How Digital Marketing Can Help Your Business

By Adriaan Brits | Tuesday, 21 July 2020 | Business, Tech

Digital marketing includes all marketing efforts that use an electronic device and the internet. Businesses interact with digital channels such as social media, other websites, and search engines to connect with prospective customers.

Although traditional marketing might exist in print ads and physical marketing, digital marketing can only happen electronically and online. What this means is that the possibilities are endless for brands to feature email, website, and social media-based opportunities.

Another key component of digital marketing is mobile marketing. Smartphone usage as a whole accounts for 69% of time spent consuming digital media, while desktop-based digital media consumption makes up less than half. This means it is important to optimize digital ads, web pages, social media images, and other digital assets for mobile devices.

Recommended: Read our guide to learn how to digitize your business.

Types of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is not limited to just one tactic or practice. Below, we’ve listed some popular forms of digital marketing that your business can easily implement into its marketing strategy.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO optimizes your website to rank higher in search engine results, increasing the amount of “free” traffic your website receives. This could target text searches as well as image, video, and news searches.

Improving your business’s SEO could be as simple as adding keywords to your webpage text and image descriptions, or you could get your webpage linked on a different website (known as “backlinking”).

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is a method of driving traffic onto a website by paying a publisher every time someone clicks the ad. A common type of PPC is Google Ads, which allows you to pay for Google search engine results top slots at a price per click of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC include:

• Paid ads on Facebook
• Twitter ad campaigns
• Sponsored ads on LinkedIn

Social Media Marketing

This type of digital marketing promotes the brand and content on social media platforms to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your business. Some popular social media platforms for businesses include:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn

Some social media marketing practices include holding user polls, posting status updates, and creating eye-catching visuals for your feeds.

Content Marketing

Content marketing refers to the creation or promotion of content for the purpose of generating brand awareness. Channels that can play a part in your content marketing strategy include:

• Blog posts
• Ebooks and white papers
• Infographics

Content marketing plays into other forms of digital marketing, including SEO and social media marketing. Consistently generating optimized content will boost your business website’s search engine rankings, and making interesting content allows your online followers to share with new users.kk

Online PR

This is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications. It is a lot like traditional PR — it’s just online. There are various ways to optimize PR efforts, like talking to journalists via social media. This tactic is a great way to develop a relationship with the press.

Engaging online reviews is also essential in this practice as it helps humanize your brand and deliver messaging that protects the brand’s reputation.

Email Marketing

Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audience. It is often used to promote content and events, and ultimately directs people toward the business’s website. The types of emails you might send in an email marketing campaign include:

• Subscription newsletters
• Followup emails to website visitors
• Promotions for loyalty program members
• Customer welcome emails

Sponsored Content

With sponsored content, the brand pays another company to promote content that represents your brand. A popular type of sponsored content is influencer marketing, where a brand sponsors an influencer in its industry to publish posts related to the company on social media.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is a software that serves to automate your marketing operations. Many marketing departments automate tasks they would otherwise manually, such as email newsletters as well as campaign tracking and reporting.

There are many opportunities to maximize a company's digital marketing growth, especially in the challenging times we are currently facing. The following tips are a great way to get started:

• Take advantage of Facebook and Instagram stories: This is resection refers to prevalent and visually focused section on a business’s page, which included a detailed ‘about us’ text box that showcases a business’s strengths and history.
• Update Google My Business frequently: Google My Business allows updates to customers regarding promotions, business events, and new blog posts. Photos, links, and videos can also be uploaded to further personalize the experience for each business.
• Optimize for mobile use: We are rapidly moving to a mobile-first society, ensuring the business website is user friendly is important. Using apps such as TikTok and Snapchat for influencer marketing can help boost online engagement and visibility.
• Consider video marketing: Including video in your digital marketing plans is vital. Ad spend in the video space continues to grow. Site.es like Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram can help you stay abreast of the latest trends in the marketing space.

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