Anyone involved with business knows how important marketing is. If you cannot let people know you exist, where you are, who you are and what you do, your company will find it hard to succeed. While traditional marketing still has its place, many companies rightfully make digital marketing a central part of their overall plans.
People are spending more time than ever online now. Digital marketing enables your company to achieve a global reach, find new customers, build brand awareness, engage people via mobile devices and use the latest analytical tools to run better campaigns.
But what 4 fundamentals are the best digital marketing strategies built on?
1. Social media
As a digital marketing strategy, social media is hard to beat. But why is this true? To begin with, social media platforms are free to sign up with and so give a cost-effective way to engage your audience online. In addition, sites like Twitter are easy to use and do not need any specific training for staff to get going on them.
Social media is also a great digital marketing strategy because of the exposure it delivers. Instagram, for example, has over 1 billion active users around the planet and this shows the reach it offers any company – wherever you might be based physically.
This type of exposure is particularly good if you plan to break into new markets and need a way to engage online consumers there. When you also factor in how great it is for quickly telling people of new products/promotions, showcasing your brand story and connecting with the public in an organic way, it gets better.
2. SEO
SEO is one of the best digital marketing strategies and stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. It involves taking steps to show up higher in search engine results online and connect with a greater number of consumers as a result.
SEO is a pretty broad topic but is split into on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to anything you do on your website to gain a higher search engine ranking, such as targeting keywords relevant to your business, posting fresh site content regularly and keeping page load speeds fast. Off-page SEO is anything else you do off-site! This could be ethical link-building, guest posting or social media marketing.
Some people still question if SEO is worth it – the simple answer is that it is. Showing up higher in the search engine results page means more people see you online and more traffic should come your way as a result.
3. PPC
PPC is another classic digital marketing technique and stands for ‘Pay Per Click’. In this method of online marketing, businesses run targeted adverts on specific platforms and then have to pay a fee each time someone clicks on their ad. The most popular and well-known platform for PPC campaigns is Google Ads.
Although this method naturally brings costs with it, the returns it can generate makes PPC campaigns widely used. This includes visibility for a product/business and the chance to not only increase online traffic but also drive sales from people who are looking for what you offer.
There are a few things to note if you plan to make this a key part of your digital marketing strategy. The first is to spend time researching which keywords to put into your online ad. While you want the most relevant, it can pay to avoid the most popular. This avoids you having too much competition when bidding for browsers. In addition, you also want to focus on wording your ad properly, think about the landing page your ad goes to, plus making sure any PPC campaign stays within budget.
4. Content marketing
The last fundamental digital marketing method is content marketing. This refers to the creation and sharing of content online to promote your brand. This can be anything from blog posts to infographics, videos and social media posts. It’s key to note that content marketing may not always be explicitly about your brand/product/services but will still promote it online in one way or another.
The key to successful content marketing of course is creating fresh, original and useful content to share online. If you can do this regularly and put it in places people will see organically, then it can help stimulate interest in your company. This, in turn, can help your reputation grow and also drive more traffic/sales your way. The most common places to market new content are social media platforms, company blogs, forums, press releases, podcasts, websites and video sharing platforms.
Use the best digital marketing strategies to your advantage
Digital marketing is not only vital for connecting with more consumers in an online setting but also a far ranging topic. For this reason, it can sometimes seem a little overwhelming and hard to know which methods are crucial to focus on. If you need a hand here, the above shows the 4 digital marketing fundamentals to concentrate on.
Here at Fifteen, we offer a wide range of digital marketing services including the above fundamentals and more! Take a look at what we offer and be sure to get in touch with us to see how we can help you and your business.