This year, more than ever before, businesses are turning to online marketing and social media to reach potential customers. According to HubSpot Blogs, 83% of executives are using online marketing to gain more traction and visibility in today’s crowded marketplaces. In other words, digital marketing is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity.

Why Digital Marketing?

There are several benefits to using digital marketing to grow your business.

• Attract New Customers
• Create Brand Awareness
• Build Trust With Consumers
• Boost Your SEO
• Make Sales More Simpler
• Reduce Costs
• and More

Despite the many benefits, it’s important to note that not all businesses are created equal when it comes to marketing strategies. Some companies, especially larger ones, may be better suited for in-house marketing teams who can focus on driving traffic and gaining brand awareness while the company’s larger brand managers take on more of a behind-the-scenes role.

How To Get Started With Digital Marketing

If you’re brand new to digital marketing or simply looking to switch gears and tackle marketing tasks remotely, here are some tips to get you started.

1. Set a marketing budget and stick to it

If your marketing budget is limited, you have two options: reduce your budget or increase your effectiveness. The first option is rarely a good idea, but increasing your budget may help you attain better results. However, you need to be realistic about your budget and set a limit that you can comfortably achieve. Marketing with a limited budget typically means focusing on highly targeted audiences and engaging with them on an individual basis. This may mean paying for online adverts, running Facebook ads, or purchasing email lists.

2. Optimize Your Website

The first thing you should do once you’ve set up your budget is to optimize your website. Begin by creating a digital marketing strategy and then, using Google’s free tools, optimize your website for search engines like Google and Bing.

You should also look into buying a high-quality domain name and registering your website with Google and other major search engines.

Once you’ve registered your website, begin implementing a digital marketing strategy. You can use free tools like Google Analytics to track the performance of your website and determine where you should focus your efforts.

3. Measure the results of your marketing efforts

After completing step two, you need to measure your results. There are a variety of digital marketing metrics that you can use to determine the success of your marketing campaign. The following are a few examples of key metrics that you can use to measure the success of your digital marketing campaign:

• Revenue – This is the money that comes in from product sales, lead generation, and any referrals generated from marketing activities.
• Cost – This is the money that went into your marketing campaign–the adverts, website payments, etc.
• ROI – This stands for Return on Investment, and it’s a measurement of how much money you’re spending relative to how effective your campaign is. The higher the ROI, the more effective your campaign is.
• Brand Awareness – This refers to the extent to which your target audience knows about your brand and its products. You can use a tool like Google’s Brand Tracker to perform a quick analysis of brand awareness in your target audience.
• Lifecycle Marketing – Allowing you to track the lifetime value, or total worth, of a customer. You can use a tool like HubSpot’s Segmentation Builder to easily segment your customers into different groups based on their behavior. This way, you can individually target each group and determine the most efficient way of reaching them using digital marketing.

Tips For Successful Online Marketing

If you want to increase the likelihood of attaining profitable results from your online marketing efforts, here are some tips to help you succeed.

1. Know Your Audience

To begin with, you must know your audience and understand what motivates them to behave in a certain way. Only then can you effectively choose the right tactics and strategies to reach them. For example, if you’re marketing to women aged between 25 and 45, you may want to consider creating a blog that focuses on providing helpful tips and tricks for women in the digital sphere.

The way you describe your products and services can also influence the way consumers perceive you. If possible, test some of your current content to discover what resonates with your audience and whether or not it’s worth keeping or altering.

2. Focus On One Or Two Platforms

Creating and optimizing content for multiple platforms is a popular strategy among businesses, since doing so can help drive web traffic and establish your brand as an authority in your industry. However, despite the many benefits, this strategy can also hinder your efforts if not implemented correctly.

You should instead focus on one or two platforms and optimize your content for them. Chances are, your audience is already listening on one platform, and if you want them to discover your content, you may have to shift your focus to another. This can make it more difficult for them to locate your content should they desire to explore your site further.

3. Measure Your Results

Now that you have a clear idea of how effective your strategy is, you can begin to measure its results. This is key to continually improving your campaign and ensuring that you’re driving the right traffic and gaining the right results. To begin with, you can use Google Analytics to track the traffic that’s visiting your site. From there, you can determine the types of users that are visiting your site and whether or not they’re a fit for your product. With this information, you can create more effective strategies to draw in the right audience and encourage them to engage with your content.

In addition to using Google Analytics, you can also look into using a tool like HubSpot’s Segmentation Builder to further analyze the results of your marketing efforts. With this tool, you can create segments of your audience based on behavior such as demographics, product usage, and more. This way, you can determine the most efficient way of reaching a group of people and choose the right tactics to draw in the right audience and encourage them to engage with your content.

Final Takeaway

The purpose of this article is not to suggest that all businesses should market themselves online, but more so that you understand the importance of digital marketing in today’s world and the various ways in which you can be effective with it. Once you have a clear idea of the basics, it’s easy to dive into more advanced strategies and techniques that will further boost your marketing efforts.