1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a necessary skill for anyone involved in online marketing. If you want to be able to effectively reach your target audience through the search engines, you need to learn how to optimize your content and use the right keywords. With the right training, tools and of course, a little bit of magic, you will be able to get yourself started with SEO and begin your journey to mastering search engine optimization.

2. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is all about creating marketing plans, using digital technologies and keeping track of what’s working and what needs to be changed. Essentially, it’s about using digital tools to plan, execute and track marketing activities.

What is digital marketing?

Traditionally, marketing has been considered to be the activity of selling a product or service to a customer. But as more and more people turn to the web for information, marketing has evolved to include online marketing, which is the practice of getting customers to interact with your business through online channels like social media and websites.

In other words, marketing can be considered to be everything from offline marketing (cold calling, billboard advertising, etc) to online marketing (social media, email marketing, blogging, etc).

Why is digital marketing important?

Marketing itself has changed. Just a few years ago, marketers primarily focused on getting the largest audience possible for their ads. Today, the emphasis is on building long-term relationships with customers.

If you want to be able to target your ideal buyer, you need to understand their digital world and learn how to interact with them where they are. Otherwise, you may end up annoying or frustrating them, which could result in a bad word of mouth campaign that brings in less profit than anticipated – not to mention the fact that it’s a lot of work to try and get someone’s attention if they’re not already familiar with and engaged with your product or service.

3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

SMM stands for social media marketing and is all about using various platforms, social networks and digital marketing to interact with and engage with customers.

In today’s world, social media has become an important part of everyone’s daily routine. When someone posts a new status update, photo or video, we tend to instinctively reach for our smartphones and click on the ‘like’ button, or comment on the posted content.

As a marketer, you would be remiss not to try and engage with your target audience via social media. Why? Because nearly everyone is now on social media, which means that your target audience is probably already interacting with your competitors and other businesses in their industry.

If you want to be effective and grow your business online, you need to learn how to utilize social media.

4. Analytics

With so much information available online, marketers need to be able to accurately measure the success of their campaigns and improve on their techniques – something that is made much easier with the help of analytics, which gives you a clear picture of your marketing performance, including the effectiveness of your campaigns and the worthiness of your efforts.

Why is this important?

As previously stated, marketing has changed. In today’s world, marketing is all about building long-term relationships with customers. To achieve this, you want to make sure that your marketing efforts are bringing you concrete results, which is something that analytics can help you measure.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing refers to the process of sending emails to existing or potential customers to promote your products and services. Email marketing is a type of digital marketing, which promotes products via email.

Why is email marketing important?

It’s a fact: people love to read emails. So much so that there are entire industries (e.g. marketing) devoted to just getting people to open their emails and take action.

If you’re not using email marketing as part of your digital marketing strategy, you’re actually limiting your business’ growth potential. Why? Because not only does email allow you to communicate with potential customers when they’re most receptive to receiving promotions, it also allows you to get to know your customers better, which in turn, makes you appear more human and less like a brand.

6. Website Analysis

Website analysis is all about using digital tools, such as Google Analytics and Hootsuite, to measure the performance of your website.

Why is this important?

If you want to effectively market your business, you need to understand how people are finding your site and what they’re doing once they’re there. This includes analyzing traffic, identifying your target audience, discovering the effectiveness of your web content and learning what content on your site is most valuable.

7. SEM

SEM stands for search engine marketing and is all about getting traffic to your site via the search engines, which is a lot easier said than done. You’re going to need a solid plan to ensure that you’re reaching your target audience via the search engines and that you’re having an effect on your desired audience.

What is search engine marketing?

SEM is the umbrella term for all of the marketing activities that revolve around getting traffic to your site via the search engines. As the name would suggest, search engine marketing is mostly focused on marketing activities through search engines and various tools that can help track the performance of your campaigns.

SEM includes, but is not limited to, search engine optimization (SEO), which we just discussed, as well as paid search and social media marketing. Paid search is when you pay for having your product or service (e.g. a digital audio recorder) listed on search engine results pages, often referred to as ‘organic’ results or ‘natural’ results. Social media marketing is all about using different social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, to bring in potential customers.

Why is search engine marketing important?

The short answer is that you need to learn how to use the search engines to effectively market your business. If you want to find your target audience, there are numerous tools, including Google Analytics, that can help you pinpoint the right people, reach them and convert them into paying customers.

You also need to determine how much you’re willing to spend on paid search and social media marketing. These are costs that you incur, but they also are costs that you can afford, at least in the short term. If you want to become a successful marketer, you need to understand the importance of investing in these tools.

8. PR

Finally, we have press releases and social media profiles. A press release is a type of marketing tool that allows you to quickly and easily distribute news stories about your company, brand or product.

Why is press release marketing important?

This is a medium that is often overlooked but can be extremely effective in getting the word out about your business, brand or product. If you want to establish yourself as an authoritative voice in your industry, getting a press release is a great way to do so.

A press release can be seen as a public relations (PR) tool, as well as an online marketing tool. Therefore, it’s important to learn about press releases and how to use them to effectively market your business or product.

Now that you have an idea of the basic building blocks of a marketing plan, let’s dive into how to put one together.

Step one: Identify your target audience

The first step in creating a marketing plan is to identify your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your marketing? What are they looking for?

Start by considering demographics, such as age, gender and interests. Then, look at the websites and social media platforms that your target audience uses. Analyze the type of content that they’re interacting with and determine what kind of products or services you might offer that would interest them. By understanding your target audience’s needs and wants, you will be able to devise smarter marketing strategies that are more effective at driving business.

Step two: Set a budget and time frame

After you’ve determined your target audience, you need to set a budget and time frame for your marketing. Setting a budget and time frame can be helpful in determining how much you should spend on various marketing initiatives.