Modern marketing relies on technology to analyze the comprehensive performance of a marketing campaign, and help guide future strategies and decision making. The best way to define a digital marketing platform is to break it down into its two parts: digital marketing and digital business platforms. Let’s take a look at how the two relate:

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is any marketing initiative that leverages online media and the internet through connected devices such as mobile phones, home computers, or the Internet of Things (IoT). Common digital marketing initiatives center around distributing a brand message through search engines, social media, applications, email, and websites.

Today, digital marketing often focuses on reaching a customer with increasingly conversion-oriented messages across multiple channels as they move down the sales funnel. Ideally, marketing teams will be able to track the role each of these messages and/or channels plays in reaching their ultimate goal.

Examples of Digital Marketing Assets

In short, a digital marketing asset is any tool that you use online. Here are a few of the more common examples:

• Social Media Profiles
• Website
• Images and Video Content
• Blog Posts and eBooks
• Reviews and Customer Testimonials
• Branded Logos, Images, or Icons
  

  What is a Digital Marketing Platform?

  Gartner notes that in the context of modern business, platforms are tools that provide multiple business or technology capabilities. While there are tools to address specific functions within one business need, such as a single tool to schedule social media updates alone, platforms support multiple functions across these needs. Platforms typically enable a more extensive set of functions with APIs, integrations, and partnerships with other applications or data sources.

  Now, let’s revisit the initial question. What is a digital marketing platform? A digital marketing platform is a solution that supports a variety of functions within the realm of marketing over the internet. According to Gartner, it is important to note that to classify as a platform, the solution cannot claim to support every component of digital marketing – but will rather cover functionality like media buying, performance measurement and optimization, and brand tracking. However, it may not cover other marketing efforts like SEO, social media.

  Why is Digital Marketing Important?

  Digital marketing is on the rise – surpassing spend on traditional marketing for the first time ever in 2019. This is because consumers are increasingly present on online channels. With this increased use of technology, digital marketing platforms have become essential to the digital marketing world. Tech advancements such as AI and machine learning, make marketers better equipped with the marketing technology they need to reach consumers on digital devices at just the right moment.This is opposed to traditional marketing methods – which have to be planned and placed well in advance. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and blogs have now taken over the digital marketing space. Consider the following:

  • The world has 7.7 billion people and 4.4 billion people use the internet
  • Nearly 30 percent of consumers would rather interact with brands via social channels versus going to a store.

  To be competitive, organizations need to be present across digital channels and devices. However, this doesn’t mean offline channels should be ignored altogether. The best way to meet consumer demands is with an omnichannel presence – which combines offline and digital elements.

  Here are a few more reasons why digital platforms can be an asset your business:

  • You can build an online community to represent your organization across all platforms.
  • Personalized exchanges between consumers and producers.
  • Increases appeal for consumers and establishes trust between buyers and sellers.
  • The use of API’s  allows a 3rd party to facilitate the exchange for users.By employing digital marketing initiatives, your organization can create a more cohesive, customer oriented program that maximizes benefits for your clients. Digital marketing platforms can also be beneficial for easy measurement and adjustment of company goals and bring you a better return on investment. These platforms and initiatives open up the door to ongoing engagement even after a purchase, which can help marketing teams more effectively foster brand loyalty and improve customer retention.

  8 Types of Digital Marketing Strategies with Examples

  8 common platforms for digital marketing include social media, influencer marketing, content marketing, email, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), affiliate, and mobile. Let’s take a deeper look at each:

  1. Social Media Marketing Platforms

  Todays’ consumers are highly reliant on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. This is why it is essential that brands are active across accounts. Consider these stats:

  • On average users have about 8 social media accounts.
  • An average of 2 hours and 22 minutes are spent on social media per person per day.
  • Out of the 5.11 billion people who have a phone, 3.26 billion access social media using it.
  • People spend about 1/7th of their waking time on social platforms.

  Social media platforms allow marketers to reach their prospects in a myriad of ways. First, marketing teams can use these channels to distribute paid ads and sponsored content. Each platform has a way for marketing teams to create paid ad campaigns and segment users so these ads appear on the feeds of target audience members. While each platform is different, most have capabilities that allow marketing teams to place ads based on location, job title, interests, age, etc.