DIGITAL MARKETING 101: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW
More than 5 billion people use the internet to connect with brands, access information, and find solutions to their problems. And that is why every business nowadays has an online presence. If you still haven’t figured it out yet, right now is the best time to start. However, if you don’t have a digital marketing strategy, you may be missing out on a golden opportunity. To reach new customers, bring the existing customers closer, and increase your brand’s reach and visibility. Here’s an overview of digital marketing that will get you up to speed.
What is digital marketing?
If you want to know what digital marketing is, you’re at the right place to find out. Digital marketing consists of many components and strategies that you can use to attract customers and reach places that weren’t possible before. It is a combination of various digital platforms that you use so that your audience finds you quickly and interacts with you.
Basics of Digital Marketing
Now that we have an understanding of digital marketing and what it includes let’s start. You have to start by looking at all the services mentioned above and selecting those that directly affect your business.
So, you’re ready to start using digital marketing to reach new leads, but where do you start? For an effective and productive digital marketing strategy, you have to start by choosing your best methods. Let’s take a look at all the various components of digital marketing.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
We will talk about developing your website later, but we thought we would get you up to speed on SEO practices before that. Think about it. More than 90% of all internet activity starts with an online search. That is a whole lot of customers that you don’t want to miss, and that’s where SEO comes into play. There are two types of SEO you’ll need to take care of when you plan your SEO strategy. You will have to take care of off page SEO as well as on page SEO. Both are equally important to your digital marketing strategy.
First, you have to choose the keywords that will help you get ranked on the search engines. These are the words that users use to find products or services that you are offering. Keywords can be short-tail and long-tail. You have to focus on both.
Apart from keyword research, there are other practices involved in SEO that will help improve your website’s ranking and bring more traffic to it. You have to clean up your website, make it mobile-friendly, include a sitemap, and ensure that your pages load quickly.
2. Website Design and Development
Your website is the primary channel that you are going to use to attract customers. All your strategies will be directed at your website, whether we talk about SEO or social media marketing. Everything will lead back to it. That is why you must invest time and effort into building your website. You have to make sure that users don’t have to wait for your website pages to load. If your website is taking too long, users will immediately go to a competitor’s page. Also, you have to invest in your website’s security. People who will be purchasing from you will input their confidential data like credit card information and personal information. You have to make it secure so that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Third, you have to make your website mobile responsive. More than 50% of users use their mobiles and tablets to access the internet. If you want them to have a great experience, make sure that your website is viewable on any device and looks good. Functionality is not the only thing you have to cater to; there’s also design. You have to make sure that users find your website aesthetically pleasing.
3. Email marketing
So, you have a website and an SEO strategy. Visitors are coming to your page, and they are viewing the information. What’s next? Next, you have to convince them to give you their email addresses and other personal information. That’s where email marketing comes into play. You have to nurture your visitors and ensure that they end up buying your products or services. For that to happen, you have to get their email addresses first. You can always offer them something in return for their email addresses like a case study, a free ebook, a discount voucher, or more. You can also buy emails, but that’s never a good strategy. You have to make sure that you obtain these emails organically. These are the ones who are actually interested in your brand, and your emails won’t end up in the spam folder.
4. Social media marketing
Almost everyone has two or more social media accounts on the various platforms available. You have to find out where your target audience exists and then create a presence on those platforms. Customers nowadays want personalized services. You can do that with your social media accounts. You can interact with them, guide them, answer their queries, ask for feedback, and so much more. Remember, don’t waste your time on every social media channel. That is a good way of thinning your efforts out. That is a daunting task for anybody. Once you find out that most of your target audience prefers a social media platform, that’s the one you have to focus on. It could be more than one like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and more.
5. Content Marketing
Content marketing is attracting customers through various types of content. You have to create unique and valuable content and then share it across multiple channels to attract customers. Your content could be in the form of blogs, videos, ebooks, podcasts, infographics, and more. Once you have created the content that your target audience wants, you have to disseminate it across all the channels you are working on. The more value you put into your content, the more your visitors will stay on your page. The longer they stay, the more they come back, the better ranking you will get.
Conclusion
So, this is it: Digital Marketing 101. These are all the services that you should be providing your customers so they can find you out, interact with you, ask questions, and review your products and services, and more. All of these strategies come under the umbrella of digital marketing. They work together to form a great, multi-tiered digital marketing strategy that ensures you connect with your target audience and keep them coming back for more.