In today’s digital world, it’s essential to have a solid online marketing foundation to stand out from the rest. With ever-changing digital marketing tactics coming and going, it’s essential to have a baseline understanding of digital marketing to keep up with the trends and know when to adapt and embrace them.
What is digital marketing? Essentially, digital marketing is the use of digital tools and platforms to promote a business or brand.
Why should you have a digital marketing foundation? Well, if you’re looking to stand out from the competition and be more efficient and effective with your digital marketing, it’s a must that you establish a strong base of knowledge.
Establishing a digital marketing foundation doesn’t just mean learning the theory behind marketing on digital channels. There are actually a lot of different ways to establish a digital marketing foundation, and I’ll share with you some of the best methods that can help you build the perfect marketing platform.
Marketing Reports, Dashboards, And Analysis Tools
One of the best things that came with establishing a digital marketing foundation is the ability to track everything relating to digital marketing activities online. Modern marketing leaders are spoiled for choice when it comes to analyzing data online. With so many new tools and platforms gaining popularity, it’s easy to see why.
As a marketer, you’d always want to have access to as much data as possible and the ability to analyze it instantly. These tools give you that power. When you combine all the tools and platforms that I’ll discuss in this article, you’ll have an incredible amount of data that you can easily analyze to make better decisions and improve your performance.
Content Strategy And Planning
Creating and publishing content is one of the most important pillars of any digital marketing campaign. However, developing a content strategy and planning out the content creation process isn’t easy. Fortunately, with the help of content strategy software, like HubSpot’s Content Studio, developing a content strategy and planning out the content creation process isn’t as difficult as it seems. Before we get into the details, let’s take a quick look at what a content strategy is.
A content strategy, also known as a content planning process, helps you develop a cohesive and comprehensive approach to creating, publishing, and distributing content.
As a marketer, you’ll have to consider many different factors when developing a content strategy. These include the purpose of the content (i.e., what do you hope to achieve with the content?), the target audience (i.e., who is this content designed for?), and the resources available (i.e., what’s the budget for content creation?).
To develop a content strategy, you can use a tool like HubSpot’s Content Studio. The great thing about using a tool like this is that it takes the drudgery out of content creation and strategizing. You can connect your social media accounts, search engines, and blogs to create a hub that contains all the relevant content for your strategy. Then, you can map out the ideal content schedule and produce content at regular intervals.
Once you have your content plan in place, it’s time to start creating content. To help you create content that will engage your audience, use effective copywriting techniques and story telling. To develop content that will rank well in search engines, utilize tools like HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing method to build trust with potential consumers.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is undoubtedly one of the more prominent technologies emerging in the digital marketing world. Marketing automation tools allow you to automate the process of marketing and advertise your product or service online. This can be exceptionally useful if you’re constantly bombarded with new marketing tactics and technologies emerging all the time.
Automation allows you to set certain criteria, like the type of content you want to create and the target audience you want to engage with, and then have the platform carry out the rest. For example, if you tell the automation tool you want to regularly publish helpful tips on how to improve your cooking, it might auto-publish those helpful tips once a week on separate days. The great thing about automation is that it relieves you of much of the drudgery involved in marketing and advertising. You can set the criteria for the content you want to create and then forget about it. The platform will handle the rest.
Content Creation Technology
The content creation technology (or tool) is exactly what it sounds like: the software or platform that you use to create content. There are many different platforms and tools designed for content creation. The great thing about these tools is that they free up some of your time so that you can focus on other things. For example, let’s say you’re a freelance writer with a full time job. With content creation technology, you can set the price you’re willing to charge for your work and then create content when you have time, in the comforts of your home. The content will then be published when you have enough subscriptions or followings.
With all of these tools and platforms to choose from, it can be difficult to know where to begin. If you’re new to digital marketing, I’d suggest trying out YouTube. The great thing about YouTube is that it’s completely free and you can use all of the tools and features available to any user. Plus, it’s the second largest search engine behind Google. So, you’ll almost certainly find the answer to your questions here.