What is digital marketing strategist and How it Works

Did you know that 63% of companies have increased their digital marketing budgets in 2023? That’s because digital marketing has become a cornerstone of modern business success, requiring strategists to leverage their skills and strategies for growth.

Whether you’re a small business owner or an aspiring marketer, understanding digital marketing strategies is no longer optional – it’s essential for survival and growth in today’s online market. In fact, businesses that employ skilled strategists and embrace digital marketing channels see an average of 2.8 times better revenue growth than those who don’t.

But here’s the truth: navigating the world of digital marketing tools and techniques requires specific skills and can feel overwhelming at first. From SEO to social media, email campaigns to content marketing, there’s a lot for strategists and teams to learn and gain experience in.

This guide will break down everything you need to know about digital marketing, how it works, and how to create an effective strategy that fits your budget. Let’s dive into the fundamentals that will help your business gain valuable insights and achieve growth in the digital age.

What is a digital marketing strategist?

Digital marketing represents a fundamental shift in how businesses and their teams connect with customers in the internet age. Simply put, digital marketing is the use of digital channels, platforms, and technologies to promote products, services, or brands within the modern market to potential customers.

Definition and core concept

Digital marketing encompasses promotional activities conducted through websites, mobile applications, social media, search engines, email, and other digital communication methods. It gained popularity with the widespread adoption of the internet in the 1990s, forcing companies and their management teams to rethink their marketing strategies, enhance their skills, and adjust budget allocations.

At its foundation, digital marketing operates on many of the same principles as traditional marketing but employs digital tools and strategic skills to reach consumers and analyze their behavior. The approach can take multiple forms, including:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Email and mobile marketing
• Social media posts and paid advertising
• Pay-per-click (PPC) and affiliate marketing
• Website content and optimization
• What is digital marketing strategist
• Text messaging and multimedia messages

The core concept behind digital marketing is establishing meaningful connections with potential customers through digital channels where they already spend time. By leveraging market insights and the expertise of experienced strategists, data from DataReportal shows that 4.62 billion people use social media and 4.95 billion people utilize the internet overall, making these platforms ideal for reaching wide audiences and driving business growth.

Digital marketing is not just online marketing—it’s broader. While online marketing focuses exclusively on internet-based channels, digital marketing encompasses all electronic communications, including television, radio, and digital billboards. This expanded role requires company managers and their teams to adopt a comprehensive approach to effectively engage audiences across multiple platforms.

How it differs from traditional marketing

The fundamental difference between digital and traditional marketing lies in the medium through which audiences encounter marketing messages. Traditional marketing relies on physical channels like print media, billboards, direct mail, and television, whereas digital marketing leverages online platforms, requiring strategists to develop new skills tailored to the digital market.

Digital marketing offers several distinct advantages over traditional methods, empowering strategists and their teams to achieve better results:

More measurable results: Digital marketing provides detailed analytics and market insights for tracking campaign performance in real-time. Marketers and managers can measure metrics like clicks, conversions, bounce rates, and traffic sources to assess effectiveness and make data-driven adjustments, enhancing the team’s strategic skills.

Cost-effectiveness: Digital marketing tactics generally require lower initial investment than traditional marketing, allowing companies to achieve growth with minimal budgets. For example, social media ads can begin with small investments that the team can scale based on performance.

Precise targeting: Unlike broad traditional campaigns, digital marketing enables highly targeted approaches based on user data such as demographics, interests, location, and online behavior. This precision allows strategists and their teams to use insights to deliver personalized messages that resonate with specific market segments.

Interactive engagement: Digital marketing facilitates two-way communication, allowing brands and their teams to interact with customers in real-time through comments, likes, shares, and direct messages. This interactive approach enhances the company’s communication skills compared to traditional one-way marketing.

Global reach: Digital marketing can reach international audiences and adapt to various languages and cultural preferences, enabling companies to expand their market and achieve global growth, whereas traditional marketing tends to be more geographically limited.

Flexibility and speed: Digital marketing allows managers and their teams to make quick adjustments to campaigns based on performance data. Strategies can be modified almost instantly by strategists, unlike traditional marketing materials that may take weeks to revise.

Enhanced analytics: The data and insights from digital marketing analytics allow businesses and their managers to target audiences in ways traditional marketing never could. Additionally, automation tools enhance the team’s capabilities, making digital marketing scalable beyond what was previously possible.

For business planning and management, it’s worth noting that digital marketing approaches may differ based on business models. Business-to-business (B2B) companies typically require longer, more strategic approaches managed by experienced strategists, while business-to-consumer (B2C) companies need shorter sales cycles and target larger audiences in broader markets.

As consumers spend increasingly more time online, understanding these digital marketing fundamentals and leveraging the skills of strategic teams has become essential for business success and growth in the modern marketplace.

How digital marketing strategist work

Digital marketing operates as a systematic approach to building meaningful connections between brands and consumers in the online world. Understanding its mechanics and leveraging the skills of experienced strategists reveals why 67.5% of the world’s population—approximately 5.52 billion people—are now internet users.

The role of digital channels

Digital marketing channels serve as the pathways through which businesses, along with their strategists and teams, deliver marketing assets and communicate with potential customers. Essentially, these channels are online platforms and methods that enable companies to promote their products, services, or brand messages effectively.

These channels function as the foundation of any digital marketing strategy, requiring the skills of strategists and teams, each serving distinct purposes:

• Social media platforms connect brands directly with 4.6 billion users worldwide, allowing for community building and meaningful engagement with prospects
• Search engines increase visibility through organic rankings and paid advertisements
• Email marketing delivers personalized communication directly to interested users’ inboxes
• Websites serve as digital storefronts and content hubs
• Mobile applications reach users on smartphones, where 65% of digital sales now occur 7

What makes these channels particularly valuable is their ability to reach specific audience segments. Skilled strategists and their teams leverage digital channels to enable hyper-personalization—connecting with the right people at precisely the right moment. Furthermore, each channel reaches a unique audience demographic, allowing marketers to diversify their approach based on target market insights.

How businesses use digital tools to reach users

Successful digital marketing begins with strategic planning carried out by skilled strategists and their teams. Businesses typically start by developing a comprehensive strategy that defines objectives, identifies target audiences, and provides a framework for marketing activities across digital channels. Subsequently, this strategy is executed through targeted campaigns—specific actions designed by strategists to achieve particular goals.

Primarily, effective digital marketing relies on owned media—content created and controlled by the business and its teams. At the core of this approach is valuable content that converts website visitors into leads while improving brand visibility. Through strategic content creation, strategists can help businesses achieve growth by:

1. Generate brand awareness by distributing valuable information
2. Nurture relationships with customers at every stage of the buying process
3. Drive targeted traffic back to websites or landing pages

Beyond content creation, businesses leverage data and market insights to inform their marketing decisions. This data-driven approach allows strategists and their teams to understand audience behavior, test different channels, and determine which marketing activities yield the best results. Consequently, marketers can optimize campaigns in real-time, adjusting strategies based on performance metrics.

The implementation typically follows a systematic process managed by strategists and their teams:

First, companies and their managers set clear business goals tied to digital metrics. For instance, rather than simply “increasing website traffic,” they might aim for “receiving at least two quote requests weekly via the website”. Next, strategists and their teams identify their target audience and develop detailed customer profiles based on market insights. Then, they select appropriate channels that align with their audience’s preferences and behavior patterns.

Businesses also utilize marketing automation tools to streamline campaigns, personalize communications, and manage customer data efficiently. These technologies have become essential enablers for digital strategies, requiring teams to develop new skills as the volume of customer data continues to grow.

The fundamental value of digital marketing lies in its ability to establish two-way communication with customers. Skilled strategists and their teams leverage digital channels to facilitate direct interaction, allowing businesses to respond to customer queries, address complaints, and build relationships through ongoing engagement, thereby fostering customer loyalty and growth.

Key Types of Digital Marketing Explained

The digital landscape offers a diverse toolkit for marketers and their strategists seeking to connect with their audiences. Understanding the distinct types of digital marketing channels allows teams to create comprehensive strategies tailored to their specific goals.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Skilled strategists and their teams utilize SEO to make your content visible when people search for relevant terms. This approach operates through three core pillars: technical optimization (behind-the-scenes improvements), on-page optimization (content relevance), and off-page optimization (building site reputation through backlinks).

The process begins when search engines use crawlers to explore websites, followed by indexing relevant content, and finally ranking pages based on their algorithms. Effective SEO requires strategists and their teams to understand user search behavior through data insights and develop the skills to create content that satisfies both search engines and human readers.

Content marketing

Content marketing uses storytelling and information sharing, guided by strategists and their teams, to increase brand awareness. This strategic approach focuses on creating valuable, relevant content that attracts and engages a clearly defined audience. Content formats include blog posts, resources like white papers, e-books, digital videos, and podcasts.

Notably, content marketing works in synergy with other digital marketing types—strategists and their teams improve SEO through fresh website content and provide material for social media and email campaigns. The primary goal is providing value to consumers rather than simply advertising a brand.

Email and mobile marketing

Email remains one of the most effective marketing techniques available. Digital marketing strategists ensure mobile optimization has become essential, with 60% of email campaigns being opened on mobile devices compared to just 10% on desktops.

Successful mobile email marketing requires the skills of strategists and their teams in responsive design, creating compelling subject lines (visible in limited space on mobile screens), and crafting effective preheaders—the summary text following the subject line in the inbox view. Moreover, businesses must consider insights that the average time spent reading a newsletter after opening is only 51 seconds.

Social media and influencer marketing

Social media marketing involves strategists and their teams promoting your brand across platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn through organic posts and paid advertising. Influencer marketing takes this further by leveraging the skills of strategists to secure endorsements from individuals with dedicated social followings.

The influencer industry is projected to reach $33 billion by 2025, driven by its effectiveness—49% of consumers make purchases at least monthly based on influencer recommendations. Strategists and their teams leverage this approach to build credibility through the trust influencers have established with their audiences, providing powerful social proof for potential customers and capturing growth opportunities in the market.

Pay-per-click and affiliate marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising enables marketers and their teams to reach audiences through paid ads on various platforms. Strategists leverage this approach in combination with organic strategies. PPC is a short-term marketing form—once payment stops, the ad disappears.

Affiliate marketing utilizes industry experts and social media influencers, managed by strategists and their teams, who promote another company’s products for commission. Commission models vary, including pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale, and revenue sharing arrangements. For businesses, this performance-based model offers precise audience targeting through partners whose followers align with their target demographic and market insights.

Building a Digital Marketing Strategy

Every successful digital marketing initiative needs a solid strategy developed by experienced strategists. Surprisingly, 49% of organizations operate without a clearly defined digital marketing strategy. Without this foundation, marketing efforts lose purpose and team members struggle to understand how their tasks connect to larger objectives.

Setting SMART goals

The foundation of any effective digital marketing strategy, crafted by skilled strategists, begins with establishing SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound objectives. Instead of vague goals like “increase website traffic,” focus on specific targets such as “receive at least two quote requests weekly via the website”.

SMART goals provide several benefits for strategists and their teams:

• They improve focus by simplifying priorities
• They enable better resource management
• They boost team engagement by clarifying responsibilities
• They help measure progress effectively

Research shows that 48% of people who consistently achieve their goals, often set by strategists and their teams, write them down, transforming vague ideas into concrete plans.

Identifying your target audience

Understanding your target audience is vital for marketing success. Strategists and their teams leverage market insights to ensure that ads engage the intended audience. In fact, $37 billion in ad spend is wasted annually on ads that fail to engage the intended audience.

Start by creating detailed buyer personas—fictional profiles representing your ideal customers, developed by strategists and their teams. These personas should include:

• Demographic information (age, gender, location)
• Psychographic traits (interests, attitudes, behaviors)
• Pain points and motivations
• Online behavior and preferred platforms

By thoroughly understanding your audience through the insights provided by strategists and their teams, you can create more personalized experiences—important considering 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with brands offering personalized interactions.

Choosing the right channels

Not every digital marketing channel will work for your specific business. Initially, strategists and their teams should ask themselves, “Which channels align with my business model, audience, and budget?”

Physical stores often benefit from local SEO, whereas e-commerce businesses might see better results with social media advertising and email marketing. Strategists and their teams use market insights to understand that younger audiences typically prefer Instagram and TikTok, while professionals engage more on LinkedIn.

Your channel selection should always support your overall objectives. Prior to implementation, strategists and their teams should determine what each piece of content will encompass and how frequently you’ll publish. This approach ensures a cohesive strategy that connects meaningfully with your audience across all touchpoints.

Tools and Tips to Get Started

Starting your digital marketing journey doesn’t require a massive budget or technical expertise. With the right tools and a strategic team of skilled strategists, even small businesses can establish an effective online presence.

Free and paid tools for beginners

First and foremost, analytics tools help strategists and their teams understand what’s working in your digital strategy. Google Analytics provides comprehensive insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversions completely free of charge. Alongside this, most social media platforms offer built-in analytics—Facebook Insights, X Analytics, and LinkedIn Analytics—that track engagement metrics and audience demographics at no cost.

For email marketing, platforms like Mailchimp and Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) provide free plans perfect for beginners and teams building their first email lists. Specifically for visual content creation, Canva makes professional graphic design accessible to anyone without specialized skills.

Small e-commerce businesses often benefit from Klaviyo for its user-friendly email marketing capabilities, managed by strategists and their teams. In view of budget constraints, tools like Buffer help maintain a consistent social media presence without requiring complex features.

Tips for small businesses with limited budgets

Given these points, creating a marketing budget, managed by strategists and their teams, is essential for success. Accordingly, start by securing the basics—launching your website, setting up social media profiles, and building an email list.

Research shows that even a digital marketing budget as low as $500 can lead to impressive returns when allocated effectively by skilled strategists. A sample breakdown might include: $50 for market research, $150 for website and SEO, $100 for content creation, $100 for social media advertising, and $100 for email marketing.

For those on extremely tight budgets, strategists recommend the following:

• Start a blog on your existing website to boost organic visibility
• Prioritize free tactics like blogging or organic social media
• DIY as much as possible, though consider freelancers for specialized tasks
• Focus on one or two social platforms where your audience spends time

Consistently monitor your analytics to determine which strategies deliver the best results for your specific business. This data-driven approach, guided by strategists and their teams, ensures every dollar of your marketing budget works effectively.

Conclusion

Digital marketing stands as a powerful force that shapes modern business success. Rather than viewing it as an optional strategy, strategists and their teams must ensure that businesses recognize digital marketing as their primary path to connect with today’s tech-savvy consumers.

Success in digital marketing demands a balanced approach from strategists and their teams. Starting with clear SMART goals, understanding target audiences, and selecting appropriate channels creates a strong foundation. Additionally, the proper use of analytics tools helps track performance and adjust strategies based on real data.

Small businesses need not feel overwhelmed by digital marketing challenges. Through strategic planning and the expertise of strategists and their teams, along with smart use of available tools, even companies with limited budgets can build effective digital marketing campaigns. The key lies in starting small, measuring results, and scaling successful strategies over time.

Remember that digital marketing evolves constantly. Strategists and their teams must stay updated with new trends while maintaining focus on fundamental principles to help ensure long-term success in the digital marketplace.