The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing
Before we get to the digital marketing examples, a quick recap of the fundamentals.
Digital marketing includes a bunch of tactics to attract customers on digital platforms and channels.
It covers everything from viral TikTok videos to downloadable whitepapers.
But every successful digital marketing campaign is built on the same fundamentals.
Here are the three core elements.
Know Your Audience
One of the most significant advantages of digital over traditional marketing is the ability to target the people most likely to buy from you.
But, you won't be able to take advantage of this opportunity if you don't know your target audience.
Who is your ideal customer?
When you know your audience, you can focus your digital marketing efforts on where they spend their time online.
You can adapt your messaging and content to resonate with your target market.
Establish Your Marketing Goals
Before you spend a single dollar on advertising, define your goals.
What is it you want to achieve with your marketing campaign?
The best strategy and digital channels will depend on your goals.
For example, if you want to increase brand awareness, you may focus on organic social media marketing.
If increasing ecommerce sales is your top priority, digital ads and display advertising might be more effective.
Aligning your marketing campaign with your broader business goals is the best way to maximise ROI.
Track & Measure Results of Your Marketing Campaign
The most successful digital marketing strategies are the result of continual learning.
You need to track, measure, and optimise.
It's super important that your marketing team knows how to adapt and improve based on analytics.
For example, you may discover that your audience loves your video social media posts on Facebook. But they don't engage as much on Twitter.
This information can help you determine where your audience is most receptive. You can adjust your strategy to boost the ROI of your campaign.
But you need to measure your results to discover these insights.
10 Best Digital Marketing Examples
Now we've covered the fundamentals, let's look at some real-world digital marketing examples.
The brands below have used digital marketing to increase brand awareness and generate sales.
Let's kick things off with one of Australia's most successful tech companies.
1. Canva - Attracting New Customers With SEO
Canva is an online design tool. It makes it easy to create everything from logos and social media posts to videos and presentations.
Image alt text: Online marketing SEO example
Canva uses a range of digital marketing strategies to attract new customers. But search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of its key channels.
SEO refers to the tactics that help you drive more traffic to your website from search engines.
When people search for terms related to your products and services, you want your website to appear at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
Canva publishes in-depth, high-quality content targeting keywords related to its offerings and audiences' interests.
Image alt text: Search engine optimization online content example
Alongside its keyword-driven content strategy, the Canva website is technically flawless.
It's easy to use, fast to load and works great on mobile devices.
All these aspects are key to your website's SEO.
In January 2020, Canva generated just under 23 million visits from search engines and ranked in the top 10 results for over 700k keywords.
Skip forward to 2022, and Canva now ranks in the top 10 results for over 1.2M keywords and drives nearly 80 million organic visits per month.
Image alt text: Search engine optimization impact on web traffic
That's a 248.51% increase in visitors, thanks to SEO!
If you want to learn more about using search engines to get more traffic to your website, check out our complete guide to SEO.
2. Skyscanner - Increase Sales With Paid Search
Skyscanner is a flight aggregator and travel agent based in the UK. It helps people compare the cost of flight tickets, car hire, and hotel rooms worldwide.
The company does a great job of using search engine marketing (SEM) to make sure it can be found in the SERP for keywords its target audience uses.
Now, most people looking to book a flight already know where they want to go.
They're close to making a purchase.
For example, if you wanted to catch a flight from Brisbane to Sydney, you would probably head to Google.
And you would see an ad like this from Skyscanner:
Image alt text: Examples of digital marketing paid ads in search results
SEM, also known as paid search, is a digital marketing strategy that uses advertising platforms like Google Ads and Bing Ads to get your business found in search results.
It works on a pay-per-click (PPC) system where you bid on the keywords that you want to trigger your ad. If your bid is higher than your competitors, you'll have a good chance of appearing at the top of the SERP in the paid ad slots.
When a searcher clicks on your ad and visits your website, you pay a fee to the advertising platform.
This can be a cost-effective way to attract the right people to your website.
Skyscanner strategy is one of the best digital marketing examples for paid search.
When users click on the ad, they are directed to a landing page that matches the search intent.
Image alt text: Paid ads landing page example
It's easy for a visitor to take the next step and book a flight.
Search engine marketing helps you get in front of your potential customers at the precise moment they are looking to make a purchase.
In fact, internet users are 4x more likely to click on a Google ad than any other type of search engine.
Image alt text: Study on CTR of online marketing platforms
It's important to note that it's not a case of SEO or PPC.
Combining these digital marketing strategies often works best to attract more customers and increase revenue.
3. Apple - Going Viral on Social Media
Social media marketing is one of the best channels to reach a huge audience.
It's a great way to increase brand awareness, nurture leads, and drive targeted traffic to your website.
There are two ways you can use social media for marketing: organic and paid.
Organic uses free promotional tactics to increase your presence and engage audiences.
Paid uses social media advertising platforms like Facebook Ads.
Let's look at one of the best organic social media marketing examples.
Apple and the #ShotoniPhone campaign.
The tech giant wanted to create a campaign that highlighted the quality of the iPhone 6 camera.
Apple encouraged its customers to share photos they had taken using the device on social media with the hashtag #ShotoniPhone.
The best photos were then showcased on billboards in locations worldwide.
The campaign was a huge success, with iPhone users flooding social media with the hashtag. It generated 6.5 billion media impressions, and Apple sold 231 million iPhones that year.
It also helped to build a community around the iPhone. Seven years after the campaign launch, there's still a thriving online community around the hashtag.
What makes the campaign such an excellent social media digital marketing example is how Apple leveraged user-generated content (UGC).
People trust user-generated content more than traditional ads or marketing messaging.
The campaign helped Apple highlight a key selling point of the iPhone6 while building a community and establishing stronger connections with its customers.
4. Airbnb - Driving Sales With Social Media Advertising
People use social media for all kinds of reasons, including product discovery.
According to Stackla, 55% of users have purchased a product after seeing it on social media.
You can target customers and promote your products using PPC ads on social media platforms.
Let's look at one of the best digital marketing examples for paid social - Airbnb.
The accommodation company does a great job of generating sales with tempting ads showing destinations and places to stay.
Airbnb targets travellers looking for accommodation and potential new hosts for the platform.
Like the Apple campaign, Airbnb uses plenty of user-generated content in its ads and sponsored posts.
The company also uses retargeting to reach social media users who have visited the Airbnb website but have yet to make a booking.
If sales revenue is your number one goal, paid social could be a great way to generate sales.
5. Superdrug - Using Content To Build Brand Awareness
Content is integral to every digital marketing strategy.
It attracts people to your website, educates prospects, and converts leads into customers.
One of the best content digital marketing examples is Superdrug's Perception of Perfection campaign.
The health and beauty retailer launched a campaign to raise awareness of body image issues and boost its brand profile.
Superdrug enlisted 18 graphic designers from different countries around the world. The designers were asked to photoshop an image of a woman to make her look more beautiful.
The designers returned contrasting images, highlighting the different perceptions of beauty around the world.
Publications like The Sydney Morning Herald, BuzzFeed, and Huffington Post ran stories about the campaign.
The web page received over 7M organic page views and over 1M reposts and shares on social media. Superdrug registered a 238% increase in organic traffic over 16 months after the campaign launch.
It remains a high traffic page for the company and has attracted backlinks from some of the most authoritative websites on the internet.
High-quality backlinks are a key Google ranking factor.
While blog posts and long-form articles are the most used types of content marketing, Superdrug is a great example of what you can achieve if you think outside the box.
6. Visit Denmark - Sparking Interest With Influencer Marketing
Travel is one of the industries that goes hand in hand with influencer marketing.
Whether it's a weekend getaway or a "workation", people want to find the best places to go, things to see, and activities to do.
Travel influencers help businesses spread the word and inspire audiences to book a trip.
One of the best influencer digital marketing examples is the 2021 Visit Denmark campaign.
The global pandemic hit the travel industry harder than most. The Danish Tourist Board wanted to increase domestic travel to compensate for the drop in foreign tourists.
But many Danes viewed a holiday in Denmark as a compromise.
To inspire domestic travel, Visit Denmark partnered with hundreds of influencers across the country.
Digital marketers running the campaign encouraged influencers to share stories and posts about childhood vacations. The goal was to evoke nostalgia and positive memories of domestic holidays.
Image alt text: Influencer digital marketing strategy
The campaign was a big success. It inspired audiences to rediscover their homeland and explore what Denmark has to offer.
On Instagram, Visit Denmark achieved high average engagement and significantly boosted its follower count.
Image alt text: Influencer digital marketing campaign results
Visit Denmark was awarded the Best Brand Engagement Campaign at the Influencer Marketing Awards.
7. Neil Patel - Building Relationships With Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the best ways to nurture leads, distribute your content, and generate sales.
Marketers consistently rank it as having the highest ROI of all types of digital marketing:
Image alt text: Study on the ROI of types of digital marketing
For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect to generate $36 in return.
The key to email marketing is to make each interaction with your subscribers meaningful.
If you bombard your email list with promotions, you'll struggle to get clicks and conversions.
Neil Patel is an excellent example of how to succeed with email marketing.
Instead of going for the hard sell in every email, Neil focuses on delivering value and sharing high-quality content.
Image alt text: Email examples of digital marketing
This is a great way to build relationships, establish credibility, and stay top of mind.
It's also an effective way to increase website traffic and get more eyes on your content.
Over 2.5% of Neil's website traffic comes from email.
Image alt text: Breakdown of traffic sources from digital marketing campaigns
While that might not sound like a huge amount, it's a much higher percentage than most high traffic websites.
Before you get started with email marketing, you need a list of subscribers.
You can encourage people to opt-in to your email list using a lead magnet.
A lead magnet could be a free resource or offer that users can access in exchange for their contact information.
Neil Patel provides users with a free trial of his marketing tool Ubersuggest.
Image alt text: Digital marketing examples of a lead magnet
When users sign up for the free trial, they opt-in to receive emails.
A free trial is a great way to introduce prospects to your product and grow your email list.
Once a user has subscribed, aim to build a relationship. Help prospects through the buyer's journey towards making a purchase.
8. Elementor - Generating Sales With Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing.
You can partner with affiliate marketers and pay a commission for every sale or sign up they generate for your business.
It can be a cost-effective way to outsource some of your marketing activities and reach a large audience.
The website builder tool Elementor is an excellent example of a successful affiliate marketing campaign.
Elementor runs an affiliate program for content creators, bloggers, and influencers.
Image alt text: How affiliate digital marketing works example
Each affiliate partner is given a unique affiliate link to use in their content. This link tracks the number of users who purchase after clicking the link.
Here's an example from the LivingWithPixels YouTube channel.
Image alt text: Examples of digital marketing affiliates
The video description contains affiliate links. It also has an honest explanation of the relationship between Elementor and the content creator.
Image alt text: Example of digital marketing affiliate link
This type of digital marketing can be super-effective. You can increase your reach and drive sales without breaking the bank.
9. Uniqlo - Creating Buzz With Hybrid Experiences
Japanese apparel brand Uniqlo is an excellent example of hybrid shopping experiences.
The brand launched a global digital marketing campaign that featured billboards in 100 real-world locations.
Shoppers were encouraged to use their smartphones to take photos of the moving image billboards.
The photos revealed secret promo codes that could be used to redeem free products and discounts on the Uniqlo website.
Image alt text: Hybrid experiences digital marketing examples
Before receiving their reward, users were shown promotional content. The branded videos highlighted the benefits of Uniqlo's HEATTECH range of products.
Shoppers were encouraged to share their experiences on social media and invite friends to seek out the billboards and uncover a code for themselves.
The hybrid experience campaign was a big success, reaching over 4M people. It generated 1.3M branded video views and attracted over 35,000 new customers to the brand.
The campaign was recognised with a Shorty Award for Best in Retail and E-Commerce in Social Media.
10. netlink - Building A Dynamic Brand Identity With Web Design
Your website is where you send people to learn about your products and convert into qualified leads and customers.
If it looks outdated or is difficult to use, your digital marketing efforts will be wasted.
Let's look at how web design can be a digital marketing asset.
netlink needed to update its digital presence to appeal to enterprise clients. It wanted to showcase its cutting edge IT solutions with a modern website.
Image alt text: Web design digital marketing example
The new website combines a modern and clean design with intuitive navigation. Visitors can easily explore what netlink has to offer and get in touch.
It also looks great and is easy to use on mobile devices.
Image alt text: Mobile-friendly web design example
Your website is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. It's the foundation for your digital marketing campaigns.
Read our case study to find out more about how we helped netlink create a new brand identity.
Creating a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy
There are so many ways you can promote your business it can be challenging to know where to begin.
Hopefully, you're feeling inspired by our top 10 digital marketing examples.
You can see what's possible and get some ideas for your next campaign.
If you need some help getting started, schedule a free consultation with our Perth digital marketing team.
We'll help you develop a digital strategy that gets you found online and grows your business.
Examples of Digital Marketing FAQs
What Is SEO vs SEM?
SEO and SEM both rely on search engines to drive traffic. The main difference is that SEO is focused on improving a website to increase its ranking in search engine results pages to attract more organic traffic. SEM is a paid strategy that involves bidding for target keywords on a search engine advertising platform like Google Ads.
What Is the Difference Between Outbound and Inbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing is a strategy that involves proactively reaching out to potential customers. It can include cold email, billboard advertising, and other offline marketing tactics. Inbound marketing is focused on getting customers to come to you through content marketing, SEO, and other inbound strategies.
Does Social Media Marketing Work?
Social media marketing can boost brand awareness and generate leads and sales. On average, a buyer will have 8 touchpoints with a business before making a purchase. Social media is one of the best types of digital marketing to stay top of mind and engage potential customers throughout the buyer's journey.
How Much Does Influencer Marketing Cost?
The cost of a single influencer post can vary dramatically depending on the niche and the size of the influencer's following. For example, a nano influencer with a small following will be much more affordable than a celebrity with a following of millions. You can reduce the cost by offering free products and other incentives in exchange for sponsored posts.
Does Affiliate Marketing Work for Brands?
Affiliate marketing can be an effective marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. It's estimated that 80% of brands run affiliate programs to promote their products, including Amazon, Koala, and K-Mart. It's a scalable, low-risk strategy to increase brand awareness and generate sales.