/WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING
WHAT IS
DIGITAL MARKETING?
Digital marketing is every channel through which a business reaches people, is chosen by them and measures what happened. That definition is broad enough to be useless on its own, so this page does the more useful thing: it explains what each channel is genuinely for, and in what order to spend on them.
/THE DISTINCTION
THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS
Channels are usually listed alphabetically, which hides the only split worth planning around.
Capturing demand that already exists
Someone is already looking for what you sell. Search — organic and paid — plus comparison sites and marketplaces. Cheaper per acquisition, limited by how many people are searching, and the right place to start if that number is not zero.
Creating demand that does not
Someone does not yet know they have the problem, or does not know a solution exists. Paid social, video, PR, content and events. More expensive per acquisition, harder to attribute honestly, and the only option once you have exhausted existing demand.
Converting either of them
The website, the offer, the forms, the checkout, the follow-up. Not a channel at all, which is exactly why it gets neglected — and usually the cheapest place to find the next improvement, because it multiplies everything upstream of it.
/THE CHANNELS
AND WHAT EACH IS FOR
What each one does well, which is not always what it is sold for.
Search engine optimization
Compounding visibility for demand that already exists. Slow to start, durable once established, and the effect does not stop when the invoice does.
What is SEO?Paid search
The same demand, available immediately and priced by auction. Instant on, instant off, and the fastest way to find out whether a market exists before investing in the slow channel.
Google AdsShopping and feeds
For retail, the dominant paid surface. Performance is governed by product data quality far more than by bidding.
Shopping AdsPaid social
Demand creation, and targeting people who could not have searched for you because they did not know you existed. Judge it on incremental effect, not on the platform’s own attribution.
Paid socialWebsite and conversion design
The multiplier. A meaningful improvement here raises the return of every other line in the budget simultaneously.
Website designAnalytics and measurement
Not a channel, a prerequisite. Without trustworthy measurement, every other decision on this page is made on vibes.
GA4 setup/HOW TO SEQUENCE IT
ON A REAL BUDGET
The order below is not universal, but it is the order we recommend most often, and the reasoning transfers even where the specifics do not.
- Measurement first, always. Not because it is exciting, but because every decision after it is worse without it — and retrofitting measurement means throwing away the data you spent the intervening months generating.
- Then capture the demand that exists. Paid search will tell you within weeks whether people are searching and what they are worth. That is also the business case for the slower organic work.
- Then fix conversion. Once traffic is arriving, the site’s ability to convert it is measurable and improvable, and improvements apply retroactively to every channel.
- Then build the compounding channel. Organic search and content, funded by the knowledge of what converts that the previous two steps produced.
- Then create demand. Once you have exhausted what exists and you know your economics well enough to judge whether a more expensive acquisition is still worth it.
/HOW TO TELL
IF IT IS WORKING
Leading indicators move first and lie occasionally: impressions, clicks, cost per click, engagement. They are useful for spotting that something has changed, and dangerous as targets — every one of them can be improved by making the business worse.
Lagging indicators are what you are actually buying: qualified enquiries, closed revenue, cost per acquisition against margin, and customer lifetime value. They move slowly and are harder to attribute, which is precisely why reporting drifts toward the leading ones.
A monthly report that shows only impressions and clicks is not telling you whether the money worked. Ask for the lagging numbers, accept that attribution between channels will be imperfect, and be suspicious of any report where every channel independently claims the same conversions.
/FREQUENTLY ASKED
QUESTIONS
NOT SURE WHICH
CHANNEL YOU NEED?
That is the most common question we get, and it is answerable in one conversation rather than a proposal. Tell us what you sell, to whom, and what you are spending now — you will get a straight answer about where the next unit of budget is best spent, including when the answer is “not with an agency yet”.
- Services — everything we run, in one place
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- About us — how the agency works
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Start your journey
Tell us what you sell and what you spend. We will tell you where the next budget should go.