Now more than ever, large and small businesses are turning to digital marketing to reach their target customers effectively. From social media campaigns and search engine optimization to email marketing and content strategy, there’s a lot to consider when engaging in digital marketing.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is any type of marketing performed online. Levying channels such as social media, email, websites, and search engines are part of bolstering your business.
Is Digital Marketing Important?
Even though inbound marketing is technically more targeted, digital marketing is still essential to your marketing strategy because it allows you to reach a larger audience overall.
Traditional marketing methods throw a wide net but may need to be noticed by most of your target audience. Unfortunately, it is more expensive and difficult to change with traditional marketing. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is more cost-effective, measurable, and easy to adjust.
How is Digital Marketing Different from Inbound Marketing?
Despite what some marketers will tell you, digital marketing and inbound marketing are different. They are similar, but there are some subtle differences between them. For example, inbound marketing is more focused and targets a smaller audience interested in a specific topic.
Inbound marketing considers the goals first. It doesn’t consider the platform opportunities. Instead, they focus on reaching the target audience and purchasing stage. Once determined, they decide what content marketing strategy they should use.
Digital marketing is focused on a larger audience. There is no differentiation between outbound and inbound marketing with the umbrella of digital marketing strategy, which encompasses all digital communication.
During the planning phase of your content marketing strategy, marketers consider the different platforms available to them and how they can use multiple platforms to get their message out. Sometimes digital marketers will focus on various platforms instead of multiple ones. However, it focuses on reaching the largest audience rather than the overall goal.
You don’t have to choose between an umbrella digital marketing approach or the hyper-focused inbound marketing process. Instead, you can use both techniques to meet your company’s marketing objectives.
Types of Digital Marketing
There are several different types of digital marketing. A successful digital marketing strategy will use multiple channels to reach customers effectively at all stages of the purchasing cycle.
Some of the top types of digital marketing include:
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Email Marketing
Let’s look at each of these digital marketing types in greater detail.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing’s primary focus is to build brand awareness and drive traffic. Building awareness and traffic can be a great way to generate leads. There are many social media platforms to choose from, and you can use multiple platforms to attract potential customers to your website.
Some of the more popular platforms include:
- Snapchat
- Tick Tock
- Linked In
Before committing to a marketing campaign on any platform, you need to research where your target audience spends their time on social media. You don’t want to waste time and energy creating content for platforms your potential customers don’t visit.
Content Marketing
Content is one of the critical components of your optimization strategy. You want quality content that is search engine optimized and targets your specific audience.
Content marketing is meant to attract leads and convert visitors into paying customers. Instead of enticing customers with the potential value of your business’ offerings, as you would with a traditional advertising campaign, you offer value to your visitors.
So what are some ways you can offer value to your visitors? Much of it will come from written materials such as brochures, blog posts, emails, newsletters, and white papers. However, infographics and videos are a great way to produce helpful content for your visitors.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is a crucial part of all digital marketing techniques. But, while you’ll hear a lot about it, it’s not a marketing strategy. Instead, it’s a tool that will help attract visitors to your content.
How does search engine optimization work? According to The Balance, it is an “art and science of making web pages attractive to search engines.” SEO takes a lot of research and works to balance the different contributing factors to rank well on search engine result pages.
It is important to remember that search engine algorithms are constantly changing and what might work well to help your website rank high this year may work better next year. To determine what is working and what isn’t, you should closely monitor your website’s performance and adjust accordingly.
Currently, the elements you need to consider as you optimize your content for search engines are:
- Level of visitor engagement
- Quality content
- Quality and number of inbound links
- Mobile-friendliness
You should use these elements strategically while remaining flexible to move quickly as the landscape changes.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is a great way to connect with your customers. You can inform them about new products or offer insight for new customers early in the buying cycle. Email is a popular way to communicate as 92% of adults in the United States have an email address, and over half check their inboxes daily.
An email will reach your target audience 90% more often than Facebook or other social media messages. For example, if you post an update on Facebook and have 10,000 followers, only about 200 are likely to see your update. However, send that same 10,000 followers an email, and 9,000 will see it directly in their inboxes.
According to Neil Patel – Cofounder of KISSmetrics &Crazy Egg & writer of the Quicksprout blog,
‘Out of all the channels I tested as a marketer, email continually outperforms most. Not only does it have a high conversion rate, but as you build up your list, you can continually monetize it by pitching multiple products. For example, just look at e-commerce sites like Amazon: One way they get you to buy more products from them continually is by emailing you offers on a regular basis.’
Conclusion
Digital marketing is a powerful tool for businesses to reach their target audiences and achieve their goals. It involves using digital tools and technologies to promote products or services, such as social media, search engines, email campaigns, and websites. Contact me today to discuss how I can help your business in its digital marketing endeavors.
I want to to thank you for this very good read!! I certainly enjoyed every little bit of it. I have got you book-marked to check out new stuff you postÖ
Good day! I simply wish to give you a huge thumbs up for your excellent information you have got here on this post. I will be returning to your site for more soon.