The complete guide to digital marketing in the age of AI

Digital marketing is a big, complicated world these days, full of changing technologies, a bucketload of real-time data, and customer expectations that seem to evolve by the day.

In our 10th State of Marketing Report , 85% of marketers say customer expectations are higher than ever, 69% say it’s harder than ever to acquire new customers, and 64% say they struggle to keep up with changing customer behaviours.

One challenge is the sheer scale of it all. In 2024, just 2% of Australians didn’t have internet access, down from 16% in 2010. But the biggest hurdle is that customers now expect faster, more personal, and more connected interactions.

This means marketers need a new way to deliver magical moments at scale, ideally without losing every hour of the day to admin.

To get ahead, many marketing teams are now experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI). AI agents can spot patterns in data, automate workflows, keep customers engaged across channels, and help marketers respond in real time. This gives teams more ways to keep customers happy and conversations moving, all while freeing up time for high-value work.

In this guide, we’ll explore how digital marketing has evolved to meet customer needs and how agentic AI helps marketers work faster and personalise smarter in 2026.

• The benefits of AI-driven digital marketing
• The main types of digital marketing (and how AI elevates each)
• How to create your first digital marketing strategy
• How to elevate your digital marketing strategy with unified data + AI agents
• Power up your marketing with Agentforce
• FAQs

Digital marketing is still the most powerful way for businesses to connect with customers and personalise experiences online. Where brands once had to rely on billboards, print ads, radio, and television to reach broad audiences, digital channels let marketers:

• Personalise interactions more easily for different audience segments
• Test different approaches at a much lower cost
• Measure performance more clearly with digital analytics tools
• Adjust campaigns while they’re still running (rather than after the fact)
• Reach customers across more of the buying journey

Here’s the challenge: Many marketers now need to do this at a scale and speed that was once hard to imagine. Teams are working harder than ever, but the old process of gathering CRM platform data, then tweaking the campaign, wasn’t designed with today’s customers in mind.

Eighty-three per cent of marketers say that customers increasingly want two-way conversations instead of one-way messages, and 69% say they struggle to keep up with customer and prospect inquiries. It’s no longer just about getting in front of the right audience. It’s about hyper-personalisation, real-time responses, and connected journeys.

This leaves teams in a bind. Customers want faster and more personal interactions, but marketers only have so many hours in the day. It’s time for a new strategy.

For many teams, that strategy is embedding AI and, more recently, AI agents into marketing workflows. These agents can handle workflows autonomously, spot patterns sooner, personalise interactions, and keep customer experiences moving in the background, even when marketers lack the time to handle every interaction themselves. This delivers a bunch of exciting benefits:

Digital marketing helps brands personalise messaging based on customer behaviour, interests, and engagement history. AI pushes this further by helping teams segment audiences faster, see intent sooner, and create personalised experiences without building every variation by hand.

Responding in real time to customers across channels can be hard to scale. AI can help by surfacing real-time signals that help reps respond faster with more relevance. AI agents can even use live data to engage customers with two-way, cross-channel conversations, keeping leads warm between human touchpoints.

Small and midsize businesses often struggle to compete with big brands. Digital marketing with AI helps level the playing field. With a clear digital marketing strategy, businesses can use AI to target more precisely and get more from every dollar they spend, even with a small starting budget.

One of digital marketing’s biggest strengths is that you can test campaigns and improve the results, but modern marketers need to know what’s happening in real time. AI can bridge this gap by surfacing issues sooner, recommending changes, and helping teams refine messaging on the fly, well before a report comes in.

In the past, sales and marketing often worked in silos, connected by handoffs and service level agreements (SLAs). But with unified data, shared dashboards, and AI agents that can carry context across departments, teams can align on the same customer signals and create smooth journeys from first interaction to post-purchase.

One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing AI is the time it frees up for your teams. Automation and AI agents handle the admin and reporting, so marketers get more time to focus on creative strategies and delivering magical customer moments.

Seventy-five per cent of marketers use at least one form of AI. And while only 13% of marketers currently use AI agents, high-performers are 1.9x more likely to do so than underperformers. The teams getting the most from their marketing are those using AI agents to move faster, personalise smarter, and claim back time for high-value work.

You can use dozens of digital marketing channels to carry out your strategy, including social media sites, SMS, and more. The sheer number of options can be overwhelming.

Below are explanations of five basic types of digital marketing: social media marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), native advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and email marketing. We’ll also take a look at how AI can support each to help businesses build out faster, more engaging, and more connected customer experiences.

Remember, digital marketing is customisable and easy to change. If a strategy isn’t as successful as you’d like, rethink your plan, change platforms or tactics, and try something new.

Social media marketing leverages platforms like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram to build connections with potential customers and drive leads or sales.

B2C digital marketing often uses social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest to attract customers directly and speed up the buyer journey. In comparison, B2B marketers might use social platforms like LinkedIn to find leads, engage decision-makers, and build trust over a much longer sales cycle.

There are two main types of social media marketing to be aware of:

• Inbound social media: Posting educational information, sharing resources, using paid ads (such as those promoting a lead gen campaign), and even sharing funny memes are all methods that can help you build a relationship with your audience.
• Outbound social media: Commenting on other social media profiles or participating in hashtag conversations are modern takes on the classic “interruption” style of outbound marketing, which helps with brand awareness and brand building.

Nearly every business, from small ecommerce brands to large enterprise organisations, can use social media to drive customer engagement, leads, and sales. Here are the main benefits of social media marketing:

• Detailed targeting: Most platforms allow marketing teams to target ideal customer profiles based on demographics, interests, location, and language. This prevents wasting ad spending to reach audiences that aren’t interested in your campaign.
• Ability to build brand awareness and trust: Consumers don’t generally make a purchase the first time they hear about a brand. With social media, you can reach your audience multiple times as they move through the sales funnel.
• Affordable approach: Social media marketing can be done with little to no budget. While you have to pay for ads, brands can post and interact with consumers for free through brand accounts.
• Easy-to-monitor results: Social media platforms and third-party tools offer analytics and tracking dashboards so you can monitor results, track interactions, and better understand your audience.

AI can elevate these benefits by helping teams manage social engagement in real time.

For instance, an agent within Agentforce Marketing could spot a spike in comments on a product post and flag it to your team so they can capitalise on the opportunity. Or, if a customer asks a question on Instagram, the agent could respond instantly, continue the conversation over DMs, and pass the lead to a rep when the prospect is ready for a sale.

Agentic workflows like these help brands meet modern customer expectations while giving marketers more bandwidth to focus on one-to-one interactions.

SEO is the strategy of helping your website appear in results when users look up a word or phrase in search engines like Google and Bing. It combines a few key tactics, like:

• On-page SEO: Creating valuable content on your pages based on the keywords, questions, and topics your audience is searching for
• Off-page SEO: Using signals outside of your website, like backlinks, PR, news announcements, or social media, to drive SEO results
• Local SEO: SEO that helps local businesses, such as family restaurants, appear in local search results when people enter queries like “restaurants Adelaide”
• Technical SEO: Optimising your website’s structure and speed to make it easier for search engines to crawl, index, and understand the contents of your pages

Seems simple enough, but there’s a caveat here. The rules are now a bit different.

Today, AI overviews (AIOs) often appear at the top of search results pages to answer concerns faster. Think of them as snapshots that provide key information and links for users to dig deeper. They can shape what a user sees before they ever scroll down.

This changes how far consumers will hunt for information, and that presents a challenge. According to Pew Research , users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. In contrast, those who didn’t encounter an AI summary clicked on a standard website link 15% of the time.

This shift is spreading beyond Google, too. LLMs, like ChatGPT and Gemini, let users search in a more conversational way and get answers without having to click a blue link.

Thinking of hanging up the SEO gloves? Hang on a second. There is an opportunity.

AI overviews and LLMs still rely on published web content that they can interpret and cite. They also link their sources directly within answers, so businesses that are included in AI answers will be the first port of call when a customer needs to learn more.

The solution? When you’re building out your SEO strategy, add a fifth component:

• AI SEO: Here, you structure content so AI-driven search experiences can understand, trust, and surface it in summaries, and link to your site as the source. The goal now is clear writing, credibility, and content that answers questions directly.

Eighty-eight per cent of marketers say they’re now in the process of optimising for AI-driven search experiences. When you can make your content easier for AI-driven search to use, you give your brand a faster way to win customer attention and get those early conversations moving.

And if you’re wondering how AI itself can help with this process, see how AI for SEO can help you transform your strategy and get your business in front of more customers, faster.

Native advertising is paid marketing that looks like organic content. It aims to fly under the radar, seamlessly blending in with surrounding content so it fits in with what the user is already asking or doing. See the sponsored results below for an example.

Native ads aren’t deceitful. They still make their paid status clear with labels like “promoted” or “sponsored”. But because they match the format or content of the platform around them, they can feel less disruptive than a pop-up or cold call. Types include:

• Sponsored articles
• Top-of-the-page paid search results
• Recommended content suggestions
• Promoted listings
• Sponsored social media posts

When done well, native advertising can cut through the noise by providing customers with a better user experience, one that blends in with what they’re already reading or watching rather than distracting them from it. This is crucial today, when customers want organic, two-way engagement rather than one-way messaging.

What makes a good native ad? It’s all about creativity and relevance. Here are four tips:

• Have a message: Make sure your content has value. Think about your target audience and craft a message they’ll find valuable.
• Match the platform: Your native ad should suit the format and context of the platform you show it on.
• Make it visually appealing: Images and videos can help your native content earn attention and build trust without feeling intrusive.
• Keep it relevant to the moment: Native ads work best when they’re personalised to what your audience is reading, watching, or browsing at the time.
• Don’t make it a dead end: Your ad should lead naturally into the next step, whether that’s a resource or website page. Make it a starting point for a connected journey.

AI can strengthen this further by helping teams tailor native ads in real time based on live customer data. For instance, with Agentforce Marketing, an agent could spot which audiences are engaging most with your ad and suggest an adjustment to the messaging in flight, all while routing high-intent prospects into a personalised follow-up journey.

PPC refers to using paid ads to reach a highly targeted audience. For example, you could create an ad campaign targeting potential customers who visit your favourite news site. You might also use Google Ads to target users who search for a specific term like “buy a new [brand name] laptop” or “best climbing shoes for bouldering”.

Unlike billboard or radio ads, where businesses pay up front, you only pay for PPC if a user clicks on your ad. Some platforms do charge by impression or view, but they’re rare. There are also several other benefits to consider:

• Track your traffic: Using Urchin Tracking Modules (UTM) parameters allows you to see where traffic from your ads goes and how often they convert.
• Make changes quickly: Did you make a mistake or want to test a new marketing approach? With PPC, you can change and relaunch ads in minutes.
• Reach a targeted audience: With paid ad platforms, like Google Ads and Bing, you can choose exactly who you want to reach based on your internal email address list, current customers, specific demographics, or onsite behaviour.
• Expand your reach: If you’re launching a new product or want to expand to a new market, PPC can help your business reach a wider audience.

The key to successful PPC ads is personalisation and optimisation over time. That starts with building unified customer profiles so you can target advertising with richer, more trusted first-party data.

From there, AI can step in to offer additional support. Using your connected customer data as a foundation, agents can track ad performance over time, recommend ways to tweak campaigns, and even pause ads that aren’t making enough impact.

Again, the benefit here is efficiency. Teams no longer need to spend their days manually tracking ad performance. AI handles the monitoring, so teams can spend more time in conversation with customers.

Email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing channels because it gives businesses a direct way to have conversations with their customers. This comes with a few key benefits, like:

• Complete control: Unlike SEO or social media, where other companies (Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter) control your connection and reach, email marketing lets you connect directly with consumers.
• Tailored outreach: Email marketing software makes it possible to send personalised emails to different audience segments based on interests, past browsing behaviour, or previous interactions.
• High ROI: Email marketing is still one of the most cost-effective digital marketing channels, as it gives businesses a simpler way to have back-and-forth conversations with customers and build connected journeys.
• Versatility: Email marketing is a great fit for every stage of the journey. For instance, it can drive traffic to your blog, promote a new Black Friday sale, remind a user of an abandoned cart, and ask for a review after a purchase.
• A natural fit for AI: Email marketing is perfect for AI. Teams can get support personalising subject lines, refining send times, segmenting audiences, and even triggering entire journeys automatically based on live customer signals.

To make your strategy a success, focus on two-way interactions. The age of “do not reply” is over. What customers want now are conversations that feel real and personal.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Only 55% of marketers say they frequently reply to customer emails. This reveals the gap between the kind of responsiveness customers want and what most teams have the bandwidth to deliver.

This is one area where AI agents can be truly revolutionary. With Agentforce Marketing, agents can draft email content based on live signals, answer questions by pulling business context, tailor recommendations across channels, trigger journeys automatically, and hand off to a human whenever the moment is right.

Essentially, it’s like an always-on, behind-the-scenes collaborator. This is more than marketing automation. It’s a way to ensure every customer, whatever their journey, gets an experience that feels personal, all the time. As Salesforce Product Marketing Manager Daisy Han put it at our 2026 Agentforce World Tour in Sydney:

The goal of an online marketing strategy today is to help you engage customers on the right channel at the right time. There are many ways to achieve this with advanced tactics, but despite everything, the basic foundation has never changed.

Here’s a simple seven-step guide to defining who you want to reach, where you want to market, and what you want your campaigns to achieve.

What do you want to accomplish? For example, do you want to increase traffic to your website, get more leads, increase sales, or launch a new product next quarter? Use the SMART framework to make these goals more actionable, timely, and relevant.

Your objectives will inform everything that follows, from the channels you use to the metrics you track. For instance, a strategy built to increase brand awareness will look very different from one designed for retention.

The next step is understanding who you want to reach and what they actually need from you. What kind of channels are they frequenting? Where do they tend to engage? What kind of content are they going to enjoy?

Build an ideal customer persona (ICP) that outlines the types of people or businesses you want to reach, including their needs, pain points, and preferred channels.

It’s okay not to have all the answers at this stage. The beauty of a digital marketing strategy is that you can continue to gather more data about your ideal customers over time.

Use your goals and target audience to choose the most effective channels to engage on.

For example, a B2B company might lean more heavily on LinkedIn, email, and a well-polished business website, whereas a retail brand might drift toward Instagram, SEO, paid ads, and influencer marketing. The goal is to choose the platforms where your audience is already paying attention.

How will you know that your campaign is reaching your goals? KPIs help marketers turn data into actionable insights. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to a blog through an email campaign, you could use traffic acquisition on your blog or email click-through rates to see how effective your strategies and campaigns are.

At this point, you’re ready to start creating content that supports the journey. This might be educational blog posts backed by keyword research, social media content on your audience’s preferred channels, live email campaigns that encourage replies, or paid ads to build rapid brand awareness.

In reality, you’ll often use a blend of all of these approaches. What matters is that everything you build has a purpose and is tailored to your audience’s needs.

Next, track the performance of your digital marketing strategy based on the KPIs you set earlier. Look for signs of what your audience is responding well to, what they aren’t, and which channels are performing best.

Tools like Google Analytics can help you track where traffic is coming from and whether visitors are converting once they arrive. Alternatively, platforms like Agentforce Marketing Analytics can give you more comprehensive insights into every aspect of your campaign performance, along with actionable recommendations to improve results.

Lastly, use the insights you’ve gathered to refine your strategy over time. That could mean testing new channels, adjusting your targeting, or even just trying new content styles.

Remember that digital marketing only gets better with time. It’s a good idea to try new avenues to see what works. The more data you collect, the easier it is to refine your approach in the future.

A strong digital marketing strategy should bring together content, email, social media, organic search, and paid media in a way that matches your audience and goals.

That bit has never changed, and it likely won’t for a long time. But what matters now is how you connect these touchpoints. Digital marketing is no longer a list of tactics and channels, each with its own approach. Marketers need to think about how customers travel across the entire journey and how each interaction can pick up where the last one left off.

Here’s how you can elevate your digital marketing strategy to make this possible.

Currently, only 60% of marketers in Australia have access to sales data, 59% to service, and 55% to commerce. This is a big hurdle for many businesses because it limits the data marketers have available to power real-time, connected experiences.

For this reason, your first major priority should be to join up all of these touchpoints. When browsing behaviour, purchase history, service interactions, and campaign engagement can all work together, marketers get a clearer view of what customers need and a stronger way to make every interaction feel personal and connected.

Salesforce’s Customer Data Platform, built into Agentforce Marketing, can help you connect your data across teams, build unified customer profiles, and activate that data in real time, where your teams already work.

This gives marketers the insight they need to personalise every interaction, sales and service teams the details required for a smooth handoff, and agents the foundation they need to take action based on live customer context. It’s a win no matter how you look at it.

Unified customer data is the start. The next step is turning that context into action while giving marketers enough time to focus on the moments that need a human touch.

Platforms like Agentforce Marketing are built to make this goal achievable. With our solution, AI agents can help marketers:

• Build niche audience segments using natural language prompts: One example is, “Show me customers who browsed tennis rackets but haven’t yet purchased”.
• Spot when campaigns aren’t doing too well: If an email journey starts losing momentum, an agent could flag the issue, explain it, and recommend a change.
• Keep every lead moving: An agent could capture a list of leads, prioritise them, and deliver the best-fit candidates to marketing and sales teams each morning.
• Power engagement: With AI-powered engagement, your agent can answer questions on your site and provide personalised recommendations. If a customer leaves the chat, the agent will remember the context, update your CDP, and follow up later via email.
• Act as the glue between your teams: Agents can carry context forward between teams and channels, so sales, service, and marketing can work as a single unit rather than separate departments.

The biggest benefit here is time. High-performing teams are using AI agents to reclaim eight hours a week, with many reporting more time for strategic work, experimentation, and developing deeper customer insights.

This is what agentic digital marketing is all about. Marketers get the context they need to meet customers where they are. Sales and service get the data to make every conversation count. Everyone gets more time to focus on the tasks that matter.

To learn more, see how Fisher & Paykel uses unified data and Agentforce to build long-lasting customer relationships.