Digital marketing comprises all planned activities carried out through internet-connected channels to promote a product, service or brand, acquire customers and maintain relationships with them. It is also referred to as internet marketing and online marketing. Search engines, social media, a company’s own website, email, SMS, messaging apps such as WhatsApp, and marketplaces are the main channels used. What distinguishes digital marketing from television, newspaper or outdoor advertising is the ability to choose who sees a message and track how many visits, telephone calls or sales it generates.
After understanding the definition, business owners usually ask which channel deserves a limited budget. A sound decision requires three things: knowing where each channel works in the customer journey, how results are measured, and which consent and disclosure rules apply to campaign messages and advertising partnerships in Türkiye. Once these are clear, you can decide where to start and how to judge the results.
How it differs from traditional marketing
A newspaper advertisement delivers the same message to everyone who reads it, and a roadside billboard to everyone who passes it; neither tells you how many people visited your store because of that message. Online, you can choose who sees your message based on location, age, interests, search terms or previous visits to your website. A furniture store in Ankara can run a search ad shown only to people in the city searching for “dining table”, instead of using a billboard on a busy street. With measurement in place, it can track the clicks, phone calls and orders generated by that ad separately.
Measurability also brings speed. You can see that an image or message is underperforming before a campaign ends and shift the budget to a better-performing ad; a printed brochure or a television commercial already on air does not offer the same flexibility. Another difference is two-way communication. Customers comment on your ads, send you messages and rate your products. Responding consistently to feedback builds trust; unanswered complaints can undermine the effort invested in advertising.
Budgeting is different too. You can start small and change daily budgets while campaigns run. Prices are not fixed: Google decides ad order through a new auction for every search; as the Google Ads help page explains, results can vary with the competition at that moment. As more competitors seek to reach the same audience, costs may rise. Television and outdoor advertising are still used for broad awareness; the two approaches do not have to be alternatives to one another.
Its relationship with performance marketing
Digital marketing covers every promotional activity conducted online, from sales listings to brand videos. Performance marketing is the part that focuses on measurable actions, such as a purchase, a completed form or a telephone call, and manages the budget according to the cost of that action. The answer to “what is digital marketing?” therefore includes performance marketing, but is not limited to it. A video campaign run to build brand awareness is also part of digital marketing, although its impact may not appear in the first week’s sales report.
For details of the concept and its business benefits, read our article on what performance marketing is and why it matters, while Pam Ajans’s Google Ads, Meta Ads and SEO work in this field appears on our performance marketing service page.
The main digital marketing channels
Thinking of channels in three groups makes it easier to decide how much time and budget to allocate to each. In marketing, these are known as paid, owned and earned media. Paid media is visibility you purchase: search, social media and marketplace advertising. Owned media covers your own channels: your website, social accounts, email list and phone contact list. Earned media is visibility gained through your work: organic search rankings, customer reviews, shares and press coverage. Paid visibility starts quickly but stops when the budget does; the other two grow more slowly, but build value that does not need to be purchased again every month.
Search engines: SEO and search ads
Someone searching Google for a product or service has already expressed their need in their own words. You can appear in search results in two ways. The first is through organic results; the work involved is called search engine optimisation, or SEO. Google describes SEO as helping search engines understand your content and helping users find your site and decide whether to visit it through search (Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide). Organic rankings cannot be bought; according to the document on how Google Search works, rankings are automated, and Google does not accept payment for higher positions. Its SEO Starter Guide also notes that some website changes take effect within hours, while others take months. SEO should therefore be planned as an investment that delivers over months.
The second option is search advertising. The Google Ads Help Center explains that search campaigns let you show ads to people actively searching online for your products and services. Ads can go live quickly; with conversion tracking correctly configured, they also reveal which search terms generate sales much sooner than organic work. For the scope of organic search services, see our SEO management page; for the paid side, see our Google advertising management page.
Social media and video advertising
Someone browsing Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube is not searching for you at that moment; your ad enters their feed. These channels suit introducing a new product that people are not yet searching for, showcasing visually compelling products, and reaching people who visited your site without buying. Ad images and video deserve dedicated attention; testing several different creative angles with the same audience teaches you more than concentrating the budget on a single ad.
The objective chosen when creating a campaign also shapes results. Meta's page explaining advertising objectives explains that you must tell the auction system what outcome you want from the ad, so it can find people more likely to take the relevant action. A store seeking sales but choosing an engagement objective may collect likes without generating orders. For Instagram and Facebook, see our Meta advertising management page, and for short-form video, read our TikTok advertising article.
Content marketing
The answers you provide to customers' pre-purchase questions are also a marketing channel. Product comparisons, usage and care guides, size charts, FAQ pages, and short product videos can earn search visibility; the same content also becomes material to share on social media and in email. A home coffee-machine retailer's guide comparing fully automatic and manual machines may bring someone who is deciding what to buy to the site, while its descaling guide may bring back a customer who already owns a machine. To assess content's contribution, track monthly organic traffic, newsletter signups from content, and these visitors' later purchases.
Email, SMS, and WhatsApp
These are channels for directly reaching people who have shared their contact details with you. Typical uses include order and shipping updates, abandoned-cart reminders, back-in-stock alerts, and seasonal campaigns. While advertising brings in new customers, these channels help prepare for their second and third orders; this is why building a consented customer list is part of marketing. Connecting to your e-commerce platform to automatically send abandoned-cart reminders, order and shipping notifications through WhatsApp, and campaign announcements to selected customers, Pushouse tools make this easier. Campaign messages require the recipient's prior consent; details and exceptions are covered in the rules section below.
Marketplaces
Marketplaces such as Trendyol, Hepsiburada, and Amazon Türkiye already have demand; customers often search for the product there. A marketplace can therefore be a fast sales channel, particularly for a new e-commerce business. In return, you pay commissions, face intense price competition, and communicate with customers within the marketplace's rules. Advertising systems such as Trendyol Ads and HepsiAd promote products within the marketplace. For store setup and marketplace advertising, visit our marketplace entry and advertising support page.
Influencer partnerships
An influencer whose followers match your audience can introduce your product to new people through the trust they have built. Choosing solely by follower count can be misleading: audience composition, whether comments come from real users, and previous brand partnerships reveal more. Give each collaboration a separate discount code or trackable link to measure results. In Türkiye, these posts must also clearly disclose that they are advertising.
Channel selection: are your customers looking for you?
The first question is whether people are already searching for your product or service. Air conditioner installation, steel doors, home removals and wedding photographers are needs that people type directly into a search box. For such businesses, search advertising and SEO are often the first destinations for the budget; marketplaces join them in e-commerce. Keyword Planner in Google Ads estimates how many monthly searches a term may receive, while Google Trends uses normalised data to compare how search interest changes over time.
If your product is new or people do not yet search for that need, search alone is not enough. A skincare product with a novel formula, a design-led accessory, or new software may fall into this category. First, you need to create demand; social and video ads, influencer partnerships, and content showing what the product does take the lead. As interest develops, branded searches may increase, bringing search advertising and SEO into play.
Existing customers are another starting point. For regularly replenished products such as coffee, pet food or cosmetics, a reminder timed to average consumption is one of the first things to test before seeking new customers. If you sell frequently repurchased products, start building a consent-based customer list from day one.
In business-to-business sales, buying decisions often require several people's approval and take time. Alongside search ads and SEO, content answering technical questions and consistent follow-up of sales enquiries are especially important. Our B2B marketing page also covers this process.
Set up measurement before advertising
Before advertising, ensure valuable website actions such as purchases, form submissions and phone calls are recorded. Google uses Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking; Meta uses the Meta pixel. If measurement code is missing or faulty, the platform cannot learn who purchases and manages the campaign using incomplete information.
Adding UTM parameters to links in email, SMS and WhatsApp messages or influencer posts makes that traffic appear separately in reports. A campaign link shared without parameters can disappear into another source in reporting. You can find examples of how pixels and UTM parameters work, together with the abbreviations you will encounter in reports, in the digital marketing glossary.
Likes, reach, and clicks tell you how many people an ad reached and how much interest it attracted. To see whether it generated sales, examine cost per sale or inquiry and its relationship with profit. The gross profit remaining from a sale sets the maximum you can spend on advertising to acquire it; if the customer buys again, that limit can be raised.
It is also normal for different tools to show different sales counts for the same period; one reason is that the same sale may be recorded on different dates. According to Google's help page on data discrepancies, Google Ads attributes conversions to the ad date, while other reporting tools use the conversion date. Add the “Conversions (by conv. time)” column to Google Ads for a more consistent comparison with tools such as Google Analytics.
Consent, registration, and ad disclosure rules in Türkiye
Campaign messages sent by email and SMS are legally defined as commercial electronic messages. Law No. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce states that these messages may be sent only with the recipient's prior consent, and recipients may opt out at any time without giving a reason. If someone provided contact details to be contacted, separate consent is not required for messages about changes, use, or maintenance related to goods or services they purchased. Merchants and tradespeople may also be contacted without prior consent, but they can exercise the right to opt out.
The Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages sets out the implementation details. Under the regulation, senders of commercial electronic messages register with the Commercial Electronic Message Management System (İYS). Messages may not be sent to recipients without consent recorded there, and unregistered consents are invalid. Consent collected through website membership or newsletter forms must also be entered into İYS within three business days. Notifications about purchases and delivery require no prior consent and are not checked through İYS, but must not promote products or services.
WhatsApp's own platform rules also apply. The WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy states that businesses may contact someone only if the person has provided a phone number or username and consented to receiving messages. It also requires honoring requests to block or stop communication.
Transparency is also required in partnerships with social media influencers. The Regulation on Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices requires, under the amendment that took effect on 1 August 2026, that influencer advertising be clear, understandable and identifiable. Posts must include either “Reklam” (Advertisement) or “Tanıtım” (Promotion), together with the advertiser's name or legal business name, or a disclosure such as “@[reklam veren] tarafından sağlandı.” (“Provided by @[advertiser].”) Posts made in exchange for free or discounted products rather than payment are also covered. The label must appear before other hashtags and where viewers can see it without scrolling. Regulations may change, so checking the current text before a campaign and obtaining legal support where needed is advisable.
A step-by-step plan to get started
Once channels and measurement are clear, we recommend this sequence for businesses allocating a regular budget for the first time:
- Define your goal as a measurable action: an online sale, quotation request, phone call or store visit. That definition determines how budgets and reports are evaluated.
- Prepare the foundation that will welcome visitors from your ads. A fast mobile site with clear product and pricing information, visible return and contact details, working tracking code and consent notices comes before advertising. If you are building a new site, our guide to steps to consider when setting up an e-commerce website completes this list.
- Choose one or two channels according to demand. Splitting a small budget across five channels may leave none with enough data for sound decisions.
- Set a testing period and budget. Allow sufficient outcome data to accumulate before evaluating; frequent changes based on a few days of fluctuations make it harder to see what works.
- Establish a weekly reporting routine. Place spend, order or lead volume, cost per sale and actual figures from your order system side by side in one table.
- Move budget to performing channels and ads, and stop those falling short. Invite acquired customers to return through consent-based channels.
Who will do the work is another decision. A business owner with time to learn can handle the basic setup; our e-commerce and advertising training lets those choosing this route learn most of these channels through their own business model. As channels and budgets grow, tracking, copywriting, creative production and reporting may exceed one person’s capacity. Hiring an in-house specialist or working with an agency becomes relevant at that point.
To discuss which starting channel makes sense for your business using your own data, contact the Pam Ajans team through the contact page.