Digital marketing has become impossible to ignore.
It was already on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, but it's grown even more as people spent more time staying home and shopping online. Any company can start using digital marketing to grow its online presence, and here's how.
You have to know the different forms of digital marketing in order to leverage it in your company. There are several different places you'll need to spend time working with in order to maximize results.
Pretty much everyone in the marketing industry has heard of search engine optimization, or search engine marketing, in 2021 (SEO and SEM). These play a critical role in digital marketing considering everything takes place on the internet. This affects everything on your website, from your landing pages to your content.
Content marketing goes hand in hand with SEO and SEM. The content that you push out from your company, whether it's blog posts or YouTube videos, plays a role in digital marketing. Content should also play a large part in your marketing plan in general—content is organic SEO.
Social media marketing is another area of digital marketing that you can't ignore. With everyone staying at home more lately, it's become a necessary place for companies to advertise no matter the industry.
Email marketing has always been important, even before digital marketing saw a rise. However, getting a good email list and optimizing results is getting more and more important. The more loyal subscribers you have, the better.
Affiliate marketing is becoming more important as SEO and SEM grow. Affiliate marketing plays a direct role in your website's or page's rank on Google.
Last but not least, you'll want to focus on pay-per-click advertising, PPC. Organic, ie free, SEO, and SEM are becoming more important, but that doesn't mean that PPC is a thing of the past. Most companies still need to invest in Google Ads.
If you're trying to leverage digital marketing in-house instead of using a digital marketing agency, then you need to have your marketing team well-learned. Digital marketing is something that changes daily, so keeping up-to-date with marketing blogs or other forms of SEO news is important.
Keep in mind that digital marketing requires dedication. If you're not working with a digital marketing company, then your in-house team has a lot of work cut out for it. It takes experience and time to become a marketing expert, and these are great ways to start that process.
There are also several free tools you can use to learn how to use digital marketing, whether you're learning about how to use the most popular platforms for each type of digital marketing or you're learning about the most current trends.
LinkedIn and other online resources have certifications and classes available that your team can take to learn about the most up-to-date digital marketing strategies. Just remember that, like any marketing field, digital marketing changes quickly, and it's important that your team is ready to make those changes when they need to.
Another important place to learn how to use digital marketing is the Skillshop offered by Google. This teaches marketers how to use PPC ads. PPC ads are tricky because they vary so much by industry. If you're not planning on using digital marketing services from experts, then this is a must.
Staying on top of the social media trends in your business is another valuable part of digital marketing. The biggest way to learn here is by simply using social media and watching your competitors.
It's also important to learn about different marketing tools before investing in any. While this sounds like a no-brainer, it's an important thing you should do because of industry differences. Some CRMs or marketing tools like Spyfu are only specific industries. You don't want to purchase a product and then never see a return on your money because it wasn't a good product for your team, marketing process, or company.
Because there are so many different forms of digital marketing, it's important to have a very precise plan in place for your marketing team. In many cases, a team Trello board or another type of team workspace is necessary.
In an ideal world, your digital marketing content should work together. Having a schedule that includes your PPC ads, your social media posts, your content, and even your emails is ideal. However, that doesn't happen without careful planning.
One way you can do this is to plan with business quarters. Creating a specific topic or cluster of topics can make it easy to stay focused on looking cohesive as a company. Your marketing channels should look uniform, and having specific plans are an important key to making this work.
This is also a great way to make sure that you're marketing team is smarketing, ie working with your sales team! When there's a clear plan in place, the entire company can come together to create a cohesive attitude. This pays off in the long run when it comes to customers.
You can't over measure the results of your marketing team. Understanding email clickthrough rates, interaction numbers on social media, and even engagement statistics on your content are more important than anything you can do beforehand.
Every industry is different, and the way you speak to your customers can change at the drop of the hat. A simple way to think about this is with the current pandemic. Most companies had to change how they approached customers in order to be sensitive to a world issue.
This kind of thinking applies to everything you do in digital marketing, and it can change any minute. If you're not measuring the results of what you're doing, then you have no idea how to improve. You'll also never be able to find out what you're doing wrong or how to improve.
Digital marketing has revolutionized the marketing world. In the past decades, marketers have only really needed to get information in front of people. From there, things like television advertisements did their job.
Nowadays, people have become blind to the advertisements littering TVs and even roads nowadays. It's much harder to grab customer's attention. There are too many different groups competing to win customers over.
In general, more customers are seeking out information when they're ready to buy something or look into a service. They're more educated than ever before, and companies can use this beneficially with inbound marketing.
In a nutshell, inbound marketing focuses on creating content so that you can educate customers in a way that benefits your company. Since customers are looking for information online, it's best to get your company in front of them and give them all the information they need.
This creates a very interesting marketing dynamic. Instead of reaching out to customers that might not want to talk to you, you're creating customers through the content you're creating, the information advertising you're doing, and the helpful links you're sharing on social media.
There are a ton of websites that will give you overviews and case studies about inbound marketing and how you can use it in your digital marketing strategy. A mental change can be difficult, especially if you're not used to marketing like this. However, it's extremely important when it comes to leveraging digital marketing.
This type of thinking is all about understanding the demographic of your customers. Sometimes this can be different groups depending on your industry. Inbound marketing means learning about the consumer psychology of any of your demographics and using that to provide information that's both accurate and useful.
Content marketing is the center of inbound marketing, and it's a great place to center your digital marketing strategy in general. Spreading the content you create, whether in ads or social media posts, is key.
If all of this information sounds like a lot to you, that's because it is. Digital marketing is a field that people study and get university degrees in—it's not something that can be perfected overnight.
A lot of companies prefer to use the best digital marketing services they can find instead of relying on training employees and hoping for the best. That's where we can help. For more information on how we can help you leverage digital marketing in your company, feel free to contact us at any time!
Not sure how digital marketing fits into your overall business strategy? Do you want to learn more about the strategies best suited for your specific business? Book a free, no-obligation strategy call to chat with one of our Digital Strategists!
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