What is Digital Marketing? How to Boost Your Business
Digital marketing is the broad term that refers to any and all advertising that is done through digital channels. These channels include social media, websites, search engines, mobile app stores, and social sharing sites. This can span paid and organic advertising and marketing campaigns, SEO, and influencer outreach.
Defining Digital Marketing and Digital Media Marketing
The definition of the term“digital marketing” has evolved as quickly as the internet has over the last ten years. We are in a landscape where basically everything a company does on the internet can be seen as digital marketing. Updates to a website, SEO, branding, the social media presence, public relations: all of it is digital marketing.
At its most basic level, digital marketing is the act of promoting a product or brand via one or more internet channels. Some digital marketing professionals may argue that not all of these methods count as digital marketing. We’re going to dive into some of the main aspects that everyone can agree on here.
Most frequent channels for digital marketing:
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of optimizing your website and content for the purpose of ranking well on search engines. Google is the most recognizable search engine, but this can also extend to Amazon, mobile and/or web app stores, Bing, and any other up-and-coming search engines.
SEO can encompass website structure, keyword research, link building, blog content, website content, and anything else that may have an impact on search rankings. Since 67% of searchers only look at the first five search results, SEO is a big part of digital marketing. Some businesses are successful based on their SEO traffic alone since 71% of Google searches result in a first page click.
Best practices include having a well-constructed, polished, and easy to use website with authoritative and relevant content. This will result in people wanting to spend time on your website and share your content via links and social media.
SEM
Search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) is typically referring to the ad results at the top of your searches. These are usually paid per click, and based on the popularity of the keywords you’re using. They are set up and purchased through Google Adwords and can be valuable for increasing search visibility to companies.
Strategies include keyword research to identify the most relevant keywords, research on companies that are using search advertising, finding areas that they’ve missed (to save money tap into another set of potential consumers), and outbidding competitors to rank number one when their name is searched.
Using SEM and SEO in conjuncture, (generally just known as “search marketing”) is the suggested method. The two can support each other and create great traffic results.
Social Media Marketing
Social media platforms are not stagnant, so neither is social media marketing. One of the most interesting features of social media marketing is that you can see how many followers companies have. This can add to the competitive nature of social media marketing. You can set goals for your business based on how many followers your competitors have.
It also gives fans more insight into the daily working and the mind of companies they follow. Content needs to be fresh, with engaging posts added daily to retain your audience’s interest. It also needs to be vibrant and consistent. When companies go off brand via social media, it can become newsworthy
Current popular social media platforms for marketing:
It’s important for marketers to emphasize sharing and interactive content on their social media platforms. The more engagement your posts have, the more visible they will become to others. Contest and giveaways are normal, as are polls and games.
Companies also have to be ready to jump onto the newest social media platforms as they are released, as there’s no way of knowing what might be the next big thing. Staying up-to-date on social trends is vital.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising can span influencer marketing, ads placed on social media, ads that appear before YouTube videos, and much more. Paid marketing must be well thought out and carefully placed. If it doesn’t promote your brand, or doesn’t fit, it can turn customers against you. Also, many potential consumers have advanced ad blockers that can cause them to avoid seeing your content all together. So, it must be creative.
Paid advertising must be fresh, interesting, engaging, and on brand.
Email Marketing
Email has been around since the dawn of the internet. It’s still completely relevant and a great avenue for marketing. But, in order for your email to make an impact, it needs to be opened. Subject lines should be informative and worthy of the click. Content must be conversational, informative, and engaging.
With the marketing tools currently available, there are simple tools to send emails to your mailing list and track how each one does. This knowledge will be useful when planning future campaigns.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile devices have become an integral part of our daily lives. Mobile marketing has become a huge part of marketing campaigns due to the fact that everyone uses them and it’s a good way to appear right in front of their eyes.
Mobile marketing spans many avenues such as:
Voice Search
More people are using voice search every day through voice activated assistants like Siri and the Amazon Echo. How does that impact SEO? Because people speak in full sentences, marketing specialists must now consider voice search when creating page and blog post titles. Full questions are replacing single keywords. Instead of simply searching “digital marketing” people are now searching “What is digital marketing.”
According to a study by Comscore, it’s estimated that 50% of searches will be conducted via voice apps by 2020.
In-App Advertising
It is difficult to get through a day without opening apps on a mobile device. Games, social media apps, video apps, photo editors, etc. And most apps include in-app advertising. This is how many free apps make their entire profit. Ad blockers haven’t been created for mobile devices yet, so your in-app advertisement will be seen.
Responsive Websites
Google has started punishing sites that are not optimized for mobile. Intrusive pop-ups and websites that don’t resize for mobile devices can cause websites that previously ranked high in searches to be significantly downgraded.
One of the easiest ways to boost your mobile presence is to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile. Or, better yet, like many small businesses, you could create an app for your business. Your website can redirect to your app which will be a great way to reach your mobile audience.
Affiliate Advertising
Affiliate advertising is when you pay another company or person to market for you (per click, or simply up front). One example of this is when the game from another company will offer free in-game prizes for watching your advertisements. It can also be a sponsored post on a blog, or a YouTube video that has an agreement to talk about your brand.
This can be valuable if you have a small business and are trying to grow your visibility.
What are KPIs and What Do They Mean for Digital Marketing?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable values that business can use to track progress. In marketing, these would be used to track the effectiveness of specific marketing campaigns. Easy things to track would be engagement in social media posts, click through rates on advertisements and links, traffic, bounce rate, where people are entering the website, and where they go from their landing page.
Many companies use special links to track exactly how many people clicked through specific advertisements so they can measure the effectiveness of campaigns and plan future campaigns.
It’s also important to see exactly how many people convert from visitors to customers. A low conversion rate could indicate that a marketing campaign was not relevant to what is being sold on the site.
There are so many tools available to parse data, the most popular is Google Analytics, which can be added to the backend of your website. Google Analytics can get complex with the amount of data available and where to find it. There are even certificate programs for Google Analytics experts.
Can a Digital Marketing Agency Help?
Digital Marketing is a huge part of building a business and there are so many ways an agency can help reach your goals. There are a lot of agencies out there with different specialties and strengths, so you’ll be able to find a good fit for your company.
Hiring a digital marketing agency will give you the opportunity to focus on your business. If you trust them completely, you can give them an idea of what you want and then let them do their work. An agency should be away of what’s new and relevant in your industry, and be able to translate that into a marketing product that you love.
Often hiring a digital marketing agency saves on cost over hiring your own in-house crew, particularly as your company grows, and with it, your marketing needs. You can also rely on the fact that you are working with a team of experts. Just like you are great at what you do, make sure that you hire a marketing agency that is as talented in their field
Designing a Digital Marketing Campaign Without a template for creating a campaign, things can get a little messy. You should know why you are doing what you are doing, before you decide to do it. So, here is a handy list of elements to put together your effective marketing campaign:
1. Analysis of the marketplace: Who is your customer/client/audience?
2. Competitive analysis: what are your competitors doing? What are they doing well? What can you do better?
3. Goals and objectives: What do you want to get out of your marketing campaign? Most eyes on your website? More social media followers? More paying customers?
4. Decide which marketing channels will best fulfill those goals.
5. Start fleshing out your plan, brainstorm ideas and come up with a loose outline based on those ideas.
6. Set a timeline and goalposts.
7. Create your content.
8. Implement your plan. Put everything into motion.
9. Take a look at your KPIs and see if you hit your goals. See what you did well and what you can do better next time.
Do You Need a Digital Marketing Manager for Your Campaign? This depends on whether you have an in-house team for your marketing or you’re going through an agency. If you have decided to use an agency, there is no need to hire your own digital marketing manager. The agency will have one on staff and dual marketing managers would likely step on each others toes.
If you do go with hiring your own in-house marketing team, a digital marketing manager is a must. You need someone who is familiar with the marketing channels and has a broad view of what goes into a digital marketing campaign.
Digital Marketing Final Thoughts
The internet is something we all use and understand. It can be tempting for startups and small businesses to take on their own simple digital marketing tasks like social media platforms Instagram and Facebook. While
While it’s normal for very small business employees to wear many hats, from dev work, sales, and PR, to marketing, the addition of a digital marketing specialist is highly valuable. It can ease your load and allow you to focus on growing your building. Marketing is a powerful tool for any business, particularly start ups. It can help get customers interested and on your side. It’s wise to start good marketing from the beginning.
So there you have it: the basics of digital marketing. Because there are so many different digital marketing channels, you could dive deeply into each one and still have a lot of ground to cover.
Defining Digital Marketing and Digital Media Marketing
The definition of the term“digital marketing” has evolved as quickly as the internet has over the last ten years. We are in a landscape where basically everything a company does on the internet can be seen as digital marketing. Updates to a website, SEO, branding, the social media presence, public relations: all of it is digital marketing. At its most basic level, digital marketing is the act of promoting a product or brand via one or more internet channels. Some digital marketing professionals may argue that not all of these methods count as digital marketing. We’re going to dive into some of the main aspects that everyone can agree on here.
Most frequent channels for digital marketing:
- SEO
- SEM
- Social Media Marketing
- Paid Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Affiliate Advertising
SEOSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of optimizing your website and content for the purpose of ranking well on search engines. Google is the most recognizable search engine, but this can also extend to Amazon, mobile and/or web app stores, Bing, and any other up-and-coming search engines.
SEO can encompass website structure, keyword research, link building, blog content, website content, and anything else that may have an impact on search rankings. Since 67% of searchers only look at the first five search results, SEO is a big part of digital marketing. Some businesses are successful based on their SEO traffic alone since 71% of Google searches result in a first page click.
Best practices include having a well-constructed, polished, and easy to use website with authoritative and relevant content. This will result in people wanting to spend time on your website and share your content via links and social media.
SEM
Search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) is typically referring to the ad results at the top of your searches. These are usually paid per click, and based on the popularity of the keywords you’re using. They are set up and purchased through Google Adwords and can be valuable for increasing search visibility to companies.
Strategies include keyword research to identify the most relevant keywords, research on companies that are using search advertising, finding areas that they’ve missed (to save money tap into another set of potential consumers), and outbidding competitors to rank number one when their name is searched.
Using SEM and SEO in conjuncture, (generally just known as “search marketing”) is the suggested method. The two can support each other and create great traffic results.
Social Media Marketing
Social media platforms are not stagnant, so neither is social media marketing. One of the most interesting features of social media marketing is that you can see how many followers companies have. This can add to the competitive nature of social media marketing. You can set goals for your business based on how many followers your competitors have.
It also gives fans more insight into the daily working and the mind of companies they follow. Content needs to be fresh, with engaging posts added daily to retain your audience’s interest. It also needs to be vibrant and consistent. When companies go off brand via social media, it can become newsworthy
Current popular social media platforms for marketing:
- Snapchat
It’s important for marketers to emphasize sharing and interactive content on their social media platforms. The more engagement your posts have, the more visible they will become to others. Contest and giveaways are normal, as are polls and games.
Companies also have to be ready to jump onto the newest social media platforms as they are released, as there’s no way of knowing what might be the next big thing. Staying up-to-date on social trends is vital.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising can span influencer marketing, ads placed on social media, ads that appear before YouTube videos, and much more. Paid marketing must be well thought out and carefully placed. If it doesn’t promote your brand, or doesn’t fit, it can turn customers against you. Also, many potential consumers have advanced ad blockers that can cause them to avoid seeing your content all together. So, it must be creative.
Paid advertising must be fresh, interesting, engaging, and on brand.
Email Marketing
Email has been around since the dawn of the internet. It’s still completely relevant and a great avenue for marketing. But, in order for your email to make an impact, it needs to be opened. Subject lines should be informative and worthy of the click. Content must be conversational, informative, and engaging.
With the marketing tools currently available, there are simple tools to send emails to your mailing list and track how each one does. This knowledge will be useful when planning future campaigns.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile devices have become an integral part of our daily lives. Mobile marketing has become a huge part of marketing campaigns due to the fact that everyone uses them and it’s a good way to appear right in front of their eyes.
Mobile marketing spans many avenues such as:
Voice Search
More people are using voice search every day through voice activated assistants like Siri and the Amazon Echo. How does that impact SEO? Because people speak in full sentences, marketing specialists must now consider voice search when creating page and blog post titles. Full questions are replacing single keywords. Instead of simply searching “digital marketing” people are now searching “What is digital marketing.”
According to a study by Comscore, it’s estimated that 50% of searches will be conducted via voice apps by 2020.
In-App Advertising
It is difficult to get through a day without opening apps on a mobile device. Games, social media apps, video apps, photo editors, etc. And most apps include in-app advertising. This is how many free apps make their entire profit. Ad blockers haven’t been created for mobile devices yet, so your in-app advertisement will be seen.
Responsive Websites
Google has started punishing sites that are not optimized for mobile. Intrusive pop-ups and websites that don’t resize for mobile devices can cause websites that previously ranked high in searches to be significantly downgraded.
One of the easiest ways to boost your mobile presence is to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile. Or, better yet, like many small businesses, you could create an app for your business. Your website can redirect to your app which will be a great way to reach your mobile audience.
Affiliate Advertising
Affiliate advertising is when you pay another company or person to market for you (per click, or simply up front). One example of this is when the game from another company will offer free in-game prizes for watching your advertisements. It can also be a sponsored post on a blog, or a YouTube video that has an agreement to talk about your brand.
This can be valuable if you have a small business and are trying to grow your visibility.
What are KPIs and What Do They Mean for Digital Marketing?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable values that business can use to track progress. In marketing, these would be used to track the effectiveness of specific marketing campaigns. Easy things to track would be engagement in social media posts, click through rates on advertisements and links, traffic, bounce rate, where people are entering the website, and where they go from their landing page. Many companies use special links to track exactly how many people clicked through specific advertisements so they can measure the effectiveness of campaigns and plan future campaigns.
It’s also important to see exactly how many people convert from visitors to customers. A low conversion rate could indicate that a marketing campaign was not relevant to what is being sold on the site.
There are so many tools available to parse data, the most popular is Google Analytics, which can be added to the backend of your website. Google Analytics can get complex with the amount of data available and where to find it. There are even certificate programs for Google Analytics experts.
Can a Digital Marketing Agency Help?
Digital Marketing is a huge part of building a business and there are so many ways an agency can help reach your goals. There are a lot of agencies out there with different specialties and strengths, so you’ll be able to find a good fit for your company.Hiring a digital marketing agency will give you the opportunity to focus on your business. If you trust them completely, you can give them an idea of what you want and then let them do their work. An agency should be away of what’s new and relevant in your industry, and be able to translate that into a marketing product that you love.
Often hiring a digital marketing agency saves on cost over hiring your own in-house crew, particularly as your company grows, and with it, your marketing needs. You can also rely on the fact that you are working with a team of experts. Just like you are great at what you do, make sure that you hire a marketing agency that is as talented in their field
Designing a Digital Marketing Campaign Without a template for creating a campaign, things can get a little messy. You should know why you are doing what you are doing, before you decide to do it. So, here is a handy list of elements to put together your effective marketing campaign:
1. Analysis of the marketplace: Who is your customer/client/audience?
2. Competitive analysis: what are your competitors doing? What are they doing well? What can you do better?
3. Goals and objectives: What do you want to get out of your marketing campaign? Most eyes on your website? More social media followers? More paying customers?
4. Decide which marketing channels will best fulfill those goals.
5. Start fleshing out your plan, brainstorm ideas and come up with a loose outline based on those ideas.
6. Set a timeline and goalposts.
7. Create your content.
8. Implement your plan. Put everything into motion.
9. Take a look at your KPIs and see if you hit your goals. See what you did well and what you can do better next time.
Do You Need a Digital Marketing Manager for Your Campaign? This depends on whether you have an in-house team for your marketing or you’re going through an agency. If you have decided to use an agency, there is no need to hire your own digital marketing manager. The agency will have one on staff and dual marketing managers would likely step on each others toes.
If you do go with hiring your own in-house marketing team, a digital marketing manager is a must. You need someone who is familiar with the marketing channels and has a broad view of what goes into a digital marketing campaign.
Digital Marketing Final Thoughts
The internet is something we all use and understand. It can be tempting for startups and small businesses to take on their own simple digital marketing tasks like social media platforms Instagram and Facebook. While While it’s normal for very small business employees to wear many hats, from dev work, sales, and PR, to marketing, the addition of a digital marketing specialist is highly valuable. It can ease your load and allow you to focus on growing your building. Marketing is a powerful tool for any business, particularly start ups. It can help get customers interested and on your side. It’s wise to start good marketing from the beginning.
So there you have it: the basics of digital marketing. Because there are so many different digital marketing channels, you could dive deeply into each one and still have a lot of ground to cover.
