Worried about your online marketing skills? Want to master the art of digital marketing? Worried about paying for your marketing tactics? Don’t worry, I have you covered.
In the last couple of years, online marketing has changed drastically. Gone are the days where you could rely on expensive commercials to gain eyeballs. Now, with every person having a smartphone, you have to rely on more sophisticated methods to reach your audience.
If you’re curious about digital marketing and want to get started, here’s a quick overview of what you can expect at the first meeting with a marketing professional.
An Outline Of The Most Important Concepts
Before you begin your digital marketing journey, it’s important to understand what it means. Simply put, digital marketing is a way of getting messages out to the public using digital tools.
As with any new industry or career, there are a host of terms and phrases you need to learn. While you might know what SEO is, don’t expect to understand the ins and outs of digital marketing solely from an SEO perspective.
One of the most important things to learn is how online marketing differs from marketing as we’ve known it in the past. For decades, marketing has referred to the overall strategy of a business – what products it will offer, how it will sell those products, pricing, etc. – but online marketing focuses on the digital aspects of that strategy, such as SEO, paid ads, email marketing, and more.
An outline of the most important concepts you need to learn will help you get the most out of your first meeting. Knowing what these terms mean will put you ahead of the game.
An In-Depth Analysis Of Your Website And Its Content
If you’re anxious to get started, don’t waste any time examining your website. Simply open up your web browser and type in your website’s URL – you can find this information within the ‘about’ section of your company’s homepage.
Once you’re on the site, take a few minutes to examine its design. Are you using an external design agency or do you have someone on your staff who designed your website? If you decide the latter, how was the process? What type of technologies did they use?
The answers to these questions will provide you with invaluable information about your web developer’s skills and his/her experience.
Once you’ve examined the website’s design, it’s time to move onto the content. What pages do you want to promote? Did you set up the site with a couple of goals in mind? For example, did you want to encourage customers to subscribe to your newsletter? Did you want them to visit the blog?
The content on your site can be broken down into several categories, including the following:
- Web pages
- Blogs
- FAQs
- How-To guides
- Events
- Case studies
- Products
- Quotes
- Links
Each of these elements needs to be assessed and understood in order to properly formulate a digital marketing strategy. Having a clear idea of what will and won’t work when using digital marketing to promote your business will save you time and money. You’ll know exactly what to expect when you meet with your digital marketer – even before the first pitch was drafted!
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
An important part of any marketing plan is the collection of key performance indicators (KPIs). These are metrics that can be used to determine the success of your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re curious about how many customers you’ve acquired via SEO, you can use Google Analytics to track the referrals – and transactions – that resulted from your SEO work. Similarly, if you’re using social media to grow your audience, you can use social media analytics to determine the effectiveness of your strategy.
When you establish KPIs for your marketing plan, it’s time to set some realistic goals. For example, did you expect to grow your audience from 100 to 500 subscribers in the next 30 days? Did you expect to increase your blog’s page views by 10x in the next 6 months?
When you set these goals, brainstorm ways of measuring whether or not you’ve accomplished them. If you’re using SEO to drive traffic to your website, how will you know if your efforts are paying off? Did you set up a special landing page for leads that convert at a 30% rate? How will you know if you’re succeeding with your social media strategy?
As you can see, every part of a digital marketing strategy – from creating the strategy to measuring its success – requires dedication and learning. Don’t expect to understand it all at once. Take it step-by-step. In time, you’ll be able to look back and appreciate all the hard work that went into creating a successful digital marketing strategy for your business.