What Digital Marketing Covers
An overview of the channels the term covers, and how they differ from one another.
Digital marketing is marketing carried out through digital channels — search engines, websites, email, social platforms and mobile devices — rather than print, broadcast or physical media.
The definition
It's the part of marketing that uses the internet and connected devices to promote products and services. Websites, search engines and social platforms work together to reach both existing and potential customers.
What distinguishes it from traditional marketing is that it's interactive rather than one-directional: the audience can respond, share, and be measured, which changes both what's possible and what's expected.
The term covers a wide set of channels. Grouping them by how you get attention — channels you own, earn, or pay for — makes the differences clearer than listing them flat.
Channels you own
Website. The central component. Other channels send people somewhere, and that somewhere is usually a website. It describes products or services in depth and, unlike a profile on a platform, it's controlled entirely by its owner.
Blogging. A blog can stand alone or form part of a website. It provides updated information about a company, brand or person, and builds awareness over time rather than in bursts.
Email marketing. Commercial messages sent to a list of recipients. Any email sent to an existing or prospective customer counts. Its strengths are brand awareness, trust and customer loyalty — and unlike social platforms, the list belongs to the sender.
SMS marketing. The same principle over text message. High visibility, correspondingly low tolerance for overuse.
Channels you earn
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Improving a site so it appears for relevant searches, through the quality and structure of its pages rather than payment. Its results are organic, and slow to arrive.
Social Media Optimization (SMO). Making people aware of a product or service through social platforms — optimising a site and its content so people are inclined to share it. Related to SEO in that both aim at traffic that isn't bought.
Video. Straightforward to share across platforms and effective at holding attention. Production tooling, free and paid, has made it broadly accessible.
Webinars. Live or recorded sessions, generally used where a subject needs more explanation than a page can carry.
Channels you pay for
Online paid advertising. Buying placement — search ads, display, or promoted social posts. It produces results immediately and stops producing them the moment spending stops, which is the essential trade against the earned channels above.
Mobile apps. Where an organisation has one, it functions as a channel in its own right: a direct route to people who have already opted in.
Choosing between them
The ten channels above are not alternatives to one another so much as different instruments. Most organisations use a few well rather than all of them thinly.
The distinction that matters most in practice is the owned/earned/paid one. Paid channels are fast and rented. Earned channels are slow and compound. Owned channels are the only ones that can't be taken away or repriced by someone else — which is why the website tends to sit at the centre regardless of what else is running.
This post is from infoMogli's earlier run and sits outside what the site currently covers. It's kept online because the page has been at this address for years — the writing has been cleaned up, but the subject hasn't been brought into the current editorial focus.