What is Digital Marketing and How Can You Use it?

The influence of technology on today’s businesses have become more important than ever thanks to digital marketing. Entrepreneurs know how crucial it is to reach your target audience at the right place at the right time.

This means going to meet them where they spend most of their time and that is on the internet. Enter digital marketing — a means of promoting your products/services online. Building a successful business in the era of social media requires a steady use of digital marketing to further expand your brand’s reach and convert leads into customers.

Today we’ll be discussing what digital marketing is all about and how you can use this strategy to take your business to the next level. This includes adding user engagement, revenue, and even improve the chances of more people knowing about a brand or company through their targeted content.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing can be defined as the act of promoting your business on the internet using a variety of online marketing strategies. Search engines, social media, and email are the main channels digital marketers use to connect with prospective customers. Digital marketers have a clear understanding of how each digital marketing campaign will help them achieve their business goals.

Below are some examples of digital marketing strategies that businesses use to expand their brand’s presence:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to help rank it above other competitors in search engine results pages (SERPS). The goal of SEO is to boost the amount of organic traffic that your website receives. In a nutshell, SEO works by ensuring you have relevant content and information that’s favored by Google’s algorithms. The optimization is the most crucial part and this can heavily influence the success of your business if done properly. 

This is largely done through keyword research and implementation. Find the right words that people search for a business and then use those words throughout your website. There is a methodology to this; you need to pepper in the words naturally and use commonly searched words.

2. Social media marketing

There’s a good chance you’ve heard about social media marketing (SMM) because it’s one of the most popular digital marketing strategies used today. As the title suggests, social media marketing is the process of promoting your brand on popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and more. With almost 3 billion active users in 2019, it makes sense to go where the people to market your products/services.

This is done much in the same way as with SEO but has different approaches and depending on the platform will have built-in tools for promoting the page or feed. When it comes to Social media marketing though, you must absolutely be active on that platform and ready to respond to interested inquiries as soon as possible. There is a certain expectation of immediacy and activity when it comes to social media platforms.

3. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a commission-based marketing strategy where you receive money for promoting a brand’s products/services. The idea is you promote other people’s business through an affiliate network and receive a commission when your marketing efforts lead to sales. Some of the most popular affiliate marketing channels include the YouTube Partner Program and posting affiliate links on social media.

A two-way street, affiliate marketing is most helpful with brands or products that are commonly known but don’t have a lot of competition in your area. People searching for that product or service might stumble across your platform, looking to see a review or opinion piece. This gives you traffic and a chance to sell.

4. Pay Per Click (PPC)

Measured advertisements based on getting business from various platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Even Google presents such a feature with its Google Ads platform. If you’ve ever wondered why there are ‘Promoted posts’ or ‘Ad links’, those are the result of algorithms determining the likelihood of getting clicked. These kinds of targeted ads are, as their titles imply, cost the owner of the ad an amount of agreed-upon expense. Pay as you go.

While there isn’t any specific method or metric to get the most out of this service, the more niche the service or product and the less competition there is for the area, the cheaper it will be to go this route. Highly competitive markets can make this method expensive but it sees the most direct impact of your actions making it a very good and easy way to start a marketing campaign.

The role of digital marketing in any business

What makes digital marketing stand out from other offline marketing strategies is that it shows you accurate results in real-time. For example, you never know how many people have seen your newspaper ad while in digital marketing, each ad view is recorded. This means you can better track your progress with digital marketing and see how your ad is performing. You can pretty much measure the ROI of each aspect of your marketing efforts such as:

• Website traffic – With digital marketing, you’ll know how many people are visiting your website by using digital analytics software. These softwares go in-depth about how many pages the user visited, what device they used to visit your website and their location. This allows you prioritize marketing channels that deliver increased traffic to your website, helping you preserve your time, effort, and marketing dollars. Depending on the platform you are using, even metrics like age and gender can be leveraged assuming someone has put in their real details.

• Lead generation and content performance – Imagine creating a brochure on your website. You can measure the number of people who viewed the page where it’s hosted and enables you to collect their details when they choose to download it. Not only will it give you a good idea of how many people engage with your content, but also the quality of it so you can make further improvements to increase website traffic. While making direct sales is not always the goal of a marketing campaign, this can also be a great way to introduce extra revenue streams.

• Attribution modeling – Attribution modeling is identifying trends about the way people engage with your products/services before they buy something. When combined with the right tools and technology, digital marketing allows you to trace your sales back to the customer’s first engagement with your brand. If you can improve the experience of the customers throughout the entire buying process, you’ll benefit from increased sales and profit.

Ready to try digital marketing?

In today’s world where the consumer’s experience is heavily influenced by the internet, digital marketing makes total sense. You’re promoting your brand to billions of people around the world who can access your business in just a few clicks.

A local agency like Digital Marketing Perth has the power to shape your brand identity, expand your brand’s reach, and establish a loyal customer base through online marketing efforts. If you’re looking to elevate your game and narrow the gap between you and your competitors, then give digital marketing a shot and see how it works.