In the last five years, digital marketing has evolved from purely online marketing to include all forms of marketing and communications whether conducted digitally or physically. For marketers, this evolution has allowed for greater reach and effectiveness while providing more opportunities for growth.

As a digital marketer in a medium that is constantly changing and expanding, it’s important to always be learning and adapting to ensure you’re keeping up with emerging technologies and best practices.

Here are some of the most fundamental tips and tricks you can use today to effectively market your business online.

Set A Goal

Your first step to effective online marketing is to set a goal. What do you hope to gain from your online marketing efforts? Are you looking to increase web traffic to your website? Do you hope to see sales generated from your online marketing activity? Setting a goal will give you a clear starting point for your digital marketing efforts and allow you to measure your success (or failure) toward your goal.

Determine The Best Channels To Promote Your Business

Determining the best channels to promote your business is one of the most fundamental pieces of marketing strategy. When choosing your channels, you want to consider the size of your audience (i.e., how many people are actually looking for your product or service), the strength of your existing relationships with those audiences (i.e., does someone out there already know, like, or trust you?), the costs associated with each channel (i.e., how much does it cost to advertise on television?), and the likelihood of these audiences converting into leads or sales (i.e., how good is your past performance in converting potential customers into paying customers?).

When developing your list of channels to promote your business, it’s important to keep in mind that different platforms function on a fairly uniform basis with different interfaces so your tactics may need to change depending on the channel you’re using. For example, if you’re using digital marketing software to manage all of your campaigns, you may want to create separate campaigns for the different platforms (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) to ensure you’re delivering the right message to the right audience.

Create A Marketing Plan

Your marketing plan is the integral piece of planning that will guide your entire digital marketing strategy. To effectively market your business online, you will want to lay out a plan that breaks down the various platforms and social media channels you will be using to promote your business and the techniques you will be employing to maximize your results.

You can start by identifying the goal you hope to achieve from your online marketing efforts and the metrics you will use to determine your success (i.e., website traffic, social media engagement, and lead generation). Next, you will want to consider the type of content you will put out (i.e., are you planning on blogging regularly or will you be publishing eBooks or whitepapers?), the type of ads you will run (i.e., display, video, or paid), and the frequency with which you will engage with your audience (i.e., are you planning to post regularly to social media or will you only post when you have new content to promote?).

After you’ve developed your marketing plan, you can move onto the next step which is to actually put into practice your plan. This involves using tested strategies and techniques to gain measurable results.

Determining The Optimal Budget

Determining the optimal budget for your online marketing efforts is another critical decision you will need to make. How much are you prepared to spend on ads, content, and social media engagement? Budget is always a key consideration when considering marketing plans and social media has become so personalized that a one-size-fits-all approach to budgeting may not be suitable. You’ll need to consider how much you are able to spend and still meet your income goals as well as how much you are willing to spend given the strength of your existing relationships with your customers (i.e., if you’ve already established yourself as an expert in your industry, you may not need to spend as much as you would on a business you’ve just started).

Determining The Role Of Analytics

Determining the role of analytics in your online marketing strategy is yet another critical decision you will need to make. Do you need to track the performance of your various campaigns and platforms to find the most effective methods of reaching your audiences? How much do you need to pay for analytics services to find the answers you’re looking for?

Tracking the performance of your various campaigns and platforms is incredibly important if you’re looking to effectively market your business online. Without it, you’ll have no idea if the strategies you’re employing are actually working or if you’re just wasting your time and money (and potentially damaging your business in the process). Analytics can help you find out how effective your campaigns are and if they’re worth continuing or changing. It can also help you find winning combinations of content, demographics, and channels to target in the future.

Monitor Your Progress

Finally, you’ll want to monitor the progress of your plan to determine its effectiveness. Did you achieve your goal? Are you getting the results you were looking for? How efficient is your plan in comparison to your original goals?

To effectively market my business, I monitor my progress with Google Analytics. I look at site traffic, the number of visitors that came from different sources, and the number of pages that were most often visited to get an idea of my audience’s interest and interaction with my content. I also look at which countries my audience comes from, the regions of the countries, and the actual devices my audience uses to access the Internet.

To find and monitor the effectiveness of your marketing plan, you can use tools like Google Analytics to track your progress. Not only will this help you determine the overall success of your efforts, but you can use the data to continually improve and optimize your plan for greater results.

The role of digital marketing has evolved from simply getting users to your website to include all forms of marketing and communications whether conducted digitally or physically. As a marketer you’ll always be adapting to stay ahead of the curve and use cutting edge technologies to grow your business.