Digital Marketing

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing activities conducted through digital channels - websites, search engines, social media, email, mobile apps, and online advertising. In the influencer marketing context, understanding digital marketing as a whole is essential because influencer campaigns rarely operate in isolation: they are most effective when integrated with complementary digital channels that amplify, support, and measure their impact.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the umbrella category that includes:

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - paid search ads (Google Ads, Bing Ads) that appear when users search for relevant keywords. High intent, measurable, directly commercial.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - organic optimisation of website content to rank in search results. Long-term investment with compounding returns.

Social Media Marketing - both organic social media management (brand-owned channels) and paid social advertising (Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads).

Influencer Marketing - collaborating with creators to reach their audiences through trusted, native content. Bridges paid media and earned media.

Email Marketing - direct communication to a brand's subscriber list. Highest ROI channel for converting known prospects and retaining customers.

Display Advertising - banner and visual ads across websites and apps, typically bought programmatically on CPM.

Content Marketing - creating and distributing valuable content (blog posts, videos, guides) to attract and retain an audience organically.

Affiliate Marketing - performance-based partnerships in which publishers or creators earn commission on referred sales.

How Influencer Marketing Fits in the Digital Marketing Mix

Influencer marketing occupies a unique position in the digital marketing mix - it is neither purely paid media nor purely earned media:

• It has paid media characteristics (brands pay for access to creator audiences)
• It has earned media characteristics (the content is trusted, native, and peer-like - not a typical advertisement)
• It bridges awareness (reaching new audiences) and consideration/conversion (driving traffic and sales)

Within a full-funnel digital marketing strategy:

• Top of funnel: Influencer + display advertising + social media → brand awareness
• Mid funnel: SEO + content marketing + influencer reviews → consideration
• Bottom of funnel: SEM + email + affiliate/influencer promo codes → conversion
• Retention: Email + ambassador programs + community → loyalty

The Integration Advantage

Brands that treat influencer marketing as an isolated channel miss its full potential. When integrated:

• Influencer + paid social: Creator content run as paid ads (whitelisting) outperforms traditional ad creative by 2–5x on average
• Influencer + SEO: Creator-published reviews and mentions build backlinks and brand search volume that improve organic rankings
• Influencer + email: Creators can drive newsletter sign-ups; brand email lists can be used to build lookalike audiences for paid amplification of influencer content
• Influencer + SEM: High search volume generated by influencer campaigns (audiences who see a product and search it) lifts paid search performance

A digital marketing strategy that allocates budget across channels without considering these integration effects leaves significant value uncaptured.

TANKE, an influencer marketing agency in Paris, writes this glossary from the campaigns it runs for brands since 2014. Talk to us about your project.