In a nutshell, digital marketing refers to marketing activities delivered through channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps.
Its easy to get baffled by the technical jargon, so to help you to understand what we can help you with, we have compiled this list of the most common forms of digital marketing:
Paid Search:
Paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, typically refers to the “sponsored result” on the top or side of a search engine results page (SERP). You only pay when your ad is clicked. You can tailor your PPC ads to appear when specific search terms are entered, creating ads that are targeted to a particular audience.
Search Engine Optimisation:
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising the content, technical set-up, and reach of your website so that your pages appear at the top of a search engine result for a specific set of keyword terms. A set of best practices for good digital marketing, SEO enforces the need for a well-constructed and easy-to-use website. Via SEO the goal is to attract visitors to your website when they search for products, services, or information related to your business.
Content Marketing:
Great content is key to driving a great digital marketing strategy. Creating clever content that is not promotional in nature, but instead educates and inspires, is vital. Offering content that is relevant to your audience helps them see you as a valuable source of information.
Social Media Marketing:
Many people rely on social media networks to discover, research, and educate themselves about a brand before engaging with that organisation. For marketers, it’s not enough to just post on your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Social elements must be incorporated into every aspect of your marketing and create more sharing opportunities. The more your audience wants to engage with your content, the more likely it is that they will want to share it. This ultimately leads to them becoming a customer.
Influencer/Affiliate Marketing:
One of the fastest growing areas of digital marketing, influencer marketing has become a major opportunity for brands to link with their target customer. Through partnerships with individuals or brand partners, businesses can showcase their products and/or services with a through a form of endorsement in unique and visual ways. Spearheaded by the growth of social media, businesses can seek to work with accounts with similar or complimentary outlooks and interests. Additionally, this opportunity can offer affiliated marketing opportunities (particularly popular through Instagram shopping and link features) where individuals can not only promote your brand, but enable the viewer an easy journey to you through a simple tap/click for a small fee once a conversion is complete.
This form of marketing can require considerable resource and/or budget to source and manage depending on the approach and scale, but has proven to have very strong ROI with the right match.
Email Marketing:
Still the quickest and most direct way to reach customers, email marketing is still very relevant in the marketing mix. Successful email campaigns must be engaging, relevant, informative, and entertaining.
Mobile Marketing:
From SMS and MMS to in-app marketing, there are many ways to market on mobile devices, so finding the right method for your particular business is key. Beyond the mechanisms used to deliver your message, the coordination of your marketing across digital channels with mobile marketing as part of that mix, is very important.
Marketing Automation:
Marketing automation is an integral platform that ties all your digital marketing together. Without it, your campaigns will look disjointed. Marketing automation software streamlines and automates marketing tasks and workflows. Most importantly, it measures the results and ROI of your digital campaigns. Marketing automation technology gives an insight into which channels and campaigns are working and which aren’t.
Don’t forget the plan:
As with anything in business, it’s all about having a plan. For digital marketing, this is no different. By setting a strategy you can set out a clear roadmap of where you are, where you want to be and how to get there.
You may wish to utilise all digital marketing opportunities or simply a mix of a few but this should be determined by the plan. Through a strategic plan alongside regular measurement of progress, you can determine if the roadmap is working, identify how to continue and celebrate success along the way.
Next Steps:
Keen to do more with digital marketing but unsure where to start, need help creating your strategy or need more resource to make your plans possible, The Web Orchard is here to help. We offer a range of digital marketing solutions which can be bespoke to your needs.
To find out more or to get a quote speak to the team today.