Given how easy the internet has become, would you believe that the number of people using the internet every day is growing?
It is. According to Pew research, adults’ internet use has increased by 5% over the past three years. Even though we often say this, offline marketing is less effective than it was in the past.
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Marketing is about connecting with your audience at the right place and time. You need to reach them online, as they are spending their time online.
Enter online marketing — that is, any type of marketing that exists online.
702 Pros is a big believer in Inbound Marketing. It’s a great way to engage and delight customers online. We still receive many questions from people around the globe about online marketing. We decided to answer their questions. You can click the links below to head directly to each question or continue reading to learn more about digital marketing.
How do you define digital marketing?
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is also known as online marketing. It refers to any marketing activities that take place on the internet. Digital channels like search engines, social media and email are used by companies to reach current and potential customers. This includes text and multimedia communication.
While a seasoned inbound marketer may say that inbound marketing is almost the same as digital marketing, there are some differences. Through talks with business owners and marketers in the U.S. and U.K., Asia and Australia, as well as New Zealand, I have learned a lot about these small differences.
What is digital marketing to a business?
Digital marketing is critical for your brand and business. Every brand seems to have a website. Even if they don’t have one, they should at least have a digital presence on social media or a digital advertising strategy. Consumers now expect digital content and marketing to be a reliable way to learn more about brands. Digital marketing offers so many plans and options that you can be imaginative with your marketing budget.
Digital marketing refers to the use of multiple digital channels and tactics to connect customers online. Digital marketers who are the best have clear understanding of how each campaign supports their overall goals. Marketers can support larger campaigns through both paid and free channels, depending on their goals.
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For example, a content marketer can create blog posts that generate leads using a newly created ebook. These blog posts might be promoted by the company’s social marketing manager via organic and paid posts on their social media accounts. Maybe the email marketer creates emails to give more information about the company to those who have downloaded the ebook. In a moment, we’ll discuss these digital marketers more.
Why is digital marketing so important?
You can reach more people with digital marketing than traditional advertising and target those who are most likely buy your product or services. It’s also more affordable than traditional advertising and allows you to track your success and pivot as needed.
Digital marketing offers several major benefits:
- Focus your efforts on only the prospects most likely to buy your product or services.
- It is more affordable than outbound advertising methods.
- Digital marketing helps you compete with larger brands and even levels the playing field in your industry.
- Digital marketing can be measured.
- It is easier to modify and adapt a digital marketing strategy.
- Digital marketing can increase your conversion rates as well as the quality of your leads.
- Digital marketing can be used to engage audiences at all stages.
Let’s get into them.
1. Focus your efforts on only the prospects most likely to buy your product or services.
You have little control over the audience that sees your advertisement if it is placed on television, in a magazine or on billboards. Although you can measure certain demographics, such as the typical readership of the magazine or the demographic in a particular neighborhood, it is still difficult to know what the actual numbers are.
Digital marketing allows you to target and identify a very specific audience and then send them personalized, high-converting messages.
You might use social media’s targeting tools to target a specific audience based on certain variables, such as gender, age, location, and interests. You might also use SEO strategies or PPC to show ads to people who have shown interest in your product/service or searched for keywords related to your industry.
Digital marketing allows you to do the research required to identify your buyer persona and helps you fine-tune your marketing strategy over time so that you reach prospects who are most likely to purchase. Digital marketing allows you to market to sub-groups of your larger target audience. This is particularly useful if you want to sell multiple products and services to different buyer personas.
2. It is more cost-effective than traditional outbound marketing strategies.
You can track campaigns and reduce the amount you spend on certain channels if they aren’t showing high ROI. This is not possible for traditional advertising. It doesn’t really matter how well your billboard performs; it still costs the same regardless of whether it converts.
Digital marketing gives you complete control over how you spend your money. Instead of spending money on PPC campaigns, perhaps you decide to invest in design software to create high-converting Instagram posts. Digital marketing strategies allow you to constantly pivot so that you don’t waste money on channels that don’t work.
Digital marketing is, by and large, more cost-effective and offers unique opportunities to make sure you get the best bang for your buck.
If you are a small-business owner with a low budget you might consider investing in SEO, social media, and blogging. These three strategies can provide high ROI with very little investment.
3. Digital marketing helps you compete with larger brands and even levels the playing field in your industry.
It’s difficult to compete with big brands if you are a small business. Many of these companies have millions of dollars invested in national campaigns and television commercials. There are many opportunities to surpass the big players with strategic digital marketing strategies.
You might, for example, identify long-tail keywords related to your product or services and create high-quality content that will help you rank at the top of search engines for those keywords. Search engines don’t care about which brand is the biggest. Instead, they will prioritize content that resonates with the target audience.
4. Digital marketing can be measured.
Digital marketing gives you a complete, end-to-end view of all metrics that may matter to your company, including impressions and clicks. This is one the greatest benefits of digital marketing. Traditional advertising is useful for certain purposes, but its greatest limitation is the measurability.
Digital marketing, unlike other offline marketing strategies, allows marketers to view real-time results. You’ll be able to see the exact number of people who actually read your advertisement if you have ever placed it in a newspaper. It’s impossible to determine if the ad is responsible for any sales.
Digital marketing allows you to measure the ROI of virtually any aspect of your marketing activities.
These are just a few examples.
Website traffic
Digital marketing allows you to see exactly how many people have visited your website’s homepage. This is possible with digital analysis software that can be found in marketing platforms such as 702 Pros.
In addition to other digital data, you can see which pages they have visited, what device they used, and where they came.
This information allows you to decide which channels you should spend the most time on based on how many people are visiting your site. If 10% of your traffic comes from organic search, then you will need to invest some time in SEO to increase this percentage.
It’s difficult to see how people interact with your brand offline before they make a purchase or have a conversation with you. Digital marketing allows you to identify patterns and trends in people’s behavior prior to them reaching the end of their buyer’s journey. This means you can make better decisions about how you attract them to your site right at the beginning of the marketing funnel.
Lead generation and Content Performance
Envision that you have created a product brochure, and sent it out through people’s mailboxes. This brochure is an example of content, although offline. Problem is, you don’t know how many people read your brochure and how many people tossed it in the garbage.
Imagine that you were able to display the brochure on your website. It’s possible to track how many people visited the page it is hosted on your website and collect contact information of those who downloaded it using forms. You can measure the engagement with your content and generate qualified leads by downloading it.
Attribution Modeling
A digital marketing strategy that is effective and uses the right technologies and tools allows you to track all sales back to the first digital touchpoint of a customer with your company.
This is what we call attribution modeling. It allows you to identify trends and patterns in how people search for and purchase your product. This will help you make better decisions about which parts of your marketing strategy need more attention and which parts of the sales cycle require more refinement.
It is crucial to connect the dots between sales and marketing. According to Aberdeen Group companies that have strong sales and marketing alignment experience a 20% annual increase rate, while companies with weak alignment see a 4% decrease in revenue. Your business’ bottom line will likely reflect on how digital technologies can help improve the customer journey throughout the buying cycle.
5. It is easier to modify and adapt a digital marketing strategy.
It takes a lot of tries to develop a marketing strategy. You will generally follow that strategy through to completion, then allow it to take affect and then evaluate its results. Sometimes things don’t go as planned. Sometimes, you might realize that something is wrong with your calculation, an assumption was wrong, or the audience didn’t react as expected. It is very beneficial to be able to adjust or pivot the strategy as you go along. This will save you from having to do it all over again.
Digital marketing offers many perks, including the ability to easily change your strategy. Digital marketing is much less complicated than traditional marketing methods like billboard advertising or mailers. If an online advertisement isn’t performing as expected, you can easily adjust it or pause the program to get better results.
6. Digital marketing can increase your conversion rate as well as the quality of your leads.
Digital marketing makes it less complicated to measure your marketing efforts. This makes increasing your conversion rate even simpler. You can measure the effectiveness of each tactic to help you develop better strategies. Your conversion rate will improve by continuously refining your methods. Online marketing is a great way to ensure that your conversion rates are high.
All leads are not created equal. Digital marketing lets you to target specific customers that will result in higher quality leads and more likely customers. Your conversion rate will increase if you connect your business to the most valuable leads.
7. Digital marketing can be used to engage audiences at all stages.
Engaging your audience early is crucial. The first step of the buyer’s journey is to establish a connection. This helps move the lead through the sales funnel. Digital marketing makes it possible to do that from beginning to end and every step in between.
You can track the entire buying process of your customers through online channels. It is crucial to understand and analyze how customers move and operate in order to convert leads. You can track customers through digital marketing. Even if they don’t convert at the beginning, it helps to ensure that they are connected with your company.
Different types of digital marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click (PPC).
- Affiliate Marketing
- Native Advertising
- Marketing Automation
- Email Marketing
- Online PR
- Inbound Marketing
- Sponsored Content
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
- Instant Messaging Marketing
Here is a quick overview of some of the most popular digital marketing strategies and the channels that are involved in them.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is the process of optimizing your website so it appears at the top in search engine result pages. This will increase the organic traffic (or free) your website receives. SEO can be used to benefit websites, blogs, infographics, and other channels.
SEO can be approached in many ways to bring qualified traffic to your site. These are:
- On-page SEO: This SEO type focuses on the content “on the page” while looking at a website. You can answer readers’ questions by researching keywords to determine their search volume, intent (or meaning) and rank at the top in search engine result pages (SERPs).
- Off-page SEO: This SEO type focuses on the activities that take place “off the pages” in order to optimize your website. What activity could impact my website’s ranking? You might ask. You might ask. How high you rank for keywords that you care about will depend on the number of backlinks you receive from other publishers and their relative authority. You can build backlinks by networking with other publishers and writing guest posts (and linking back) on these sites.
- Technical SEO: This SEO type focuses on your website’s backend and how it is coded. Images compression, structured data and CSS file optimization all form technical SEO that can improve your website’s loading time , which is an important ranking factor for search engines such as Google.
Check out this case study from Canva to see how you can successfully integrate SEO into your digital marketing strategy.
2. Content Marketing
This term refers to the creation and promotion of content assets with the goal of increasing brand awareness, traffic growth and lead generation.
You want to learn how to apply content marketing to your company? 702 Pros Academy’s free content marketing training resource page .
These channels can be a part of your content marketing strategy:
- Blog posts. Writing and publishing articles for a company blog can help you show your industry expertise and drive organic search traffic to your business. You have more chances to convert website visitors into leads that you can use for your sales team.
- Ebooks & whitepapers: Ebooks & whitepapers and similar long-form content help website visitors to be more educated. You can also exchange content with readers to get their contact information. This will generate leads for your company, and help move people along the buyer’s journey.
- Infographics Sometimes readers want to see, not hear. Infographics can be used to aid website visitors in visualizing a concept that you wish to teach them.
- Video or audio content: Radio and television are both popular channels for digital marketing. Your audience can be greatly expanded by creating content that can be shared online via video or radio listeners.
Stumped? Click below to download 150+ content creation templates
3. Social Media Marketing
This promotes your brand and your content via social media channels to grow brand awareness and drive traffic. It also generates leads for your business.
702 Pros is a tool that allows you to connect social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn in one place, if you are new to these platforms. You can schedule content for multiple channels simultaneously and view analytics right from the platform.
702 Pros allows you to connect social accounts for posting. You can also integrate social media inboxes with 702 Pros so that you can receive your direct messages all in one place.
You can use the following channels in social-media marketing:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Instagram
- Snapchat
- Pinterest
These social media platforms can be used by many marketers to create a viral campaign. Viral marketing is about partnering with a well-known content creator or participating in a movement that has a large audience. In order to make something that’s shareable, the goal is to spread it across social media channels.
Are you unsure how to get started in social media marketing? Get our social media content calendar for free to get your social media strategy started.
4. Pay Per Click (PPC).
PPC lets you drive traffic to your site by paying a publisher for each click of your ad. Google Ads is the most favored type of PPC. This allows you to purchase top spots on Google’s search engine result pages for a fee “per click” for the links you place. You can also use PPC through the following channels:
- Paid Ads on Facebook: Users can pay to have a video, an image post or slideshow customized by Facebook. This will be published to the news feeds for people who are similar to your business.
- Twitter Ads campaigns: Twitter users can pay to have a set of posts or profile badges placed in the news feeds for a particular audience. Each post is dedicated to a specific goal. Website traffic, Twitter engagement, Twitter followers and app downloads can all be goals.
- Sponsored messages on LinkedIn: Linkedin users can pay to send messages to certain LinkedIn users based upon their industry and background.
PPC can be difficult to understand at first. We have created a beginner-friendly guide that will help you get started. It’s available below.
5. Affiliate Marketing
This type of performance-based marketing allows you to earn a commission by promoting the products or services of another person on your website. These are affiliate marketing channels:
This is part the relatively new wave in Influencer marketing . A campaign that includes influencers is a great way to use affiliate marketing. Your digital campaign can be elevated by finding the right content creators.
6. Native Advertising
Native advertising is a kind of advertisement that is primarily content-driven and features on a platform alongside non-paid content. BuzzFeed sponsored posts are an example of native advertising. However, many people consider social media advertising “native” — Facebook Advertising and even Instagram Advertising.
7. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is software that automates your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments are able to automate repetitive tasks that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do manually.
- Email newsletters: Automation allows you to send email to your subscribers. You can shrink or expand your contact list to ensure that your newsletters only reach those who are interested.
- Schedule social media posts: Posting frequently is a must if you want to increase your company’s visibility on social networks. Manual posting can be a tedious task. Social media scheduling software make it easy to push your content to social media channels. This allows you to spend more time on content strategy.
- Lead nurturing workflows: Converting leads into customers can take time. You can automate this process by sending leads targeted emails and content when they meet certain criteria.
- Campaign tracking & reporting:Marketing campaigns may include many different people, emails and content. Marketing automation allows you to organize everything you do by campaign and track its performance over time based on how each component has progressed.
8. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a process for companies to engage with their customers. Email marketing is used to promote content, events and discounts, as well to direct people to the company’s website. Email marketing campaigns can include the following types of emails:
- Blog subscription newsletters.
- Follow up emails sent to website visitors who have downloaded something.
- Emails to customers are welcome
- Loyalty program members receive holiday promotions
- Customer nurturing via tips or similar emails.
Get our free guide to email marketing:
9. Online PR
Online PR refers to the process of securing earned coverage online through blogs, digital publications, and other content-based websites. It is similar to traditional PR but online. To maximize your PR efforts, you have the following options:
- Reporter outreach through social media: For example, talking to journalists via Twitter is a great way for you to build a relationship that will result in earned media opportunities for your business.
- Engaging online reviews about your company: Regardless of whether the review is positive or negative, you might instinctively avoid touching it. Engaging company reviews can help you humanize your brand, deliver powerful messaging, and protect your reputation.
- Engaging comments in your personal blog or website: In the same way that you would respond to reviews about your company, responding directly to people reading your content is a great way to start productive conversations around your industry.
It can be difficult to start a PR department if you don’t have one. We’ve got your back. Get our free PR Kit below.
10. Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a process of marketing that aims to attract, engage and delight customers at all stages of their buying journey. To create an experience for customers that works with them, you can use any of the digital marketing tactics listed above. These are classic examples of how inbound marketing compares to traditional marketing.
- Blogging vs. pop-up ads
- Video marketing vs. commercial advertising
- Email contact lists vs. spam
11. Sponsored Content
Sponsored Content lets you, as a brand, pay another entity or company to create and promote content about your brand or services.
Influencer marketing is a popular form of sponsored content. Sponsored content is when a brand sponsoring an industry influencer to post posts or videos about the company on social networks.
A blog post, article, or other type of sponsored content, could also be used to highlight a topic or service or brand.
12. Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
A promotion is a great way to reach potential leads who are searching for products or businesses that are related to yours. Payed advertising and SEO can be great ways to promote your business so you can capitalize on future leads. Paid ads placed on search engines are another way to increase website traffic. Bing Ads and Google Ads are the most popular SEM services. These paid ads appear seamlessly at the top of search engine result pages and are instantly visible. This is an example of native advertising.
13. Instant Messaging Marketing
It’s easy to market your products via messaging platforms, even if you don’t have their phone number. This is a quick way to inform your audience about flash sales, new products or updates regarding their orders. It’s also an easy way for customers to reach out to customer service if they have any questions. You have the option to send messages to your mobile phone via text, or through messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
What is a digital marketer?
Digital marketers are responsible for driving brand awareness and lead generation via all digital channels (both paid and free) that are available to a company. These channels include social media and company websites, search engine rankings, email advertising, display advertising, and company blogs.
Digital marketers usually focus on one key performance indicator (KPI), for each channel, so that they can accurately measure company performance across all channels. For example, a digital marketer responsible for SEO measures their website’s “organic visitors.” One generalist may be able to handle many of these digital marketing strategies in small businesses. These tactics are more effective in larger companies where there are multiple specialists who focus on one or two digital channels.
These specialists are just a few examples:
SEO Manager
The main KPIs for organic traffic
SEO managers are responsible for getting the business on Google. This person may work directly with content creators in order to make sure that the content they create ranks well on Google.
Content Marketing Specialist
The main KPIs are: Time on page and overall blog traffic. Subscribe to YouTube channels
The content marketing specialists are digital content creators. They keep an eye on the company’s blog calendar and develop a content strategy that incorporates video. These professionals often collaborate with other departments to ensure that the launches of products and campaigns are supported by promotional content on every digital channel.
Social Media Manager
Principal KPIs: Follows. Impressions. Shares
Although it is obvious from the title that a social media manager plays a key role, the specific industry they work in will determine which social networks they manage. Social media managers create a schedule for posting company written and visual content. This employee may also collaborate with the content marketing specialist to create a strategy on what content to post to which social networks.
(Note: According to the KPIs, “impressions” refers the number of times that a business’s post appears in a user’s newsfeed.
Marketing Automation Coordinator
Principal KPIs: Campaign click-through rate, email open rate, and lead-generation (conversion rate) rate
Marketing automation coordinator is responsible for selecting and managing software which allows the entire marketing team to understand customers’ behaviour and measure their growth. Many of the above-described marketing operations can be performed separately, so it is important to have someone who can organize these digital activities into campaigns and track their performance.
Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Which Is It?
Inbound marketing uses digital marketing tools to engage and delight customers online. Digital marketing is a generic term that describes all online marketing strategies, regardless of whether they are inbound or not.
While digital marketing is often compared with inbound market, it does not distinguish between the ‘inbound and ‘outbound’ approaches. Digital marketing is a broad term that covers all digital marketing, while inbound marketing refers to a strategy.
Digital outbound strategies aim to get a marketing message across the internet to as many people as possible, regardless of its relevance or acceptance. You may see banner ads at the tops of many websites that try to promote a product or offer to people who aren’t ready.
Marketers who use digital inbound strategies, on the other hand offer valuable assets online to draw their customers to their sites. A blog is one of the most effective inbound digital marketing tools. It allows your website to capitalize upon the terms that your ideal customers search for.
Digital marketing works for all businesses
Digital marketing is applicable to any business, regardless of industry. No matter what product or service your company offers, digital marketing can still be used to build buyer personas and identify the needs of your audience. But that doesn’t mean all businesses need to implement the digital strategy.
B2B Digital Marketing
Your digital marketing efforts will be focused on business-to-business (B2B) companies. The goal is to generate leads online and get someone to contact you. Your marketing strategy should aim to convert high-quality leads via your website and other digital channels.
You’ll likely choose to concentrate your efforts beyond your website on business-focused channels such as LinkedIn, where your target audience is spending most of their online time.
B2C Digital Marketing
Depending on your product price, your business-to-consumer (B2C) company may have a goal to drive people to your site and convert them into customers.
You’re less likely to be focused on ‘leads” in the traditional sense and more likely to concentrate on creating a buyer’s journey that is accelerated from the moment someone visits your site to the moment they make a purchase. You might have to place your product features higher up on your marketing funnel for a B2B company than it would be for a consumer business.
B2C companies often find channels such as Instagram and Pinterest more valuable than those that are business-focused like LinkedIn.
What type of digital content should you create?
Your audience’s needs and where they are at various stages of the buyer’s journey will determine what content you create. To identify your audience’s needs and goals in relation to your business, you should first create buyer personas (using these free templates or makemypersona.com). Your online content should help them achieve these goals and overcome their challenges.
Next, think about the time they are most likely to be ready for this content relative to their buyer’s stage. This is called content mapping.
Content mapping is a way to make sure content is mapped according to:
- Buyer personas are the characteristics of the person who will consume it.
- How close they are to buying (i.e. their lifecycle stage).
There are many options for content format. These are the options that we recommend at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Awareness Stage
- Blog posts. Excellent for increasing organic traffic when combined with a strong SEO strategy and keyword strategy.
- Infographics. They are very shareable. This means that they can increase your chances of being discovered via social media when other people share your content. These free infographic templates will help you get started.
- You can make short videos. These videos are easily shared and can be used to promote your brand on platforms such as YouTube.
Take into account the Stage
- Ebooks. These are great for lead generation because they are more detailed than infographics or blog posts, so people are more likely to give their contact information in order to get them.
- Research reports. This is another high-value content piece that is great for lead generation. You can also use research reports and industry data to increase awareness, since they are often picked up by the media.
- Webinars. They are a more detailed and interactive form of video content.
The Decision Stage
- Case studies. This type of content can help you influence the purchasing decisions of those who are already ready to buy.
- Testimonials. Short testimonials on your website are a great alternative to case studies. B2C companies can think about testimonials loosely. These might be photos of people styling a shirt or dress for a clothing brand. They can also be pulled from a hashtag so people can share their experiences.
Digital Marketing: How to Do It
- Set your goals.
- Identify your target audience.
- Set aside a budget to cover each channel.
- Find a balance between paid and unpaid digital strategies.
- Create engaging content.
- Mobile optimization: Optimize your digital assets
- Do keyword research.
- Based on the analytics that you measure, iterate.
1. Define your goals.
It is crucial to pinpoint and determine your goals when you first get started in digital marketing. You’ll be able to create your strategy differently depending upon those goals. If your goal is to increase brand awareness you might want to be more focused on reaching new audiences on Social Media.
You might also want to increase sales of a product. If that is the case, you should focus on SEO and optimizing your content to attract potential customers to your site. You might also consider PPC campaigns to drive traffic via paid ads if you are aiming for sales.
It doesn’t matter what case it may be, it’s easier to create a digital marketing strategy once you’ve identified your company’s top goals.
2. Identify your target audience.
This is something we’ve already mentioned, but digital marketing offers the greatest opportunity to target specific audiences. However, you cannot take advantage of this benefit if you haven’t identified your target audience.
It is critical to remember that your target audience may differ depending on the channel you use or goals you have for a specific product or campaign.
Perhaps you have noticed that your Instagram audience is mostly younger and enjoys quick videos and funny memes. However, your LinkedIn audience tends be older professionals looking for tactical advice. To appeal to these diverse audiences, you’ll need to diversify your content.
If you are just starting out, How To Find Your Target Audience is a great resource.
3. Set aside a budget to cover each channel.
The budget you decide to spend on digital marketing will depend on the elements you want to include in your strategy.
You don’t need a lot of budget if you are focusing on inbound strategies like SEO, social networking, and content creation for an existing website. Inbound marketing is all about creating quality content that your audience will enjoy. Unless you plan to outsource, your only investment is your time.
Hosting a website is the best way to get started. You can start WordPress on WP engine, by using a simple theme from StudioPress, or building your website without any code with the Elements Website Builder for WordPress.
There is no denying that outbound marketing techniques such as online advertisement or purchasing email lists can be costly. It all comes down to the level of visibility that you desire from your advertising.
To implement PPC with Google AdWords, for example, you will bid against companies in your industry to be at the top of Google’s search results when searching keywords that are related to your business. This can vary depending on the competition of the keyword. It’s also possible to be very expensive. Therefore, it’s important to work on increasing your organic reach.
4. Find a balance between paid and unpaid digital strategies.
To be truly effective, a digital marketing strategy must include both paid and unpaid elements.
You can expect strong results in the first six months of your campaign if you invest time creating buyer personas that help you identify the needs and then focus on creating high-quality online content to convert and attract them.
The results may be even faster if paid advertisement is part your digital strategy.
It’s best to concentrate on increasing your organic reach (or ‘free”) through content, SEO and social media. This will ensure more long-term success.
If in doubt, you can try both and iterate as you discover which channels — paid and free — work best for your brand.
5. Create engaging content.
Once you know your audience well and have a budget in place, you can start creating content for all the channels. These content could be blog posts, social media posts and PPC ads. Sponsored content can also be used, as well as email marketing newsletters.
You must make sure that your content is engaging and interesting for your audience. The purpose of marketing content should be to increase brand awareness and lead generation.
6. Mobile optimization: Optimize your digital assets
Mobile marketing is another key component of digital marketing. Mobile marketing is another key component of digital marketing. In the U.S., smartphone use accounts for 69%, while desktop-based media consumption accounts for less than half. The U.S. is still not mobile’s most popular country.
It is essential to optimize digital ads, web pages and social media images for mobile devices. Your app can be used by customers to interact with your brand and shop for your products.
Your company must provide the same user experience on mobile devices as those who visit your site from a desktop computer. To make it easy for mobile users to browse your website , you should implement a mobile-friendly or responsive web design . This could also include reducing the lengths of your lead generation forms in order to make it easier for people who are downloading your content from their mobile devices. It’s crucial to consider a mobile user when creating social media images. Mobile devices have smaller image dimensions and text can be cut off.
There are many ways to optimize your digital marketing resources for mobile users. It is crucial that you consider how mobile devices will experience the experience when developing any digital marketing strategy. This will ensure that you create digital experiences that are relevant to your audience and help you achieve the desired results.
7. Do keyword research.
Digital marketing is about reaching targeted audiences with personalized content. This can’t be done without keyword research.
Keyword research is essential for optimizing your website for SEO. It also helps ensure that people can find you business via search engines. Social media keyword research is also useful for marketing products and services through various social channels.
You should still conduct keyword research, even if you don’t have an SEO strategist. You can create a list with high-performing keywords related to your products and services. Long-tail variations are also an option.
8. Based on the analytics that you measure, iterate.
Your team must learn how to pivot using analytics to create a long-term digital marketing strategy.
Perhaps your audience doesn’t seem to be as interested in your Instagram content after a few months, but they still love what your tweets. This could be a chance to reevaluate your entire Instagram strategy, but it may also indicate that your audience prefers another channel for consuming branded content.
Alternativly, you might find that a website isn’t receiving the traffic it used too. To ensure that visitors find the most current and relevant content, you might want to update the page or get rid of it completely.
Businesses have incredible opportunities to grow through digital marketing. But it is up to them to make the most of these flexible opportunities.
I’m willing to experiment with digital marketing. What now?
You’re likely already engaging in digital marketing if you are. You can be sure to identify areas in your strategy that need some improvement.
Let’s now look at examples of digital marketing that are sure to inspire.
Examples of digital marketing
- Lego’s Rebuild the World Campaign
- Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign
- Jennifer Lopez’s #InTheMorningChallenge
- Always #LikeAGirl campaign
Source
This campaign is an excellent example of digital marketing because it speaks volumes about the brand. This campaign shows Lego taking a stand on important global issues to connect with its customers.
Companies must be open to discussing global issues and aligning with customers. This is becoming more important in this modern age. This campaign’s main purpose is to share the brand’s story and messaging.
This was a smart move by the toy company, considering that 89% customers buy from brands that share their values.
Source
Dove wanted to share a message as we learn more about how social media affects children, particularly young girls. Reverse Selfie shows what a teenage girl does to take a selfie, then photoshop it. This campaign aims to raise awareness about how social media can negatively affect self-esteem.
This is a great example of how marketing content can look when you get to know your audience. Dove was able, through intimate knowledge of its audience, which included many parents, to highlight an often overlooked consequence to the rise of social media.
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Jennifer Lopez created a dance competition to promote her new song in this social media campaign. Fans could take on the challenge in both their pajamas or in fancy dress.
This social media campaign was successful with over 13,000,000 views and more than 5,000 posts.
Social media is a great tool to engage your audience, and get them to interact with you one-on-one.
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Another digital campaign that emphasizes emotional marketing is this one. Always asked their employees to share their tips with girls through this campaign. These women share their insights in an effort to inspire others for International Day of the Girl (an international holiday that takes place every October).
This is not a campaign in which the product is often mentioned, but that’s beside the point. This digital campaign had one goal: to inspire their audience. They could communicate with more people, increase brand awareness and show that their brand values align with theirs.
Incorporate digital marketing into your strategy
Every opportunity to connect with your audience is a chance to convert leads or acquire customers. You can reach potential buyers via a variety of channels with digital marketing. Digital marketing opens up many more opportunities. It’s a great way to promote your company, product, or service via social media platforms, websites or text messages.
Editor’s note: This blog post was originally published September 2019 but was updated to reflect the current state of the content.
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