13 Types of Digital Marketing to Use for Brand Growth in 2024

Sydney Go

Aug 22, 202416 min read
Contributors: Martha Vassallo and Bartłomiej Barcik
Types of Digital Marketing
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With the right digital marketing methods, businesses can achieve major goals ranging from brand awareness to lead generation to sales conversions.

So what are the types of digital marketing your brand should prioritize?

The ideal channels and tactics depend greatly on your business objectives and target audience. 

In this article, we’ll first define digital marketing and outline its key purposes. Then explore 13 different forms of online marketing to consider using in 2024.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the practice of promoting and selling brands, products, and services via online channels. It encompasses all internet marketing channels, including:

  • Content marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Digital advertising

We’ll discuss these areas of digital marketing (and many more) in depth below. 

Why Is Digital Marketing Important?

Digital marketing is significant in today’s market because of a highly competitive landscape requiring wide visibility and reach. 

Brands must find highly engaged audiences and discover innovative opportunities to stand out—and online marketing allows them to do just that.

Businesses can implement different types of digital marketing to:

  • Connect with new prospects and expand the company’s customer base. Digital means help you reach your brand’s ideal customers virtually anywhere in the world.
  • Target potential customers throughout the buyer’s journey. You can use online marketing tactics to guide prospects all the way through the journey—from awareness to consideration to the decision stage.
  • Run cost-effective marketing campaigns. Compared to traditional marketing channels like print and TV, a digital strategy tends to be more targeted, less expensive, and easier to scale.
  • Measure and attribute results efficiently. Digital platforms automatically monitor success outcomes like clicks and conversions. So you’ll know which channels and campaigns work best for your brand.

Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing Strategies

13 Digital Marketing Types

The list we’ve put together outlines the main types of digital marketing you can tap into to promote your business online. In ways that drive success and growth.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing involves publishing and distributing all kinds of online content. One of its biggest benefits is that it can reach your ideal audience across many different digital channels. 

Types of digital content include:

  • Written content such as blog posts
  • Visual content like social media posts
  • Video content on YouTube and other platforms

Further reading: 17 Types of Content Marketing to Use for Success in 2024

A content strategy typically aims to attract, engage, and convert potential customers. Great content works at every stage of the marketing funnel

Diagram of marketing funnel with four horizontal purple sections: "Awareness," "Consideration," "Conversion," and "Loyalty"

Here are examples of how you can use content marketing effectively at different stages of the customer journey:

  • Awareness: Podcasts and videos can introduce your brand to potential buyers
  • Consideration: In-depth blog posts provide detailed information and may persuade prospects to consider your product or service
  • Conversion: Ebooks give prospects the data and use cases they need to decide to book a demo, get a free trial, or make a purchase

For instance, this Tropic ebook is designed to convert people seeking a software procurement platform:

Section of a webpage featuring a downloadable guide titled "How To Buy SaaS Smarter" by Tropic and Pavilion

To develop a successful content marketing strategy, start by identifying topics your target audience cares about. 

Use Topic Research to generate relevant ideas you could focus on in your written content.

Find the tool in the “Content Marketing” drop-down menu of the Semrush dashboard. Enter a topic and click “Get content ideas.”

UI of Semrush's Topic Research tool showing a search bar with "vegetable garden" typed in and a "Get content ideas" button

You’ll see several related topics. Click “Show more” at the bottom of any topic card to view related headlines and questions.

Semrush Topic Research dashboard with research data for "vegetable garden" showing topic cards with "Show more" buttons

Use these topics to spark ideas for content that’s likely to attract, engage, and convert your audience.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an aspect of content marketing that involves using social platforms to connect with potential customers, improve brand awareness, drive organic traffic, and generate sales and leads.

A social media strategy generally includes these elements:

  • Developing social media campaigns to reach specific marketing goals
  • Publishing original posts, stories, and short-form videos on branded social profiles
  • Replying to comments and messages you receive from social media users
  • Proactively engaging with social content posted by customers and relevant influencers
  • Searching for and responding to brand mentions across social channels

This X post by Glossier is an example of a campaign targeting a traffic and sales increase for the beauty brand:

Glossier tweet about exclusive merch with an image of foundation bottles in various skin tone shades

Open Semrush’s Social Poster tool from the “Social Media” menu to plan and publish your social media campaigns.

Select any of the social channels that appear in the popup to connect your profile. You’ll need to log into each of your social platform accounts and grant permission for the tool to publish the posts you create.

Semrush Social Poster tool dashboard with a calendar and a pop-up to connect social profiles

After connecting a social profile, hit the “New post” button.

Social Poster tool digital calendar interface with "New Post" button highlighted with a purple arrow

Then, create the post—using Semrush’s AI Writing Assistant will generate quality social media posts faster. You can write a caption, paste a link, and upload an image. 

Finally, publish the post immediately or schedule it to go live at a specific time.

Semrush Social Poster tool new post creation interface with scheduling options and various buttons for adding functionalities

Video Marketing

Video marketing is a content marketing approach that uses video content to promote brands, products, and services. Your video marketing strategy can include YouTube, social media networks, and streaming platforms.

Some of the most popular types of video marketing include:

  • Brand videos, which introduce a brand and what makes it unique
  • Demo videos to demonstrate a product or service
  • Explainer videos for breaking down a complex topic
  • How-to videos, showing viewers the steps to accomplish a task

Take this YouTube video series as an example. It features several how-to videos covering various features of the Notion productivity app.

YouTube playlist "Notion 101" with four video thumbnails, each showing tutorial titles and black labels with descriptions

You can create and edit engaging videos using Video Marketing Platform, available in the Semrush App Center.

Semrush Video Marketing Platform tool interface showing options for creating, uploading videos, and navigation menus

You can even convert a blog post into a video in the app. 

Then, upload your videos to YouTube, social media, or another platform where your target audience spends the most time. So you can reach your prospects easily.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO comprises a set of tactics for making your website more visible in search engines and attracting more organic traffic. It primarily involves two types of activities: on-page and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO refers to actions you take on your website, such as:

  • Keyword research: Identify relevant search terms to incorporate into your website content
  • Title tags: Provide webpage titles that can appear on search engine results pages (SERPs)
  • Internal links: Pass authority to other pages on your site and clarify your site structure to users and search engine crawlers

Use Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to simplify your keyword research.

Enter a seed keyword—a topic you want to research—and hit “Search.”

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool interface with a search for "vegetable garden" and a green "Search" button highlighted with purple arrow

Keyword Magic Tool will generate a list of keywords related to your seed term, ordered by volume.

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool results dashboard for keywords related to "vegetable garden," with keywords and volume columns marked in purple

When choosing keywords for your SEO strategy, consider factors like:

  • Search volume: The average number of organic searches for a particular keyword over a 12-month period. Higher search volume means more opportunities to attract traffic.
  • Keyword difficulty: A percentage score that indicates how difficult it is to appear in the top 10 search results for a particular keyword. Lower KD% keywords may be easier to rank for.

Off-page SEO refers to activities you perform outside of your website, such as:

  • Link building, or specific tactics to get other sites to link to you to grow your site’s backlink profile and authority
  • Guest posting, which entails publishing valuable, relevant content on other websites to broaden your audience and get mentions and backlink opportunities
  • Digital PR to increase brand awareness, build site authority, drive traffic, and earn quality backlinks and mentions

To analyze your website’s backlink portfolio and find more link-building opportunities, use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.

Input your domain’s URL into the tool and click “Analyze.”

Semrush's Backlink Analytics tool UI with a search bar, an input URL underlined in purple, and an "Analyze" button" highlighted with a purple arrow

You can gauge the health of your site’s backlink portfolio via metrics like total backlinks, referring domains, and Authority Score. In each case, a higher number reflects a stronger portfolio.

Semrush Backlink Analytics "Overview" tab showing various metrics and trends in a panel format

To improve your backlink portfolio, start with tactics like fixing broken backlinks. 

Go to the “Indexed Pages” tab and check the “Broken Pages” box for a list of pages with backlink issues.

Semrush Backlink Analytics' "Indexed Pages" tab showing a list of broken pages when the "Broken Pages" checkbox is checked

Click on a broken link and select the “Referring Domains” tab. You’ll see a list of URLs that link to that specific broken page.

Semrush Backlink Analytics' "Referring Domains" tab showing new and lost domains over six months and a table of referring domains

Contact the website owners to request replacing the broken link with a relevant working URL on your site.

You can also use the workflow above to find broken links pointing to your competitors’ websites. Then, reach out to the site owners to suggest relevant links to your website in their place.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing involves sending newsletters, promotional emails, and email sequences to your subscribers’ inboxes. Your marketing emails can target goals like:

  • Launching new products and services
  • Announcing limited-time sales and discounts
  • Helping customers get more value from their purchases

Let’s take this event-related email marketing campaign from Vitamix. It shows customers how to use the brand’s products (blenders) to make a solar eclipse-themed recipe:

Vitamix email featuring an Eclipse Smoothie Bowl recipe with a purple smoothie

Verifying subscribers’ email addresses can improve deliverability, ensuring more of your marketing emails arrive in inboxes. Email verification can also lower costs by preventing you from sending to old or invalid addresses.

Remember: To succeed with email marketing, you need an email list. Add signup forms on your website and mention your email list on social media to attract potential new subscribers.

4. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing refers to promotional activities that target potential customers on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. Goals for mobile marketing campaigns often focus on engagement or conversions.

Some common mobile marketing tactics include:

  • Augmented reality (AR) filters that allow people to test products virtually
  • QR codes that people scan with their smartphones to visit mobile websites
  • Push notifications that prompt people to engage with your in-app content or features

For example, this Audible push notification encourages users to listen to a podcast episode in the brand’s app:

Audible push notification for a new podcast featuring a title, description, and a photo of the podcaster

Monitor the success of your mobile app with Semrush’s Mobile App Insights

See how your app ranks in its category, its visibility score, downloads by keyword, audience geography, and more. 

Then, use these insights to optimize your app description and improve download performance. 

Semrush's Mobile App Insights dashboard displaying app metrics and statistics organized into sections

5. Local Marketing

Local online marketing involves promoting brick-and-mortar businesses or local services in a certain geographic area. A local marketing strategy often includes:

  • Establishing a Google Business Profile (GBP) and listing your business on Google Maps
  • Adding your locations to online local directories
  • Setting up social media pages for each of the business’s locations
  • Running geotargeted ads to reach prospects in your service area
  • Using local SEO to improve your brand’s visibility in searches for locations you serve

The businesses pictured below all have Google Maps listings and GBPs. Featuring the name, location, address, and phone number along with open hours, ratings, and other information.

Google SERP results for florists showing a list of three businesses and a map with florists’ locations

Improve your local SEO marketing efforts and oversee your online business presence with Semrush’s Listing Management.

Enter your business name and click to select it in the search results (if you’re using this tool for the first time). Or click the “+ Add location” button (if you’ve used Listing Management before).

Semrush's Listing Management tool interface with a search bar, and search results marked with a purple arrow

You’ll get an overall assessment of your business’s online presence, average star rating, total reviews, and listings to fix.

Semrush Listing Management results screen showing business details including an online presence assessment and star rating

Listing Management provides a complete list of your business listings in local directories. 

You can improve your local marketing performance by addressing errors and creating entries in directories where you don’t feature.

Semrush Listing Management results screen showing directory listings information for a business, with details on issues

6. Digital Advertising

Digital advertising is a method for reaching new prospects and expanding your customer base. Unlike many of the organic (unpaid) digital marketing strategies above, advertising is a paid tactic.

With digital ads, you place paid content in front of specific customer segments. You can target prospects by location, demographics, interests, behaviors (like visiting your website), and other factors.

Digital advertising can include channels like:

  • Search ads (including PPC)
  • Display ads
  • Sponsored content
  • Video ads
  • Social media ads

Let’s consider this Instagram ad. It’s a video ad that shows how businesses can use Semrush to reveal competitors’ marketing strategies. Prospects can tap the “Learn more” banner to view the ad’s landing page and sign up for a free Semrush account.

Sponsored Instagram post by Semrush featuring an ad for "Advertising Research" with metrics and a chart

Semrush’s Advertising Research helps you analyze the competitive landscape. You learn how much competitors spend on PPC and which keywords they’re targeting—so you can improve your own campaigns.

Start by entering a competitor’s domain. Hit the “Search” button.

Semrush Advertising Research tool interface with "ebay.com" in the search bar and a "Search" button marked with a purple arrow

You’ll see the site’s total number of paid keywords, the total amount of paid traffic, and the monthly cost of this paid traffic. 

Advertising Research also shows trends in these areas. To help you understand if your competitor is gaining or losing paid traffic and keywords.

Semrush Advertising Research report featuring keywords, traffic, traffic cost stats, and a graph of "Paid Search Trends"

Use the “Paid Search Positions” chart to learn which keywords your competing site is targeting with PPC campaigns. The chart also estimates search volume, traffic, and average position for each paid keyword.

Semrush Advertising Research "Paid Search Positions" table with keywords and performance metrics for various eBay-related searches

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

PPC is a type of digital advertising that includes search ads. PPC ads can run on many different platforms, including:

  • Search engines like Google and Bing
  • Forums including Reddit
  • Marketplaces such as Amazon

Take the search ad below. It’s a keyword-based ad triggered by the user’s search query. The advertiser (in this case, Semrush) pays when someone clicks on the ad to visit the landing page.

Google search results for "seo tool for keyword research" with a sponsored ad from Semrush

Use Ads Launch Assistant from the Semrush App Center to find the most effective keywords to target. And build PPC ads automatically.

To start, enter a campaign name and select a campaign type. Click “Continue.”

Semrush Ads Launch Assistant interface for creating a campaign with campaign name, "Search campaign" option, and "Continue" button highlighted

If you’ve used this tool before, click the “Add campaign +” button at the top of your dashboard.

Semrush Ads Launch Assistant showing the "My Campaigns" interface with an "Add campaign" button and an arrow pointing towards it

Choose basic campaign settings, including network, start and end date, audience devices and language, and target location. You can also set an ad schedule and add a tracking template to attribute results accurately.

Click the “Generate new ad group” button.

Semrush Ads Launch Assistant interface for managing a digital ad campaign with sections for campaign details, audience, etc. "Generate new ad group" button marked with a purple arrow.

Give the ad group a name. And input the URL for the landing page. Click “Generate ad group.”

Semrush Ads Launch Assistant form to generate an ad group with fields for group name and URL and "Generate ad group" button highlighted

The tool automatically identifies keywords, callouts, and sitelinks for the ad group. Click any of these elements to edit the auto-generated options or add more.

Semrush Ads Launch Assistant interface with boxes for keywords, callouts, and sitelinks highlighted

Preview the auto-generated ad(s). And click to edit any ad or add more headlines.

Click “+ Add new headline” to write headlines manually. Or hit the “Generate headlines & descriptions” button to do so automatically.

Semrush Ads Launch Assistant "Edit ad" interface with fields for URL, display path, and options for generating and adding headlines. "Generate headlines & descriptions" and "+ Add new headline" buttons marked with purple arrows.

To add more ads to the ad group, click “+ Create new ad.” Otherwise, finish the ad group setup by confirming your bid strategy and budget.

Semrush Ads Launch Assistant campaign setup screen with options for bid strategy and budget, and a "Start Campaign" button marked with a purple arrow

Click “Start campaign” to launch.

7. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves collaborating with creators who have engaged online audiences. While these partnerships are promotional in nature, influencers tend to promote brands in more genuine ways.

One of the biggest benefits of influencer marketing is its perceived authenticity. Because instead of branded content, influencers use personal stories and create lifestyle content.

Brands typically partner with influencers who have authority in relevant niches. For example, a health food brand may work with an influencer who specializes in health, wellness, or fitness.

In the Instagram post below, an influencer introduces the haircare brand Native to her audience:

Instagram paid partnership post showing an influencer holding her long wavy hair, introducing a haircare brand to her audience

Find the right influencers to promote your brand using Influencer Analytics from Semrush. The app lets you filter influencers by category, location, subscribers, and many other factors.

Semrush Influencer Analytics tool interface with various search filters for discovering influencers on various platforms

From there, you can build a custom list of influencers, view content analytics, or connect with them directly to discuss a partnership.

8. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing technique that involves recruiting people (affiliates) to promote your company’s products or services. Affiliates use content, social media, email, video, and other types of digital marketing to create promotional campaigns on your behalf.

Generally, affiliates receive commissions for any sales that result from their marketing efforts. To attribute sales accurately, companies typically give affiliates unique referral links or discount codes.

Let’s take the Instagram post below. Where an affiliate marketer models Gymshark apparel and mentions an affiliate code for the athletic brand:

Instagram post showing an affiliate marketer taking a mirror selfie modeling gym wear, mentioning an affiliate code

A major perk of affiliate marketing is its focus on sales. If your marketing goals focus on conversions, affiliate marketing may be a better choice than influencer marketing.

9. Audio Marketing

Audio marketing relies on marketing assets that potential customers listen to. Podcasts are among the most common types of audio marketing.

For example, the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast promotes host Ramit Sethi’s brand, book, and Netflix show.

Spotify page of the podcast "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi, showing podcast cover, episode list, and details

Audio marketing tends to work well for improving brand awareness and educating customers.

Organize, analyze, and improve your audio marketing assets with Semrush’s Podcast Hosting.

The app provides audience engagement and platform engagement insights for your uploaded audio content.

Semrush’s Podcast Hosting "Analytics" dashboard showing platform engagement with bar graphs of new and returning listeners

Use this data to understand how your listeners engage—letting you know what works. For instance, you may find that listeners prefer certain topics or formats. So you’ll know what to create more of.

10. Public Relations (PR)

PR agencies use channels like news outlets, social media, and targeted outreach to generate earned media.

A major benefit of PR is that it can improve your brand’s visibility across digital marketing channels, including social media, search, and content marketing.

While PR professionals can’t control earned media, they can influence it. Common tactics include issuing press releases and making connections with members of the press.

Take a look at this Investopedia article referencing an earnings report by Netflix’s PR team.

Section of Investopedia article titled "4 Key Takeaways From Netflix's Earnings Call" with an image of a large Netflix logo

A successful PR strategy involves generating more positive brand mentions online. Use the Brand Monitoring app to track mentions of your organization, executives, products, or services across the web and social media platforms.

Semrush Brand Monitoring tool interface showing mentions for "OpenAI" with two entries: a tweet and an article

Brand Monitoring automatically analyzes sentiment and labels your mentions as positive, neutral, or negative. So you can quickly assess how the press, influencers, and customers feel about your brand.

Then, you can identify the PR efforts that drive the most positive sentiment. And find issues that contribute to negative sentiment so you can work to improve your online reputation.

11. SMS Marketing

SMS marketing uses text messages to connect with customers via their smartphones. A typical SMS marketing strategy focuses on promotional messages that:

  • Feature new products or services
  • Mention limited-time offers or discounts
  • Prompt loyal customers to repurchase items

For example, customers who sign up for texts from soda brand Olipop can expect exclusive promotions plus early access to new products.

Promotional ad for Olipop soda subscriptions and promotions, with images of two soda cans and a signup form

Combined with mobile marketing and social media marketing, SMS marketing can enable brands to succeed at reaching, engaging, and converting customers on mobile devices.

12. Virtual Reality (VR) Marketing

VR marketing uses immersive virtual environments for promotional purposes. It typically requires people to wear headsets that create interactive, 360-degree environments.

For example, Meta Horizon Worlds is a virtual world that users can access via Meta Quest headsets. Brands can build virtual environments in Horizon Worlds or partner with influencers to promote their products and services.

Fast food restaurant chain Wendy’s opened the Wendyverse in Meta Horizon Worlds, giving visitors an opportunity to engage virtually with the brand.

One of the biggest benefits of VR marketing is its novelty. The VR space is less crowded than most other digital spaces on this list, which may allow early adopters to leverage it for considerable gain.

However, the adoption of VR technology is also lower than most other options on this list. As a result, the potential audience brands can reach with VR marketing is more limited.

13. AI Marketing

AI marketing uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to communicate with customers.

Many AI marketing tools are designed to respond to user input. They use natural language processing (NLP) to understand both the content and the context of human input.

Some of the most common types of AI marketing include:

  • Chatbots that answer questions and provide customer service
  • Personal assistants (like Google Assistant) that can have two-way conversations
  • Personalized marketing content based on users’ preferences and past behaviors

In fact, personalization is one of the biggest perks of AI marketing. With AI marketing tools, brands can create custom experiences that build better relationships with prospects and customers alike.

Further reading: Check out our curated list of the 13 Best AI Assistants for Marketers to enhance your audience-building and engagement efforts.

Maximize Your Digital Potential with Semrush

With an effective digital strategy, you can reach your target audience across channels and guide potential customers through the marketing funnel.

But with so many channels and tactics to manage, all types of digital marketing require a robust toolset to help them function smoothly.

Semrush has 55+ tools that can support your wide-ranging online marketing campaigns. Sign up for a free trial to diversify your marketing efforts and increase your ROI potential.

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Sydney has been creating content for over 10 years. She has been a writer, content manager and coordinator, editor, and strategist. At Semrush, she’s a blog editor who makes sure each article is as accurate, optimized, and helpful as possible.
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