Learn The Basics of Digital Marketing
In the current digital age, businesses have more ways and places to market themselves and communicate with potential and existing customers. As a small business owner, however, deciding on a digital marketing method while on a tight budget and limited resources can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be!By knowing the ins and outs of digital marketing, businesses can promote, market, and engage with customers in ways that boost brand engagement and customer loyalty.
So what is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is an umbrella term used for marketing products and services using internet technologies on different online platforms. It also includes mobile phones, display advertising, and other digital mediums.
Digital marketing includes:
Social Media Marketing
One of the best things about social media is that it is free, easy to get started, and grants you access to a massive network of existing and potential customers. Start small by identifying the social platforms that reach your customers best – be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Pinterest, and provide interesting and shareable content regularly.
Once you gain an understanding of who’s engaging with your content and the kind of content they are interested in, you can start expanding your reach through more social media platforms. Have a read about the benefits of using Instagram of as a marketing outlet.
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Content Marketing
Content marketing works hand-in-hand with social media marketing as it involves producing relevant and consistent content to be distributed with the intent to attract and engage targeted customers. The goal is to win customer loyalty and retain it.
By delivering high-quality and engaging content, businesses can develop communication with customers and drive
brand engagement and customer action. Content can be anything from weekly blog posts to shareable visuals, how-to’s, videos and more.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is the process of optimizing the visibility of a website in order to gain better placement in a search engine’s unpaid search results. SEO is something you can’t afford to neglect as being on the first page on Google is vital in directing traffic to your website or social media platforms.
SEO involves (but is not limited to):
- Content delivery
- Site structure (HTML)
- Keyword research and usage
- Link building
- Analytics
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SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
SEM is similar, but incorporates SEO and uses many of the same methods. The main difference is that SEM includes paid online advertising models such as pay-per-click (PPC).
PPC advertising, such as Google Adwords or Bing, is widely considered to be one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics as it targets specific markets in a cost-effective way.
This method can be daunting for many small business owners because there is a lot to learn and understand, but the results can do wonders for your business. While SEO can take weeks and months to get to Google’s front page, PPC can bring you to the top within a few hours.
Email Marketing
While some may claim that email marketing is not as important as social media these days, it is still one of the most effective ways to drive business as you are delivering targeted messages straight to your customers’ inboxes. Like social media, it can be free or at least very inexpensive (depending on the number of emails sent and the complexity of the email/ or platform used for sending them) and
can potentially deliver big results with engaging content and a strong call to action.
A variation of this is SMS marketing. Due to the fact that hardly anyone goes anywhere without their mobile phone, it’s highly likely that customers will at least read the text.