush: SEMrush is a comprehensive tool suite that enhances online visibility and provides valuable marketing insights. This all-in-one reporting software assists digital marketers in optimising their websites for improved organic search traffic. By utilising SEMrush, businesses can gain insights into how they compare to their competitors and decide which keywords to target for their organic search efforts and Google ad campaigns.
5. SEO PowerSuite: SEO PowerSuite is a comprehensive SEO tracking solution that enables businesses to conduct keyword research, track website ranking, analyse backlinks, and more, all from a centralised platform. This powerful toolkit comprises four essential tools: Rank Tracker, Website Auditor, SEO SpyGlass, and LinkAssistant, all designed to provide businesses of all sizes with the necessary resources to improve their SEO performance and stay ahead of the competition.
6. SE Ranking: SE Ranking is a comprehensive SEO toolkit that offers tools and features for efficiently managing SEO campaigns, making it ideal for SEO professionals, business owners, and agencies. With an intuitive interface and user-friendly design, SE Ranking can be easily used by anyone, irrespective of their experience or expertise. The software includes a keyword rank tracker that helps track keyword performance across different search engines, a backlink checker, on-page audits, a keyword grouping tool, and a marketing plan tool.
7. Unbounce: Unbounce is a comprehensive conversion optimisation platform enabling users to build effective marketing campaigns easily. It has smart features and an AI-powered landing page builder that lets you create stunning campaigns in just a few minutes. Unbounce offers popups and sticky bars, providing users with a complete suite of tools to maximise conversions.
8. Sprout Social: Sprout is a powerful social media management platform that enables users to monitor and analyse trends on social media to ensure that their content engages their audience. With Sprout, businesses can streamline their content creation process by organising their content calendar and assets in one place, making it easy to publish and schedule content across multiple social media platforms at the optimal time for maximum engagement with followers.
9. Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media management system that simplifies social interactions for users by providing an integrated user interface. It enables you to efficiently manage your social media presence by creating, scheduling, publishing, and monitoring content and ad campaigns across multiple social networks from a single dashboard. Hootsuite’s real-time analytics and insights feature can also help you measure and maximise the impact of your social marketing efforts.
10. Hotjar: Hotjar is a platform that offers behaviour analytics to help businesses gain a deeper understanding of their users. Through its various features, Hotjar enables users to analyse user behaviour and patterns, identify areas for improvement on their website, and ultimately increase conversions.
11. PageSense: PageSense is a comprehensive platform for optimising website conversions and personalising the visitor experience. With the help of web analytics, A/B testing, and personalisation features, businesses can analyse visitor behaviour and track their journey on the site. By gaining insights into visitor demographics and behaviour, businesses can make informed decisions to boost revenue and engagement. With PageSense, businesses can create personalised website experiences tailored to individual visitors.
12. Microsoft Clarity: Microsoft Clarity is a web analytics tool that provides valuable insights into user behaviour and website debugging. The tool helps website owners and publishers understand how users interact with their websites and identify areas for improvement. Clarity offers user behaviour data, including engagement patterns on different parts of individual pages and the ability to play back user sessions, providing valuable insights into conversions and identifying web page bugs.
13. HubSpot: HubSpot offers various tools and resources that enable businesses to improve their marketing strategies at every stage of the buyer’s journey. From analytics reports and dashboards to track audience engagement with your content to various marketing automation tools, HubSpot provides a comprehensive solution for businesses to optimise their marketing efforts.
14. MailChimp: Mailchimp is a marketing platform that offers a wide range of products and features, including audience management and marketing automation. However, it is primarily recognised as a pioneer in email marketing. Mailchimp simplifies advertising automation for e-commerce businesses, allowing them to connect with the right customers at the perfect moment. The platform allows you to set up automation based on customer behaviours or actions.
15. Canva: Canva is a user-friendly graphic design platform that allows you to design your business’s visual content. With Canva, you can create various graphics, including social media images, web banners, marketing brochures, flyers, business cards, presentations, and more. Canva offers a wide range of templates that cater to all your marketing image needs.
16. Accelo: Accelo is a cloud-based platform that helps companies—including creative agencies—manage client relationships and streamline work processes through customisable automation. The platform’s robust features allow marketing project teams to enhance collaboration, increase visibility, and optimise efficiency.
17. Monday.com: Monday.com offers an interactive virtual whiteboard that enables digital marketers to collaborate, communicate, and brainstorm ideas as they work together on a marketing strategy.
18. Microsoft Teams: Effective internal communication within a digital marketing team is crucial for their success. Microsoft Teams can meaningfully help in this regard, as it enables streamlined communication between departments and facilitates seamless collaboration on joint projects.
19. AI tools: The digital marketing world is increasingly embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help streamline and optimise various tasks. These tools can assist with administration, data analysis, social media management, chatbots, email marketing, and content creation. AI algorithms can analyse vast datasets and provide insights that inform marketing strategies and decision-making processes. With AI, digital marketers can work more efficiently and effectively, using their time and resources better while delivering a more tailored and engaging experience to their target audience.

KPIs and metrics to track to monitor your performance

In today’s data-driven world, it’s more important than ever to measure the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, you can gain valuable insights into your campaigns’ performance and make data-driven decisions to optimise them for better results. These are a few essential KPIs and metrics to track to monitor your performance and how to use them to improve your marketing strategies.

• SEO KPIs
  • Organic traffic: One metric to monitor is organic traffic, which indicates how many people discover your products and services without paid promotion.
  • Keyword rankings: Achieving a high ranking for industry-relevant keywords can drive consistent, organic traffic to your website—one of the many ways to measure the success of your SEO strategy.
  • Conversion: Measuring organic conversions, such as sales, leads, and subscriptions,  is a straightforward way to track the success of your SEO efforts.

• PPC KPIs
  • Cost per acquisition: This indicates precisely where your budget is allocated and whether reinvesting in your campaign is worthwhile.
  • Click rate: This helps to evaluate the effectiveness of your messaging and the engagement level of your audience.
  • Conversion rate: This reveals the advertised offer’s relevance and effectiveness in resonating with the targeted audience.

• Content Marketing KPIs
  • Unique visits: This metric measures the traffic volume, enabling you to evaluate the effectiveness of your sales pages, call-to-action messaging, and other inbound marketing and lead-generation strategies.
  • Avg. time on page: This metric provides information on how long visitors spend on your website or landing pages on average. A longer average time suggests that your content resonates well with your audience.
  • Link CTR: The Click Through Rate (CTR) is a metric that indicates the proportion of times a link was clicked relative to the number of times it was displayed. A high CTR suggests significant interest in your business’s offerings among those who have seen the link.

• Social Media KPIs
  • Reach: indicates the number of individuals exposed to your social media channels. By analysing reach data, you can gain insights into your current and potential audience, track growth over time, and assess your brand’s level of visibility.
  • Likes, comments, and shares: This indicates a strong relationship between you and your audience, which can result in higher conversion rates, audience growth, and stronger relationships in the long run.

• Email Marketing KPIs
  • Delivery, open, reply rate: This helps measure whether your messages get into recipients’ inboxes and how they engage with them.
  • Link CTR: Tracking click-through rate is crucial for email marketers as it provides valuable insight into the level of engagement and interest of the subscribers on your email list towards your brand or offer.

• Video Marketing KPIs
  • Video impressions: Video impressions refers to the number of times your video has appeared in a feed or search result.
  • Video engagement (likes, comments, shares): This KPI reveals the extent to which your video aligns with the interests of your target audience. A higher level of relevance between your video and your audience can lead to increased engagement and meaningful interactions with your content.
  • View-through rate: The View-Through Rate (VTR) represents the number of viewers who watched your video, serving as a crucial metric for assessing whether your content effectively addressed your audience’s queries.

• Influencer Marketing KPIs
  • Reach: To evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, monitor your campaign’s reach and the number of new prospects generated.
  • Engagement: Measuring engagement is a crucial KPI since it offers a more comprehensive understanding of how your target audience perceives your marketing campaign.
  • Conversions: Monitor the conversions resulting from an influencer marketing campaign by keeping a tab on the sales figures before, during, and after the campaign, and analyse any changes in sales that occurred while the campaign was active.

• Affiliate Marketing KPIs
  • Traffic: You can assess the impact of your affiliate program on your website traffic by comparing the difference in traffic flow from affiliates to that of other promotional channels.
  • CLV (Customer Lifetime Value): Customer lifetime value provides insight into the average profit a customer can generate for your business during their entire customer journey.

More Resources

Content Marketing Guide

Top Tips for Improving Conversion Rates

eCommerce SEO Guide

Landing Page Optimisation Guide

Do Digital the Right Way

Digital marketing is an ever-evolving field demanding constant willingness to learn and adapt. As a digital marketer, staying up to date with the latest trends and tools is crucial to reach and engage your target audience effectively. By embracing the latest techniques and tools and creating an effective strategy, you can position yourself and your brand for success in future years. If your business’s digital marketing strategy needs work, leave it up to the professionals at Pure SEO. Our team will help you craft a robust and effective strategy to benefit your business. Get in touch today to learn more.