If you’re new to digital marketing, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, isn’t Search engine optimization (SEO) just getting your website to show up on the first page of search results?
While SEO is an essential part of digital marketing, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. After all, if you want someone to find your content, you’ll need to ensure that they know it exists. This process is known as marketing. It can take many forms, but, at its simplest, marketing is just making people aware of your product or service.
Now, you may not need marketing to gain new customers. After all, you may already have the customers you need. Instead, you may need to ramp up your marketing efforts to keep existing customers engaged and to gain new ones.
Here are four different types of online marketing you may need to consider to grow your business.
1. Advertising
If you sell something online, you’ll need to consider digital advertising. This could include everything from email marketing to banner ads on popular websites. You may also want to take a look at other channels, like Google AdWords, to see what else is out there.
Some advertisers may label all digital advertising as “real-time marketing”, but that doesn’t mean it has to. To better understand digital advertising, it’s important to know the difference between display and search adverts.
Search ads appear when someone searches for something online. If you have a product that solves a common problem, like, “the best organic toilet paper”, you’ll want to show up in the search results for keywords like, “organic toilet paper”.
When a user clicks on a search result, they’re taken to the advertiser’s website. This is known as a “landing page” and is where the “conversion” (i.e. sale) happens.
On the other hand, display ads appear when someone visits a website. They’re often used to hawk a product or service and they may clutter up the page with ads. However, you can tailor your display ads to only show up when a user is on a certain page or blog post. This means your ads will only show up for people who are already interested in your product or service.
To find effective advertising, you need to look at studies that compare the effectiveness of various types of ads. Fortunately, you don’t need to. All you need to do is decide what is best for your business and create multiple ads that promote your product or service. Then, measure the results of these ads to find out which one performs best.
2. Social Media Marketing (and Making Friends)
If you have a social media account, you may be tempted to use it to market your product or service. After all, people are more likely to trust friends’ recommendations over corporate advertisements.
If you decide to use social media to market your product or service, you’ll need to pick your platform. To start, you may want to consider using platforms like Twitter, where you can find people who have something to say and who are likely to follow your lead.
On the other hand, you may want to try Reddit or Instagram, where content is predominantly user generated. These are great places for people who are already interested in your product or service to discover content that relates to it. In other words, these are the places where your target audience is already hanging out.
Once you’ve picked your platform, you need to decide what kind of content you’ll be posting. If you’re a business, you’ll likely want to post about your industry, products, and services. However, if you’re a blogger, you may want to just focus on your latest blog post. While this may not seem like a popular opinion, a lot of digital marketers believe that the most effective strategy is to simply blend marketing and content in equal parts.
Whatever your industry, you’ll likely want to post regularly to maintain interest in your audience. Once you’ve established a presence on social media, you can take advantage of all the platforms’ features to engage with your audience. This may mean creating contests or giveaways for people to enter your website. You can also use your social media to comment on relevant content to build credibility.
3. Email Marketing
Did you know that people spend more than four hours per day on their phones and tablets? This is the reason why email has become such a popular channel for marketing because it can be accessed wherever you have an internet connection.
As a business owner, if you’re not handling your email marketing, then you’re seriously hindering your marketing efforts. This is especially true if you’re trying to find new customers who aren’t yet familiar with your business. By sending out regular emails – possibly even with a few fun graphics, like a business card or logo – you can potentially reach a large audience. Of course, you need to make sure that you follow email marketing best practices so that you don’t spam your subscribers.
If you already have a database of contacts, you can take advantage of email marketing to introduce your product or service and to keep existing customers engaged. Consider using a tool like Branch to send regular emails to lapsed or dormant customers. These emails may introduce your product or service in a new way or give customers a nudge to purchase your product or service. Also, be sure to segment your email list based on what will grow your business the most. For example, if you sell shoes, you may want to send different emails to people who bought women’s shoes or men’s shoes. Each email will contain a unique offer that is relevant to that group.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Last but not least, we have SEO. As we’ve discussed, SEO isn’t just about getting your website to show up on the first page of search results. It’s about making your website stand out among the “hundreds of thousands” of other websites that the search engine algorithms consider “similar” to yours.
To achieve this, you may want to look into getting a mobile-friendly or responsive design for your site. This will make it easier for people to discover your content whether they’re on a smartphone or tablet. You can also ensure that all your page content is easily digestible on any device by using appropriate headings and subheadings. Additionally, you may want to consider getting your site reviewed by a third party to have an objective and independent view of how your site is performing.
Now, you may be wondering where all this leads. In practice, the amount of time and money you need to spend on marketing will depend on a variety of factors. If you want to grow your business, you may need to consider increasing your advertising budget. However, if you’re already doing well, you may not need to increase your marketing spend as much. Instead, you may want to consider introducing a few new marketing techniques to keep existing customers engaged and to attract new ones.