Digital marketing examples: the 12 types explained with Australian brands
Examples of digital marketing include a Perth plumber’s website ranking on Google for “hot water repairs”, a Google Ads campaign for the same term, a furniture retailer’s abandoned cart email, a cafe’s Instagram Reels, a software company’s how-to blog posts and a YouTube ad you can skip. Anything that puts a business in front of customers through a search engine, a website, an inbox, an app or a social feed counts. This guide lists the main types (the 7 and the 12 you will see quoted), an Australian example of each, how SEO fits into the mix, and what a working strategy looks like for a small business.
What is digital marketing? (with an example)
Digital marketing is any marketing that reaches customers through internet-connected channels: search engines, websites, social platforms, email, apps and streaming media. It differs from traditional marketing (television, radio, print, letterbox drops) in two ways: you can aim it at a defined audience rather than everyone in a postcode, and you can measure what each dollar produced.
An example: a Perth landscaping business publishes a page about retaining walls, runs Google Ads for “retaining walls Perth”, posts before and after photos on Instagram, and emails past customers each spring with a maintenance checklist. Four channels, one goal, and each one can be tracked back to enquiries in Google Analytics.
Which of the following is an example of digital marketing?
If a marketing activity happens on a digital channel, it is digital marketing. This question comes up in coursework as often as it does in business, so here is the split.
Examples of digital marketing: a blog post written to rank in Google, a Google Ads campaign, a sponsored post on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or LinkedIn, an email newsletter or abandoned cart email, a YouTube pre-roll ad, an influencer reviewing a product, a Google Business Profile listing with reviews, and a push notification from a retailer’s app.
Not digital marketing: a television or radio commercial, a billboard or newspaper advertisement, a letterbox flyer or printed catalogue, and a trade show stand. Some activities cross over. A billboard with a QR code sends people to a landing page, and everything after the scan is digital marketing.
What are the 7 types of digital marketing (and the 12)?
The 7 types of digital marketing are SEO, search advertising (SEM or PPC), content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing and affiliate marketing. The 12 types add video marketing, mobile marketing, paid media and display advertising, audio and podcast marketing, and virtual and augmented reality marketing. Both lists describe the same industry, one just splits the channels more finely. The table shows where each type sits and what it looks like in practice.
| Type | In the 7 | In the 12 | What it looks like in practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search engine optimisation (SEO) | Yes | Yes | Earning rankings in Google’s unpaid results with content, technical fixes and links |
| Search advertising (SEM, PPC) | Yes | Yes | Paying for ads above the organic results in Google or Bing |
| Content marketing | Yes | Yes | Guides, articles, tools and videos that answer customer questions |
| Social media marketing | Yes | Yes | Organic posts and paid ads on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube |
| Email marketing | Yes | Yes | Newsletters, automated sequences, cart recovery and loyalty emails |
| Influencer marketing | Yes | Yes | Paying or gifting creators to feature a product with their audience |
| Affiliate marketing | Yes | Yes | Paying partners a commission for the sales or leads they refer |
| Video marketing | Within content | Yes | YouTube channels, product demos, Reels and Shorts, skippable ads |
| Mobile marketing | Within several | Yes | Apps, SMS, push notifications, mobile-first pages and location targeting |
| Paid media and display advertising | Within PPC | Yes | Banner, native and remarketing ads across websites and apps |
| Audio and podcast marketing | Within content | Yes | Podcast sponsorship, host-read ads, streaming audio ads |
| Virtual and augmented reality | Not listed | Yes | AR product try-ons and placement, virtual showrooms |
If you are asked for “the 7 types of digital marketing services”, the answer is the first seven rows, which are also the services most agencies sell as separate packages.
Examples of digital marketing by type
The examples below are Australian brands, described from what is visible on their websites, apps and channels. They show the shape of each tactic, not results.
SEO example: Canva
Canva, founded in Sydney, is one of the clearest SEO examples in the country. It publishes a landing page for almost every design job someone might search for (a birthday invitation, a resume, a business card) and each page lets you start designing immediately. The search intent and the product are the same thing, which is why those pages rank and convert.
Search advertising example: JB Hi-Fi
Search a specific product model and JB Hi-Fi appears in the Shopping results with a price and an image. That is search advertising for products: the ad is the listing, and it works because the searcher has already decided what they want. Google Ads works when the ad answers the exact search.
Content marketing example: Bunnings
Bunnings publishes step-by-step D.I.Y. guides and videos for projects like building a deck or installing a garden bed. Someone who searches how to do the job finds the guide, and the guide lists the products. The content is the marketing, and the retailer becomes the default answer for the how-to question. For more patterns like this, see our content marketing examples.
Social media marketing example: Frank Body
Frank Body, the Melbourne coffee scrub brand, built its early growth on customers posting photos of themselves using the product with the brand’s hashtag, then resharing the best of them. The customers made the content and the brand curated it.
Email marketing example: Who Gives A Crap and Qantas
Who Gives A Crap, the toilet paper subscription brand, sends emails that are funny, short and consistent with its tone, whether the message is a delivery update or a new product. People open them because they are entertaining, and every open protects recurring revenue. Qantas Frequent Flyer emails are the other model: personalised by points balance, status and past routes. That is segmentation, which is where email earns its return.
Influencer marketing example: Koala
Koala, the Sydney mattress and furniture brand, built its early brand on creators unboxing and reviewing its products on YouTube and Instagram, paired with its own playful video. The influencer content did the job a showroom would have done for a brand that had none.
Affiliate marketing example: Finder and Canstar
Finder and Canstar are affiliate marketing seen from the publisher’s side. They compare credit cards, loans, insurance and energy plans, and when a reader clicks through and applies, the provider pays a referral fee. For the provider, this is affiliate marketing: paying a commission for a customer rather than for an impression.
Video marketing example: Bellroy
Bellroy, the Melbourne wallet and bag maker, uses short product videos on its product pages showing exactly how each item opens, folds and carries, which answers the question a customer would otherwise ask in a shop.
Mobile marketing example: Woolworths
The Woolworths app with Everyday Rewards combines shopping lists, personalised offers, digital receipts and boosted points, and it notifies you when an offer is about to expire. The app is the channel and the notification is the message, which is what mobile marketing means in practice.
Paid media and display example: remarketing by any online retailer
Look at a pair of boots on an Australian retailer’s site, leave, and see the same boots in a banner on a news site the next day. That is display remarketing, the most visible form of paid media, and it works because the audience has already shown intent.
Audio and podcast example: sponsor reads on Australian podcasts
Australian podcast networks such as Mamamia and LiSTNR carry host-read sponsor messages, where the presenter reads the ad in their own voice and often includes a promo code so the sponsor can attribute sales.
Virtual and augmented reality example: furniture and eyewear try-ons
Furniture retailers, IKEA among them, offer AR placement in their apps so you can see a sofa in your own lounge room before you buy. Eyewear and beauty retailers offer virtual try-ons in the browser. AR is the least common type on this list, and it suits products where “will it fit” or “will it suit me” is the reason people hesitate.
How does SEO work in digital marketing?
SEO works by making your pages the best answer to a search, then making sure Google can find, read and trust them. Search engines crawl your site, work out what each page is about, and rank it against every other page on the same topic using relevance, quality, technical health and the links pointing to it.
It has three parts. Content: pages that answer the questions your customers type, in the words they use. Technical: a site that loads quickly, works on a phone, and has no broken pages or duplicate content blocking the crawl. Authority: links and mentions from other sites that show the page is trusted.
An example of SEO in digital marketing: a Perth physiotherapy clinic writes a page for each condition it treats, adds a location page for each suburb it serves, fixes its page speed, and gets listed by the local sports clubs it sponsors. Over months, the condition pages start ranking and bookings from search grow without paying per click. That is why SEO sits alongside Google Ads rather than replacing it: ads capture demand now, SEO captures it for years. Our SEO Perth page explains what an engagement includes.
What is AMP in digital marketing?
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, an open-source framework Google promoted for building stripped-down, fast-loading mobile pages. News publishers adopted it because Google’s Top Stories carousel favoured AMP pages for several years. Google later removed that requirement, and most sites now get the same speed from a well-built responsive page, so treat AMP as a historical tactic rather than a channel.
What does a digital marketing strategy look like? (example)
A digital marketing strategy is a written plan that names the audience, the goal, the channels, the budget split and the measures, then sets a review cadence. Here is a worked example for a Perth home builder.
- Audience: couples planning a first build or a knockdown-rebuild in Perth’s growth corridors.
- Goal: qualified enquiries for a design consultation.
- Channels: SEO for the display home and design pages, Google Ads on high-intent terms such as “home builders Perth” during business hours, Meta ads showing display home walk-through videos to people who visited the site, and a monthly email to past enquiries with new designs and land releases.
- Website: a landing page for each display home with a booking form, a floor plan and a video, tracked with call tracking and form events.
- Measures: enquiries by channel, cost per enquiry and consultations booked, reviewed monthly.
The strategy is the choice of channels and the reason for each one. The examples earlier in this guide are the tactics inside a plan like this.
What are the best examples of successful digital marketing campaigns?
The most quoted Australian examples are campaigns that people shared voluntarily. Metro Trains Melbourne’s “Dumb Ways to Die” started as a safety message and became a song, an animated video and a game that spread worldwide through sharing rather than media spend. Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” launched in Australia with first names printed on bottles, and the personalised bottle was designed to be photographed and posted. Tourism Australia’s “Dundee” campaign disguised a tourism ad as a Hollywood movie trailer and let the reveal drive the coverage.
What they share is a single idea simple enough to explain in a sentence, a reason for the audience to take part, and distribution planned around sharing.
How to do digital marketing: examples for a small business
Start with one channel that matches where your customers already look, and add a second only when the first is measured. For a service business in Perth, the usual order is:
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile, with photos, services and a steady flow of reviews.
- Publish a page for each service you offer, written to answer the questions a customer asks before booking.
- Run a small Google Ads campaign on your highest-intent terms and send the clicks to the matching service page.
- Set up Google Analytics 4 and conversion tracking so every call and form is counted.
- Collect email addresses from customers and send something useful once a month.
- Add social advertising once you have proof of what converts.
If you are unsure which of these applies to you, our guide to which digital marketing services you need walks through the decision.
When to hand this to an agency
Hand digital marketing to an agency when you have more than one channel running, when you cannot see in your own analytics which channel produced each enquiry, or when the time you spend managing ads and content is time taken from running the business. An agency should show you named people doing the work, reports from accounts you own, and a plan that says which of the types above it is using and why.
PWD has run digital marketing for Perth businesses since 2007, with SEO, Google Ads, social advertising, content and web design delivered in-house from our West Leederville office. We are a Google Premier Partner and ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified, and we do not lock SEO clients into 12 or 24 month contracts.
See how PWD’s services fit together
Every example in this guide maps to a service we run for Perth businesses, from SEO and Google Ads to social advertising, email, video and the website that all of it lands on. We start with a scoping call, and the quote follows the plan rather than the other way around.
Explore PWD’s digital marketing services, or call 08 6146 0195 to talk through which channels fit your business.
