If you’re reading this, I assume you’re either running a business or know someone who is. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. 😉

If you’re looking for information on how to market your business effectively online, you’ve come to the right place. Below, you’ll discover how to make the most of your digital footprint and online presence to gain marketing traction and grow your business.

The Basics Of Online Marketing

To understand online marketing, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the fundamentals of marketing. Simply put, marketing is the process of communicating with potential customers about your product, offering, or service and trying to convince them to buy what you sell. Traditional marketing methods like billboards, radio ads, and magazine spreads are being augmented by newer, more sophisticated tactics like SEO, content marketing, and social media.

The Basics Of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of tweaking your web content in such a way that it will rank higher on search engines like Google when potential customers are looking for specific content or products. For example, if you’re a real estate agent and you want to attract potential buyers to your website, you might want to look into optimizing your real estate agent website for SEO so that it appears higher on search engine results than your competition.

There are two primary ways to gain SEO traction with your organic (non-paid) search traffic. The first is via content optimization — creating and curating high-quality content to draw in searchers. According to HubSpot Blogs research, 64% of respondents cited high-quality content as the most effective SEO tactic, while only 24% said they’d rather see brand building. Guess which one I’d put higher on my list?

The Basics Of Content Marketing

In contrast to SEO, content marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on creating and distributing content that is valuable to potential customers. In other words, content marketers essentially do the SEO work for you.

To get started, you first need to do some research to see what your target audience’s needs and interests are. You can use tools like Google Trends to easily find the most popular topics and queries that are relevant to your business. It’s also a good idea to look at what competitors are doing and either do the same or use their tactics as the basis for your own content campaign.

Once you’ve defined your target audience, you can segment them based on various interests, hobbies, and behaviors. From there, you can choose what types of content to create. For example, if you’re targeting young adults between the ages of 18 and 24, you might want to create content that is specific to this audience. You can also decide to create general content for a more broad audience or content that is aligned with a specific event or series of events.

The Basics Of Social Media Marketing

You don’t need a standalone social media platform to engage with customers via social media. You can create a Twitter account, for example, and use the platform’s own tools to engage with followers.

The great thing about Twitter is that it’s incredibly easy to get started with. All you need to do is sign up with your username and password, and you’re good to go. From there, you can start following the accounts of people that might be interested in what your business has to offer. You can also start using the platform’s own tools to engage with your followers.

Once you’ve created a following on Twitter, you can decide what kind of content and when to post. If you’ve got a fairly sizable audience, you might want to think about creating a podcast and using the platform to engage with your listeners. Just remember: Twitter is about being human and natural. So, avoid using automated tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. These tools can make posting easier but can also affect your engagement rate. The more you engage with your audience, the better.

You can use Facebook to create a brand page for your business. On this page, you can add content such as products you offer, blog posts, and offers for a giveaway. You can also use the platform to connect with existing and potential customers. Just remember that Facebook is a bit more costly than Twitter. So, if you want to do a lot of growing, you might want to consider moving some of your marketing dollars to Twitter.

Where Do I Start?

Now that you have a good idea of what SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing are and how they work together, it’s time to put it into practice. Let’s assume you’ve decided to go with SEO as your top priority for your online marketing efforts. First things first: you’re going to need to decide on your target keywords. To do this, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner Pro or Wordstream’s Keyword Explorer. Simply enter your keyword or keywords into these tools and they’ll give you an idea of the volume of searches that are made annually for each term.

For example, if you’re a real estate agent and you want to rank for the keyword “real estate agent,” you might want to target that phrase with your SEO content.

Step 1: Create Content For Free

If you’re going to use SEO to draw in potential customers, you’ll want to create content that is valuable to them. The simplest way to do this is to create valuable content for free. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You just need to produce some content that is valuable and helpful to your target audience. Once you’ve got content, you can use paid ads to promote it.

As an SEO company, we produce dozens of optimizable and high-quality pieces of content daily. From e-books to whitepapers to webinars, we’ve got you covered. To get started, check out our Education section on our website. You can also find a variety of free educational resources under the Tools tab on our site. From there, you can start developing and publishing content straight away.

Step 2: Use Digital Platforms To Their Advantage

With your content published, it’s time to use your digital footprint to promote your content. You can use tools like Google Analytics to track the success of your efforts. From there, you can determine which platforms work best for you and your business.

For example, if you’re looking to drive traffic to your website, you might want to consider using Pinterest and Instagram to do so. Pinterest is a visual platform where users can “pin” images that appeal to them to their boards. Instagram is a popular social media platform where users can share images and videos that are meant to be attractive. If your business is related to fashion, you can use sites like Instagram and Pinterest to drive traffic to your website.

If, however, you’re looking to target consumers in your area, you might want to consider using Facebook or Twitter. Facebook is, by far, the largest of the three platforms we mentioned. It has over 2 billion monthly active users (as of April 2020). In other words, if you want to target the American people, you might want to consider using Facebook.

Twitter is, as the name suggests, a micro-blogging platform where users can share short messages (known as “tweets”) with their followers. While the platform has only been around for a little over ten years, it’s already become a worldwide phenomenon. As of April 2020, there are over 400 million monthly active users on the platform. If you want to target individuals in your area, you might want to consider using Twitter.

No matter what, each of these platforms has at least 350 million users who are actively looking for content related to your business area. If you can develop a following on any of these platforms, you can use them to reach your target audience.

Step 3: Measure The Results Of Your Campaigns

Finally, you’ll want to track the results of your SEO campaign. To do this, you’ll need to use tools like Google Analytics or Facebook’s Analytics to track the traffic that is generated by these platforms. Simply enter your URL into the browser’s address bar, and the platform will give you a comprehensive report on the success of your SEO campaign. You can then dive into the data and determine which platforms worked best for you.

Based on my own (Veronika’s) experience as a digital marketer, I can tell you that SEO is one of the most effective and affordable ways to gain market share and drive business. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Simply enter your target keywords into tools like Google Keyword Planner Pro or Wordstream’s Keyword Explorer, and you’ll see search volumes increase immediately. Once you’ve entered a few keywords, you can see what words are most popular and target those with your content.