Digital Marketing vs Digital Advertising: What Is the Difference?
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Molly Blanchard
Are you trying to get your product or service to your target market? Digital marketing and digital advertising are some of the essential tools you should consider. Though the two have a common goal - to boost sales - they have a countering ideology. Keep reading to find out how digital marketing and digital advertising differ.
What Is Digital Marketing?
HubSpot defines digital marketing as all online efforts to promote your business, product, or service. It involves connecting your brand with current and potential customers via digital channels. Some of these channels include:
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Social media platforms
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Search engines
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eCommerce websites
Digital marketing entails using digital tactics to promote a brand online. These tactics include:
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Social Media Marketing (SMM)
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Content Marketing
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Email Marketing
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Online Public Relations
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Online Advertising
What Is Digital Advertising?
Digital advertising is a type of digital marketing that displays messages to the audience online. It's a marketing tactic or media presented to the target audience via the internet.
The ad campaigns you see on the internet are a perfect example of digital advertising. They appear online for a specific time frame to promote a service, product, or event. The common forms of digital advertising include:
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PPC (Pay Per Click) search ads
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Social ads (they appear on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube)
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Display ads (static, mobile, banner, video, and pop-up ads)
What Are the Differences Between Digital Marketing and Digital Advertising?
People use digital marketing vs. digital advertising interchangeably, which is wrong. These terms refer to two different approaches. Here are the differences between the two:
Digital Advertising Is an Aspect of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing entails all the efforts dedicated to creating a brand's presence online. It includes participating in various tasks that form your company's ongoing marketing strategy. Some of these tasks include:
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Coming up with a product idea
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Developing the product
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Packaging it
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Pricing the product
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Finding the ideal audience
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Defining marketing techniques
Digital advertising comes into action when you promote your services or products online. It's where you select a marketing tactic to generate traffic and grow your business.
When advertising online, you conceptualize, develop, and place ad campaigns or PPC programs online. These programs or campaigns act as a tool for digital marketing and help accomplish your business's general digital marketing strategy.
Digital Marketing Is a Process, While Digital Advertising Is an Activity
Digital marketing is a continuous process that starts when you pick a name for your brand or product. It often begins earlier in the market research and continues to the refining phase. That's where you get valuable data for analysis and creating a new marketing strategy.
Anything you do or share online is part of your brand's digital marketing process. It could be in the form of ad displays, blog posts, seminar podcasts, or how-to videos.
Digital advertising is a short activity in the general digital marketing process. It comes into play when you want to promote a product, website, or anything else using ads.
To create these ads, a digital advertiser needs data collected by a digital marketer. The data provides insights into things like:
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What product to promote
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When to promote
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How much is the advertising budget and more
The data obtained helps create apt ad campaigns to drive traffic to your landing page or website. This is a small activity in the grand marketing scheme that helps drive more traffic and boost sales.
Digital Marketing Develops the Brand, Whereas Digital Advertising Establishes Brand Awareness
Digital marketing is all about determining how your business looks to its customers. It defines your brand's image and grows your business' reputation online.
Marketing determines how audiences perceive your brand when they hear or see it. It creates a public image or impression in your target audience's mind.
Digital advertising seeks to promote your brand and generate traffic. It focuses on making your brand visible and appealing to your target customers through ads. The plan is to convince the customers to buy from the advertised product or service.
For instance, when you want to advertise on the internet, you tailor ads to target your audience. This increases brand awareness, driving more traffic to your brand or website for better sales and revenues.
Digital Marketing Is Strategic While Digital Advertising Is Tactical
Online marketing requires a strategic plan for utmost efficacy and success. It includes fulfilling various activities such as:
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Planning
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Defining marketing objectives
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Establishing annual marketing goals
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Setting marketing budget
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Understanding marketing metrics
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Deciding which marketing techniques to use
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Developing apt means to meet the marketing goals
All these tasks help create a strategic plan that fits your brand's marketing goals. The plan is often detailed and has a long-time frame for implementation. This makes the plan challenging to replicate or change.
Digital advertising identifies the suitable tactics for promoting your business to the target audience. These tactics could be PPC, banners, SEO, or SMM. You get desired advertising goals within a short time frame, and it's easy to replicate or change the plan.
Digital Marketing Focuses on Audience's Psychology, Whereas Digital Advertising Focuses on Sales
Although digital marketing aims to boost sales, it uses a different method to achieve this goal. It focuses on understanding your target audience's psychology and creating suitable buyer personas. This helps build a good relationship with your audiences and improve sales.
Online advertising aims at driving more traffic to your website and generating leads. It focuses on promoting your brand to a particular segment of the market. The segment needs to be accessible via digital advertising channels such as PPC or ad campaigns for maximum sales.
How Effective Is Digital Advertising?
Digital advertising campaigns are ineffective at promoting a product, brand, or service. That's because you only make sales when an audience clicks on the ad campaign or PPC program to transact. Most audiences interested in your brand are likely to buy a product or service without an ad’s prompt.
With digital marketing, you target specific audiences. This saves on the time you would spend on ad campaigns. You get more traffic to your website and more sales from existing customers.
Hire Professionals for the Best Digital Marketing Services
Digital marketing continues to provide incredible results for all types of businesses. Consider working with qualified and experienced digital marketing experts to help you meet your marketing goals. These specialists create a practical marketing campaign to generate sales and better ROI.
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