Marketing

Digital Marketing 101: Invest Heavily in These Tactics for Big Long-Term Payoffs

You want to be successful with digital marketing. We get it. The old-school “four Ps” of marketing – product, price, promotion, and place – have been taught in business schools for generations, but the world has changed a lot since then.

If you’re looking for a “digital marketing 101” quick start guide that covers the basics, you’re in just the right place. We want to help you get the most out of your online marketing efforts. So whether you’re a complete novice or already dipping your toes into the world of online marketing, this guide will help you take your digital marketing efforts to the next level. Let’s get started.

What Does Digital Marketing Include?

Digital marketing encompasses every effort your business makes to reach new customers in a digital world. This includes any online or “virtual” property, from websites and mobile apps to search engine marketing and social media engagement.

With so many people using the internet every day, digital marketing is essential for any business that wants to reach a larger audience. For digital marketing to successfully grow your business, you must promote your products and services using a variety of mediums, such as:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
• Video marketing
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing

As you consider using digital tools to promote your business, be sure that you are coming to this from the perspective of building relationships. When it comes to digital marketing, relationships are key. Why? Because today’s consumers not only want but have come to expect brands they patronize to build a relationship with them.

Digital marketing is so effective in this way because it allows your business to interact with potential customers on a personal level. You can connect with them through social media, email, and other channels and get instant feedback about what they think of your product or service.

It’s incredibly effective, but be ready to reply. One of the biggest pitfalls we see in digital marketing is when brands fail to hold up their end of the relationship. If you start a conversation with customers, be sure you finish it. Your digital marketing efforts will crash and burn if you leave your new audience hanging.

How to Be Prepared for Digital Marketing

Ultimately, the goal of digital marketing is to generate more leads and sales for a business. In order to do this, businesses need to have a solid online presence and create content that is relevant and interesting to their target audience.

But before you rush into creating content, a few essentials must be in place for digital marketing to work. First, take a look at your visual branding. Do your marketing materials’ logo, look, and feel accurately convey who you are and what you’re selling? If not, make the necessary changes before attempting to drive new traffic.

Next, do a quick audit of your website. If it’s been a while since you updated things, now is the time to take care of that. Nothing will turn off new leads faster than an inconsistent visual brand on a clunky and outdated website.

Before investing time and money into proactive digital marketing, get these two essentials squared away to get the most out of your efforts.

Read More:

• A Strong Digital Presence Makes a Great First Impression
• 8 Website Redesign Tips to Help Crush Your Revenue Goals in 2022

How to Be Successful With Digital Marketing

The key to success with digital marketing is creating high-quality content that people will actually want to consume. This means using elements of digital marketing such as writing blog posts that are informative and interesting, creating entertaining and informative videos, and generally just producing content that people will find helpful.

It’s also essential to promote your content effectively. This means using SEO strategies to ensure that your content is easy to find, using social media to share your content with as many people as possible, and, more generally, getting your content out there in front of as many people as possible.

Here are the steps to creating great content for digital marketing:

1. Know Your Customer Persona 

First and foremost, you need to understand your target market. Who are you trying to reach? What are their needs and desires? What are their pain points? Once you have a good handle on this, you can start creating content that resonates with them.

Read More: What’s a Marketing Persona and Why it Matters 

2. Create Content that Answers Your Customer’s Questions 

Your ideal customer has problems that your products or services can solve. Think about how your customer will search for solutions and create written and video content that addresses those needs.

Most consumers will search for information such as how much something costs, one product versus another, or which solutions are the best in class. Content that answers these questions often receives the greatest attention, whether posted on your website, shared on your social media channels, or sent via email.

Read More: Video Marketing: How To Stop The Scroll and Get Your Customer’s Attention

3. Update and Optimize Your Website

Hopefully, you took our advice and have already updated your website. Next, you need to make sure that your website is optimized for search engines. This means using the right keywords and phrases in your titles and metadata.

Keyword research has many benefits, from gauging how people actually ask questions when searching (this is often not what you may think) as well as a great source for compiling content ideas.

4. Promote Your Content 

Organic traffic is a crucial, long-term play in content marketing. You must promote your content through PPC advertising and retargeting for faster results. Digital advertising is beneficial in several different ways.

For example, when running a specific promotional campaign, you can use PPC and retargeting ads to attract leads to your landing page. Or, if you have a bit of content getting a lot of traction on LinkedIn but not Facebook, you may choose to promote the Facebook content to get more attention on that platform.

Read More: 5 Social Media Video Marketing Strategies to Help Grow Your Business

5. Nurture Relationships 

With all the digital marketing tactics up and running, it may be tempting to sit back and wait for the leads to roll in. Don’t do this. Now is the time to ratchet engagement up and proactively seek out ways to nurture relationships with the leads you’re attracting.

There are a variety of tools you can use to simplify keeping track of all these new relationships. Check out our post: 9 Social Media Tools to Make Marketing Your Business Easier for more on this.

What’s Next?

We know it’s a lot to digest but we hope that these elements of digital marketing will help you achieve more ROI for your business. Whether your head is swimming or you’re ready to get busy, we are here to help. Schedule a meeting with us to discuss your digital marketing questions and goals. If you’re hungry for more, check out these additional posts to add fuel to the fire!

• 5 Must-Haves for a Successful Content Marketing Campaign
• The Main Reason Why Brand Video Works So Well in any Marketing Strategy
• Your Digital Marketing Strategy Won’t Survive Without These Two Things