So what is digital marketing and how does it work? Here’s how it actually impacts your business, and how you can use it to grow and develop your business.
The insider terminologies such as SEO, PPC, CTA, CTR, and others are throwing a lot of business owners off in a really sad fashion. With these, people often can get digital marketing confused with software and coding or building these incredibly complex marketing systems that business owners often pay thousands for, or need a huge team to run.
TL;DR – Click to watch the video below
What is Digital Marketing?
In my opinion, as a marketer that has been in marketing for more than 25 years and started marketing even before the internet became a big thing, digital marketing is basically marketing. It’s just marketing using digital tools. Marketing is about communicating the value of what you offer and the answers that you provide to your customers. Basically, digital marketing is communicating value to your customers using digital tools.
As a business owner, you need to have an understanding of digital marketing — how you’re going to show up online and how you’re going to promote your business to your customers. Because if you’re not doing it online, you’re literally starting your business with both hands tied behind your back. Understanding digital marketing is important because Google and Facebook are where your clients are spending their time.
There are really seven big categories when it comes to the digital marketing space:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Content marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
You don’t need to be an expert in all of these, but you do need to have an understanding of how they work and how they are relevant to your business.
Search Engine Optimisation
If you want a more in-depth look into SEO, check out the video, “What is SEO & How Does it Work in 2021?”
SEO is literally having your online presence set up so that when people get onto Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or any search engine, you show up on the search page. One of the best ways of doing that is through setting up your Google My Business page. When somebody is on Google and they’re searching for something, their intent to buy is so much higher because they’re specifically looking for either answer to a problem or a particular product or service. Having an understanding of your search engine optimisation and having an understanding of where your website shows up, how it shows up, what keywords it actually shows up for is really important.
Search Engine Marketing
Sometimes it does get a little bit confused with content marketing and pay per click because they are very similar things. SEO is all the stuff that you do on your website so that you can be found. Search Engine Marketing is all the on-page content and things that you do, your Google My Business, making sure that all your other links and everything are allowing you to show up in the search engines.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is writing articles and blogs, and also providing articles for other websites. And not only that, if you’re regularly blogging, every time you change the content on your website by uploading a blog, Google will be notified that the content has been changed. They send their robots out to run through, check out your website, and then that will decide where else you will be ranked based on keywords. It’s also a great way of creating content that you can then repurpose for your social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is about showing up on social media, making sure that you’re constantly giving value and letting your clients know what it is that you do, how you serve them, and how you can add value to their lives.
It’s not about you getting out there and promoting, “Look at me out, aren’t I wonderful? This is everything that I do.” It IS about giving value and solving a problem for your audience.
It’s sharing a little bit about yourself as well because we are inherently voyeurs. And it is quite nice to have a little bit of a glimpse into everybody else’s lives. But with social media marketing, it’s about creating those relationships, and building those relationships with people.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click is Google Ads, Facebook advertising, and even LinkedIn advertising. With that, it’s actually making sure that you’re targeting your ideal client. It’s making sure that the ads that you put in front of them speak to a need that they have or fix a problem that they have. It’s probably one of the fastest ways to get in front of your ideal client, especially these days that organic reach on Facebook is continually dropping. It will be more effective if your pay-per-click is set up matching and working with your relationship building and your social media marketing.
Affiliate Marketing
If you’re running a course, or if you have products that you are promoting in the online space, building an affiliate base is one of the fastest ways to get out in front of your target audience. Basically, it is giving people their own particular link to your web store or to your course so every single time somebody clicks on that person’s link and buys your course or your product, that person gets paid a certain percentage. It’s almost like having an extended sales force online promoting you as they get paid a percentage of each sale.
Email Marketing
The final digital marketing tool that every business owner needs, regardless of the industry that you’re in and what you do, is email marketing.
Email marketing still has one of the highest return on investment rates than any of the other tools put together. Purely because if somebody is already on your email list and in your database, they’ve already got a bit of a relationship with you and they’ve got some understanding of what you do. A good email strategy is when you are reaching out and emailing your clients on a regular basis and giving value, not just constantly emailing to sell stuff.
You don’t know when that email is going to hit them in their customer journey and in their sales journey. The first couple of times, they look at it, they may not even open it because they’re busy, they’ve got so much else to do. The third time that they see your email, they might be in a position where what it is that you have to offer is exactly what they’re looking to buy. And that is when you start moving them down your sales process.
Digital Marketing at a Glimpse
If you’re going to select one or two of any of these digital tools, email marketing would be one that you definitely need to look at, along with your social media marketing and your SEO.
The whole idea when it comes to digital marketing is creating or using some of these different strategies, to work together. Different digital marketing strategies start moving your clients through alternate routes to buy from you. The seven categories of digital marketing are all like different departments of your business. They only have one particular goal and that is to make your company, and your business, successful.
Digital marketing is having a couple of different tools and a couple of different strategies that work together to start generating traffic, creating awareness of your business and transforming leads into loyal customers for your business and start moving through the sales funnel. And then they become another cog in your strategy as far as promoting your business because they’re out telling everybody about how great your company is. That’s the whole idea of utilising a couple of these digital marketing strategies to work together in cohesion. Digital marketing is not one size fits all. It depends on the industry that you’re in. It depends on who your ideal client is.
Figuring out this whole world of digital marketing at first, can become overwhelming. However, all you have to do is to have an understanding of how it works.
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