Digital Marketing Explained
What is Digital Marketing?
Today, we live in a world today where we can access a vast amount of information at our fingertips. Search Engines such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, make it easy for consumers to find your business. If you’re not already online, then your competitors are ahead of you!
Why your competitors are beating you:
I want you to think about the biggest competitor in your industry and compare them to your business? What could your business be doing better? Your competitors are giving their clients value, a sense of professionalism, and ensuring a satisfactory experience. They do this through the means of Digital Marketing- advertising conveyed through digital channels such as websites, search engines, email, social media, and mobile apps.
How Will Digital Marketing Help Me?
Digital Marketing is essential to any business, as it demonstrates growth to the consumer. With Digital Marketing your business will be able to distribute information to your customers allowing your business to acquire new clients and grow your business.
Below are the different types of Digital Marketing that should lead back to your website:
Search Engine Marketing
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is considered to cover both PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The goal is to bring in traffic to your website, that’s why SEO and PPC work in conjunction to bring in traffic. PPC paid advertising, and SEO, both work by bringing in organic traffic
Search Engine Optimization
SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, works to make your businesses’ website optimized for search engines, like Google Bing and DuckDuckGo. SEO focuses on moving your listing up the search engine results page rankings to have better visibility for users searching for your website. People searching for a service or product don’t bother scrolling to page 2 of search engines, so SEO is essential to work if you want to generate more business from online searches. SEO is not a quick fix, the process will take time to yield results.
Pay Per Click
PPC, or Pay-per-click, is a form of advertising on search engines, like Google Bing and DuckDuckGo. PPC’s allow your search result to appear at the top of a Google Listing. It’s called PPC because your ad account is charged every time one of your adverts is clicked. The cost of each ad, or CPC (cost per click), varies on the quality score of your website and the selected keyword’s competition. PPC campaigns can be a short-term solution to drive traffic to your website to generate a lead, sell a product, or provide information. There are around 4 spots for Ads on Google, so getting your website in the for a selected keyword can be challenging. SEO work is about your ranking being ‘earned’, but PPC your ranking on the first page is bought.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the process of working on marketing through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (to name a few). Social media is ever growing, businesses online need to invest in social media marketing to build a customer base around their brand and reach new potential customers. Depending on your business type, there’s a social network out there for you. All businesses would do well to be on Facebook, but if you specialize in B2B, LinkedIn is the one for you. If you’re a ‘visual business’, then Instagram is the ideal.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing not about directly marketing products and services to customers, but rather creating valuable content that educates and provides the customer experience. It’s common for major brands to actively post blogs, images and videos relating to their business that are entertaining and informative too. This method establishes your business as a brand and essentially let’s you stand out to your customers. It’s like promoting your brand without trying sell anything behind your posts – simply providing information that is both enriching and engaging.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is a form of direct marketing which sends information, offers, blogs etc. directly to your mailing list’s inboxes. Email marketing is a great way of reaching your customers, interacting with them after purchases or even sending them a newsletter. Be warned, sending unsolicited emails will land you a place in the spam box. So, make sure you’ve gathered your mailing list by your own means and not from a third-party company. They need to be your customers or have opted into receiving your emails.
Influencer / Affiliate Marketing
Both influencer and affiliate marketing utilize those in a position of ‘power’, usually social media influencers or industry experts etc. This is to assist you in marketing a product or service to their audience. It’s become more and more popular in recent years, through sites like Instagram and YouTube, where companies will enlist a well-known influencer, to promote their products or services on their social pages or affiliate websites. These collaborations can involve giving away unique discount codes, sponsored blog posts or prize draws etc. for the influencer’s audience, to build some buzz around your brand and business.
Viral Marketing
You know those viral videos and pictures you see online? Some companies use those as a smart form of marketing. Whether it’s teaming up with a popular viral content creator or promoting it themselves, the idea of viral marketing is to create something shareworthy – by making it funny, on trend and topical. The end goal is to get people to talk about your brand.
Display Advertising
Display advertising is something that spans across all forms of digital marketing we’ve mentioned above. Whether it’s mobile social ads, mobile search ads or even mobile TV and radio ads, every form of digital marketing we’ve mentioned can be transferred to mobile. Your able to find customers that may have views your website or share interest in your service and market out to them via Ad Placement on various website.