Digital marketing covers a broad range of marketing tactics, with the common thread being that they’re all based online.
While there is definitely still a place for traditional marketing methods, ignoring digital means you could be missing out on a huge number of potential customers.
Getting your digital marketing right will increase your brand awareness and sales.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is everything that helps your website rank higher in the list of results when someone enters the relevant search terms for your business. There are lots of ways to achieve this, both through making changes to your own website and building the right kind of links with external sites.
A marketing expert can identify the keywords you need to include on your webpages to make sure you’re in front of your ideal customer at the right time.
You also need an expert eye on the backend of your website to make sure all the technical information is correct and the website is working as efficiently as it can. Taking these measures can have an impact on how reliable the search engines think your website is.
SEO extends beyond your own website too, and your SEO expert will find those spots elsewhere on the internet where you could benefit from being seen.
An SEO expert will be able to look at your website as a whole and make sure your website is in the best possible shape for search engines.
Analysing Your Customer Journey
Similar to SEO, a digital marketer will be able to make sure your website is in great shape, but this time from a customer perspective.
A digital expert will follow your customer’s journey, from the point at which they arrive at your website all the way through until they’ve completed the process. Examples could be purchasing an item, getting in touch or downloading something. As your digital expert follows this process, they can identify the parts of your website which might be putting customers off – maybe your menu is difficult to navigate, maybe your payment process is too complicated?
A thorough comb through of your website will identify those issues so you can make things quicker and easier for your customers, increasing the likelihood of them completing their journey through your website and taking action.
Emails
Often overlooked, but a great way of reaching customers, email marketing can inform, educate and entertain your customers.
Whether you’re telling them about a special offer, sharing some industry secrets or keeping them up to date about events in the pipeline, emails allow you to get straight into your ideal customer’s inbox.
With platforms which allow you to check how many emails have been opened and what the most popular links are, there’s a lot of data available to help you find out more about your existing customers and what works well for them.
Advertising
Digital advertising allows you to target customers much more precisely than has ever been possible with traditional print and broadcast mediums.
Options include Pay Per Click (PPC), where you pay each time someone clicks on an ad to visit your website, or native advertising – paid for content which is featured alongside other pieces which aren’t paid for. This could be a sponsored article, for example, which runs on a site relevant to your industry and which features other pieces which aren’t sponsored.
Content
Pieces in newspapers and magazines are a recognised way of getting attention for your brand and placing you in the role of ‘expert.’ However, with the shift to online, there are so many more ways to get your business out there.
Whether it’s getting the content for your website just right, creating long-form content such as whitepapers for potential customers to download, easy-to-digest infographics getting your messages across in a more visual way, or keeping people up to date through a company blog, creating inviting, useful content is a great way to get people to engage with your business.
Blogs can be particularly powerful as a way of allowing you to inject more personality into your writing and placing you as the expert about the things you’re most knowledgeable in. As well as sitting on your own websites, you can write blog pieces for other sites and invite guest posts to yours.
It gives you the benefit of creating regular, relevant content for your website, which will also increase your search engine ranking and provides another way in which potential customers can discover your business.
A digital marketing expert will ensure that any content ties in with any wider digital marketing activities, strengthening your messages wherever your customers see them.
Outsource to a marketing specialist
The number of people online is continuing to increase, so it’s likely you will find an increasing number of your customers there. Getting a digital marketing expert involved in your business will make sure you’re in the best position to turn their interest into action.
Whether you need short-term help to optimise your website, need a one-off piece of digital content or want a long-term digital marketing campaign, get in touch.