What is Digital Marketing?

or how does digital marketing work

That’s a big question! Even when I was working towards my English degree, many of the duties that I hold now didn’t yet exist (imagine!). How does digital marketing work? Well, it encompasses many different areas of content writing, editing, digital design, social media, websites (designing, creating, coding – everything), SEO, emails (the pretty ones), graphic design, video making and animation, PR, advertising, and PowerPoint slides (creating and presenting them). I’ll talk you through some of the main ways how digital marketing works.

Content writing or copywriting

Most digital marketing jobs work in part by writing copy for companies, and that is what I am lucky enough to do. At one job after university, I worked with some of the top attractions across England and adapted the style of my content accordingly, writing for different audiences in different voices, using different language and, sometimes, key words or phrases that the client wanted me to use. I also wrote for papers, sometimes articles, sometimes Pay Per Click content which had to sum up an entire product and offering in as little as 30 words which is harder than it sounds. As a content writer I was simultaneously a content editor, checking the work of others in the team and finishing off the job by uploading it to the website.

Graphic Design

Some companies have separate graphic designer teams but, since working for a well-known travel company, for me digital marketing works with the two going hand in hand. Working on holiday brochures is a big task where content and design come together. I’ll let you in on a little secret – the main brochure pages were created using InDesign and set up using a code called XML (a little like HTML) but the images had to be resized and refreshed, the text had to fit and there was always a risk that something could, as we say in my industry, drop off. Photoshop is my essential tool to create graphics from scratch – be they logos, posters, infographics, or bespoke imagery.

PowerPoints

As a Digital Marketer you’ll work on PowerPoints for your own presentations, as well as for team presentations and management presentations. Often you might receive these requests at short notice and not have much time to create them, but the good thing with PowerPoints is “less is more”. Have a cover slide, a contents slide (if you have a lot to talk about), as few slides as you can to get your points across and a slide at the end that says “Thankyou” and asks if there are any questions. Keep the slides basic, uncluttered and only add the main discussion points – you don’t need your entire presentation on your slide.

Websites

Your content will come to life on the company website or intranet, and you’ll be the one uploading it. As you progress in your career, you’ll likely be involved with building the website or intranet yourself, or certainly be maintaining it. It’s helpful to know code, even a small amount plus the mechanics of how HTML works. This has helped me fix pages many times when the Content Management System, which holds the webpages, has become buggy.

Emails

The Digital Marketer keeps everyone connected. This means we send emails – simple ones and pretty ones. Building a Marketing email usually involved a drag and drop system and it can be tricky to make each email display correctly across different email platforms.

Videos

Users are said to engage 50 – 60% more with video content than with written content or even pictures, so video has always been a crucial part of the job. My career as a Digital Marketer has had me arranging video shoots with a crew as well as making my own. Live streaming has also become more commonplace in recent years for publicity and so that meeting, conferences, and forums can be shown to stakeholders and internally to staff.

Social media

Social media is all about promotions and it’s important to keep on top of the latest platforms and trends. TikTok is hailed as the holy grail at the moment – it’s also a bit of a gold rush – whereas Facebook has dwindled in recent years regarding marketing, but still has its used. All the rules of digital content apply here including implementing SEO and hashtags. You never know, play your cards right and with a bit of luck you might just score that viral video.

SEO

This means Search Engine Optimisation. To cut the long story short, you’re writing the content as you would google it, and overcompensating slightly so that the crawlers (the little bots working behind the search engine façade) will be more likely to find your content when related terms are typed into the search box. Get this right and it can work wonders for search visibility and engagement.

Campaigns

All of the above come together as part of the many campaigns that you will run over the course of your career. Whether that’s to increase sales, engagement, or simply to communicate essential messages many times a year you’ll be planning how to rally the troops and then act to bring your plan to life.

The list doesn’t end there!

I have been involved with planning and running events, training, writing policies and project management. I’m the connection between the business and the client, the teams and the senior management, this site - and that site. The job is never the same and that’s what’s kept me inspired and motivated during a career that’s lasted over ten years. That’s how digital marketing works.