Written by Ryan Delos Reyes and Jerome Ng
Honestly, what is Digital Marketing?
You’ve probably heard the words “digital marketing” being thrown around here and there. You probably also know that digital marketing is essential for any business to survive today. And you’ve certainly heard of the Avengers. Wait.. what? The Avengers? Digital Marketing types and the Avengers? What does that have to do with anything?
Digital marketing is the practice of promoting and selling products or services by leveraging a wide variety of online marketing strategies. Some of these have been tackled in this blog before, and we’ll tackle them in more depth in this article.
In an age where the majority of the world population has a smartphone or even a Facebook account, it’s important to learn digital marketing in order to reach the most people in the platforms they use most frequently. Factoring in the pandemic, most people rely on technology and the digital world to stay connected with friends and brands they love. Practicing digital marketing can literally make the difference between thriving or dying because consumers haven’t even heard of your brand.
Buckle up and get ready to discover the different Digital Marketing Types as the Avengers!
Welcome to the age of Digital Marveling! I mean... Marketing.
Yet, digital marketing can be a difficult concept to grasp because it’s rather vague and encompasses a wide range of different online strategies. Most people interpret digital marketing as just social media marketing, but that isn’t quite the case, as digital marketing can also take the form of influencer marketing, viral marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, radio and TV advertising, and many others.
To make it simpler, we can liken the practice of digital marketing to something we can all probably relate to (unless you’ve been living under a rock) – the Avengers! That’s right, digital marketing is much like the Avengers. Digital marketing is the team of heroes that will save your brand from the possible villains to businesses – inefficiency, irrelevance, or even obsoletion.
At the same time, digital marketing isn’t just one hero; it’s a team of heroes working together to uplift brands and defend them from several business threats. With the amount of noise surrounding the digital space, it isn’t always enough to depend on just one platform or digital marketing strategy anymore. Brands must employ a variety of strategies in order to stay relevant in the long run, and this is where it gets fun – you get to choose your own Avengers or set of digital marketing strategies to fight for your brand in the online space. Are you up for it?
To get you started, we’ll explain this by covering a few digital marketing types as the Avengers in this. Afterwards, you can kickstart your brand’s digital marketing journey with your own set of mighty heroes!
Meet your modern Digital Marketers... the Avengers!
Social media marketing is the practice of using social media platforms to bring traffic and attention to your brand, and it’s probably what you’re most familiar with among this list. In fact, social media marketing is often seen as synonymous to digital marketing as a whole, much like how Captain America is recognized as the leader and even symbol of the Avengers.
In an age where people are generally connected at all times, social media marketing is often the first step to increasing brand reach and, most importantly, to keep up with the times.
Do you know who else has had to persistently keep up with the times? Yup, that’s right – Captain America, for 101 years to be exact (based on the MCU portrayal). Despite having been frozen in Antarctic ice for around 66 years, Captain America woke up in 2011 to live his human life once again, and has strived to keep up with the times since. Similarly, social media marketing is sure to help your brand keep up with the times to stay relevant on the platforms your consumers use most. And that’s just the first digital marketing type as an Avenger.
When choosing an Avenger to best represent influencer marketing, it really wasn’t that hard, because who better to represent a strategy based on human popularity and online reach than Iron Man himself – Tony Stark.
Influencer marketing is a subtype of social media marketing that makes use of endorsements and product mentions from influencers, or individuals with a large amount of influence either in the world or in the niche communities they are viewed as experts in. Influencer marketing works because of the high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their following, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.
Does that sound familiar? If it does, it’s probably because you could name several influencers that you yourself adore. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there probably isn’t a more prominent influencer than Tony Stark, who, apart from serving as one of the most popular superheroes in the universe, is also a renowned tech billionaire industrialist; in his own words, Tony Stark is a genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist. Hip, quirky, and vastly popular, there is no greater representation for influencer marketing than MCU influencer himself, Tony Stark.
Viral marketing is a digital marketing strategy that aims to have a brand’s content organically shared by the general public on a large scale rather than just its target audience. When executed effectively, it has the potential to reach users on a scale that the brand might not have otherwise achieved through other, more traditional forms of marketing.
Now from that definition, you probably picked up that viral marketing is all about power – power through the reach extended from having others share your content, and power in the message and execution that made them share it in the first place. You might even say that viral marketing has Hulk-like power, and you wouldn’t be wrong, as the Hulk is an excellent representation of this digital marketing strategy due to the sheer power he possesses.
Underneath that power, however, is an underlying genius in Bruce Banner, who perfectly reflects the bold ingenuity that is required in crafting a campaign that goes viral. As consumers of digital content, we normally just see the flashy trends and the viral posts, but rarely the effort that goes into getting those trends and posts viral, which, believe us, takes a Bruce Banner brain to think up!
We chose to combine radio and television advertising in one as a cluster of more traditional digital marketing strategies. The definition is pretty straightforward – these are strategies where content is advertised through the radio and television as main channels.
Despite radio and TV being a bit more old-school, they still remain to be powerful mediums on which to advertise, especially to older audiences. Both forms of digital marketing have stood the test of time, and are still considered to be viable advertising mediums despite how long they’ve been around, which is why radio and TV advertising is best represented by Thor. Virtually immortal and remaining powerful through the ages, radio and TV advertising have proven that they’re here to stay, much like how Thor has remained strong and mighty throughout most of his 1500-year life.
This is a bit more superficial, but we also find it funny how radio and TV are powered by electricity, while Thor is the god of thunder. Coincidence? We think not!
Email marketing is the digital marketing strategy of sending emails to customers and potential customers, whether to sell products, share some news, or simply to tell a story. Effective marketing emails can bring consumers further down your sales funnel by converting prospects into customers or turning one-time buyers into loyal, raving fans.
Unlike most forms of social media marketing, email marketing is direct, accurate, and targeted to specific consumers to whom emails are sent. You probably already know where we’re going with this – email marketing can be best represented by Hawkeye, whose superpower is his insane ability to hit his targets with unmatched accuracy. What’s more, Hawkeye hits his targets with arrows, and so does email marketing, but with arrow clicks rather than physical arrows. The cursor can be a powerful weapon in the hands of a capable digital marketer, and email marketing is one of his/her most dependable tools!
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method that aims to generate the maximum amount of traffic to your website by bringing it to the top of a search engine’s results. This digital marketing strategy focuses on optimizing a brand’s visibility and credibility online, and making the most of this strategy can help your brand stand out in the world’s most used search engines.
Now that may seem pretty straightforward, but the practice of SEO is more subtle than you might think, as it mostly plays with the repetition of certain keywords that consumers commonly search online. In fact, we’ve been practicing SEO throughout this whole article! Did you notice how many times the words “digital marketing” or “strategy” have been used? That’s because these keywords, among several others, have been identified to be commonly searched terms that we believe will bump up our page in search results when used.
And because the practice of SEO is so subtle and even sneaky, we find no better Avenger to represent it than former Russian spy, Black Widow. Much like you won’t notice Black Widow creep onto an enemy ship, search engine optimization can be just as tough to notice when you’re not aware of the practice.
We know the different digital marketing types through the Avengers, what now?
Digital marketing can be complicated, and with how vast strategies have grown over the years, it can be difficult to even just start. But, at least now, you have a general idea on how some of the most prominent strategies work through digital marketing types as the Avengers – social media marketing as Captain America, influencer marketing as Iron Man, viral marketing as Hulk, radio and TV advertising as Thor, email marketing as Hawkeye, and search engine optimization as Black Widow.
On that note, click here to access other content on our website to learn more about SEO and other digital marketing content! You now have a basic under of different digital marketing types as Avengers, and all there’s really left to do is to choose which Avengers you’re going to be recruiting onto your brand’s digital marketing team.
AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE!
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