What is Digital Marketing?
You have probably heard the phrase ‘Digital Marketing’ used a lot in recent times, you know it’s the way to grow and online business, but what actually is it?
The key difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing mediums is that digital marketing campaigns are fully measurable from the outset, with exact data and analysis available to ensure campaign optimisation and better return on investment,
Online marketing options
Digital marketing continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace, key online marketing channels include
Website marketing
Email marketing
Pay-Per-Click advertising
Search engine optimisation
Social Media
Content marketing
Website Marketing
A website is the basis of all digital marketing campaigns and the first stage if any journey into digital marketing. A good website alone is an outstanding marketing tool for your business but in addition to this it’s the medium on which you can execute other online marketing campaigns such as email, pay-per-click and search engine optimisation.
Your website is your virtual shop front. It should represent your business, brand and products in the best possible way. It should be user friendly, fast and responsive to display well on different types of devices.
Once you have a website live your next step is to come up with a digital marketing plan, designed to promote your website, brand and content with the goal of generating more traffic, leads and customers.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimising your website for search engines, ensuring that your site moves higher up results pages. By helping a website rank higher in the search results SEO helps to get organic (free) traffic from search engines to your site.
There are number of elements to SEO including finding the keywords that generate traffic to your website, making your site friendly to search engines, building links and marketing the unique value of your site.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing channels and an excellent tool for engaging potential customers and people interested in your brand.
Email marketing should not be confused with spam or junk mail - it targets only people who have expressed an interest in your business and/or product and have given permission for you to keep in touch.
By using other digital marketing methods you can successfully generate leads to be added to your email list - leads which may turn into customers through direct email marketing.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) allows your business to reach potential customers online on a number of networks through paid ads.
You can run PPC ads on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn amongst others and show your ads only to people searching for keywords related to your products, services or brand.
PPC campaigns allow specific targeting of users allowing you full flexibility. You can segment users by age, gender, location or specific interests.
Every time a user clicks on your ads, you pay a fee to the provider - you only pay for ads served to the users you have targeted.
Google ads and Facebook and currently the largest providers of PPC advertising.
Content marketing
Content marketing allows brands to reach potential customers through the use of content that is relevant to them.
Content is usually published to your website and then promoted through other online channels such as social media, email marketing and PPC ads.
Content marketing can take the form of blogs, podcasts, infographics, eBooks and more. By publishing relevant content, brands can capture and maintain customer interest with a view to increasing brand loyalty and generating leads.
Social Media
Social media marketing allows you to reach people across various social networks either through engaging posts, paid ads or a combination of both.
Social media marketing is an excellent tool for brand awareness and establishing trust with potential customers and as you develop your brands social media presence you can use social media marketing to generate additional leads or even direct sales
What is a digital marketing strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is a detailed plan on how you can harness the power of digital marketing channels to achieve your business goals and objectives.
When you create a digital marketing plan you need to think about which channels to use, the level of resources, time and spend to assign to each channel, what to expect in terms of results and how you plan to analyse them.
A common mistake made by many beginners at the start of their online marketing journey is that they try to run with everything at once as it all seems so good! Without focus the results end up no where near as good as they could be. Many small business owners do not yet have the level of expertise or time to run digital marketing campaigns correctly. It’s crucial to ensure that budgets are spent on online marketing channels that are suitable for the individual business and brand.
The first step and cornerstone in any digital marketing strategy should be your website, responsive and easy to use it should represent your brand. Once you have your website looking and performing at it’s best you can then build a strategy using other online marketing channels.
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