It can seem overwhelming when you think about the ever-evolving world of digital marketing. Where do you start? What are the first steps you should take when getting your feet wet in this critical area of study? In the following article, we will walk you through all the necessary steps to get you to a comfortable place of understanding what digital marketing is and how to use custom tools and strategies to your advantage?
Traditional Offline Marketing
The business card will never die so make sure you invest in a great one and hand it out wherever you go. Print ads (newsletters, newspapers, magazine, flyers, brochures) may not be as popular in the digital age so when you do use them make them impactful by adding coupons and events you’re hosting, as well as free products and/or services. Billboards are still a great tool for marketing as well. TV commercials (especially on streaming content) and radio spots with catchy jingles, memorable characters and slogans can go a long way.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the study, management and promotion of brands, products or services via digital technologies such as email, search engines, social media, websites, mobile apps, etc… Their implementation will vary according to the marketing campaign chosen, but the goal is always to maximize the bottom line.
These technologies are utilized via electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, notebooks and laptops.
Why Is Digital Marketing Important?
Gone are the days of people buying things because of a great commercial or print ad. Today’s consumers are much more intelligent and will turn to family, friends and online research before making a purchase. This is why it’s important to master digital marketing if you want your business to bloom. It was reported by Statista that the estimated number of global Internet users in 2021 was 4.9 billion.
Here is the regional breakdown as of July 2022:
- East Asia: 1.23 billion users
- Southern Asia: 1.02 billion users
- Southeast Asia: 516 million users
- North America: 444 million users
- South America: 310 million users
- Central and Western Europe: 293 million users
- Eastern Europe: 201 million users
- Southern Europe: 191 million users
- Western Asia: 182 million users
- Western Europe: 175 million users
- Northern Africa: 169 million users
- Western Africa: 156 million users
- Eastern Africa: 130 million users
- Southern Africa: 53 million users
- Central Asia: 53 million users
- Central Africa: 31 million users
- Northern Europe: 30 million users
- Central America: 23 million users
An Important Element
Before jumping into the practical knowledge, it must be said that a very important aspect of your company is your employees. Keep them happy because it has been proven that happiness has a direct correlation with high productivity in the workplace. Treat your employees right and they’ll become family members. Corporate event functions are a great way to let off steam and build a bond with your team.
Strategies, Tools, Hacks and Tips
The following gems will help guide you to a more profitable bottom line. With digital marketing, you will always be a student because there are always going to be emerging new trends be wise and anticipate where those trends will shift. Be wise and educate yourself so that you can tweak and adjust your strategies along the way
The First Step
The key to digital marketing mastery is understanding your target market. This is important because it will determine how you approach your digital marketing campaign and where you advertise. Once you’ve defined your audience you can design a plan of attack to cater specifically to them.
Assemble Your Toolbox
You must have an online presence so invest in a website. Make sure it represents your mission statement and carefully choose its design. The color scheme, fonts, and graphics must be thematic and cohesive to bring the visitors a piece of mind that they’ve found the right place. There is great software like Adobe’s Dreamweaver to help you construct your website. RightMessage is a software that modifies your site in real time with great options like dynamic opt-ins and even the ability to swap testimonials in that will be similar to the current viewer.
Next, you have to engage in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are over two hundred factors in getting your website to rank high on search engines. This takes time you can’t just land on the top of google unless you are prepared to pay for it. This might not be a bad option, but either way, learn these six areas of importance when it comes to SEO and with time you can become a pro at it.
- Site Analysis
- Keyword Research
- Competitor Analysis
- Page Optimization
- Link Building
- Reporting
Track Your SEO Progress
You want to keep your eye on “impressions” which is how many times your ad was shown. “Clicks to website” is how many clicks your site has received. Depending on your aim you’ll want to focus on “conversions”, “calls”, “clicks”, and “key page View” as well. Analyze your key metrics regularly to see if you if you need to make changes to your strategy.
For your email marketing consider using Drip. It is an email marketing platform that allows you to select certain visitors and enroll them in custom campaigns based on their behaviors.
Cater To The Mobile Sector
This is a different animal that must be given special attention. Invest in understanding it.
Social Media
Create accounts for Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc… And understand that you must become a publishing/posting powerhouse. Create high-quality original content to draw an audience in. Use these tools like this:
*TikTon – where the action is, with millions of loyal users worldwide, including younger demographics.
*Instagram – capture and create great images to promote your brand or service as well as your employees.
* LinkedIn – a great networking tool that should be utilized
*Facebook – their ads are worth the cost and the Facebook pixel is a great marketing must have.
*Twitter – concise, clear and engaging tweets can really get eyeballs to your brand.
*YouTube – jump in front of the camera because mobile video consumption is on the rise.
The Future
In today’s world we have Siri and Alexa and tomorrow it’s predicted that more than half of us will be doing our searches via voice. Make sure you optimize your website for voice search and latent semantic indexing so that you’ll be at the forefront of what’s to come.
When marketing in the digital world keep in mind that you must be vigilant. Be consistent with your mission statement. Use these tools to your advantage and you’ll be successful.
Helen Cartwright is a freelance blogger
This blog was posted in 2018 and has been updated