What exactly is Digital Marketing and what are the benefits of learning it?
What you’ll find in this E-Book has a lot to do with what we call inbound marketing – the tactics you can use to attract, convert, close and delight visitors to your website, social and blog. Digital platforms are great for this because we now have more ways, places, and routes to attract people to visit our website where, we hope, they’ll become our customers. We can also be much more creative with this kind of marketing because it’s not just about what we think of as traditional outbound marketing activity. With all of these opportunities at your disposal, you need to consider what’s the impact on your target customer. This is because audience expects a great experience with your brand at each digital touchpoint. If you can provide a great experience at every touchpoint, you’ll turn more visitors into leads, and more leads into customers. Though we have to admit, it’s easier said than done! It’s your website, blog and social media channels that are at the heart of any digital marketing plan—so always keep in mind that you’re optimizing for these destinations when planning digital marketing tactics.
LET’S BEGIN WITH THE BIG IDEAS AND CLARIFY A FEW DEFINITIONS: Digital marketing This is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing efforts. Businesses leverage digital channels such as Google search, social media, email and their websites to connect with their current and prospective customers. From your website to your online assets like digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures and beyond, there’s a huge spectrum of tactics to consider. The best digital marketers know which channels their audience uses and they have a clear picture of how each asset supports their overarching goals. Inbound marketing This is about using marketing to bring potential customers to you, rather than having your marketing efforts fight for their attention. Sharing is caring and inbound marketing is about creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more. Content marketing this is a marketing program that centers on creating, publishing and distributing content for your target audience – usually online – the goal of which is to attract new customers. While inbound marketing can be looked at as a methodology, content marketing is a more specific inbound strategy of writing content that audience will find valuable. Buyer’s journey this is the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate and purchase a new product or service. The journey is a 3-step process:
1. Awareness stage: the buyer realizes they have a problem
2.Consideration stage: the buyer defines their problem and researches options to solve it
3. Decision stage: the buyer chooses a solution.
Strategy, in spite of being a word favored by the shiny
suits of the world, really means thinking about why you’re doing something before you do it. So, starting your digital marketing strategy is as simple as starting with why you want to do it, deciding what you want to do, how you’re going to do it, what you expect to happen, and when and how you’ll measure your success
RESULTS—REASONS WHY YOU’LL WANT TO
CREATE A DIGITAL MARKETING EFFORT:
Brand awareness
Do you want more people to know about your brand
(or your products and services)?
Acquisition or lead generation
Do you want to reach people who’ve never bought from
you before and bring them into your buyer’s journey?
Growth from existing customers
Do you want people who’ve already bought from you
before to buy more frequently or buy a different kind
of product?
If possible, set a specific goal
Your metrics should be tied to your goal and include
a time limit. These might include:
• X Number of leads from a piece of downloadable
content in 1 month
• % of old customers buying a secondary product
within the year
• % of follower growth on social media within 2 weeks
If you would like to learn more about Digital Marketing and how to plan out a great marketing Strategy in our E-Book called Digital Marketing for Small Businesses subscribe to our mailing list. It’s locating near the bottom of the page here on the home page.
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