The internet is increasingly becoming accessible to people around the globe. With the number of going online increasing each day, the way we shop and go about our day has in fact changed a lot.
According to Pew Research, almost 81% of Americans go online each day. With so many people accessible on online platforms, offline marketing is no longer as effective as it once used to be because marketing is all about how you connect with your target audience at the right time and in the right place. This means you have to meet them where they’re spending most of their time – the internet.
This is where digital marketing comes in. Digital marketing encompasses any type of marketing that is done online through an electronic device. Businesses do their best to leverage all digital channels like search engines, emails, and social media to connect with their current and potential consumers.
Digital marketing gives you access to a large target audience in a cost effective way, which is why is it has become a preference for many marketers.
Long story short, in order to be a competitive business owner, it’s necessary to embrace certain aspects of digital marketing. Let’s look at some of these aspects that can help grow your business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is all about optimizing your website so to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). It increases the amount of organic traffic that comes towards your website.
Marketers make use of blogs, websites, and infographics while practicing SEO. There’s more than one way to approach SEO so that it generates qualified traffic for your website.
Here are some of the ways:
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO focuses on the content that exists on the page when you look at a website. Therefore, by researching specific keywords for their intent and search volume, you can answer a reader’s question and ultimately rank higher on the SERPs.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is technically the vice versa of on-page SEO, as it focuses on activities that occur off the page when you want to optimize a website. So what kind of activity that’s not on your own website is likely to affect its ranking?
The answer is backlinks, also known as inbound links. The total number of publishers that link themselves to you, and their authority will affect how high you rank in the keywords you actually care about.
Hence, by connecting with other publishers and writing guest posts on their websites, you’ll generate the external attention needed and therefore earn the backlinks that’ll rank your website higher on SERPs.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is different from the other two SEOs as it focuses on a website’s backend and how pages are coded. Structured data, image compression, and CSS file optimization are a part of technical SEO.
They increase a website’s loading speed, which is a vital factor for search engines such as Google. Of course, a good internet speed is a must to have to get these SEOs working steadily. Even if your visitors have good internet service such as AT&T new service, unnecessary stuff on your website will make it load slowly and ruin their experience.
Content Marketing
Content marketing entails creating and promoting content assets for the sake of traffic growth, brand awareness, and lead generation. Here are some ways that can help you in your content marketing strategy:
Blog Posts
Writing and publishing articles on your brand’s blog help demonstrate how much expertise you have in your particular industry. It then helps in generating organic traffic for the business.
This opens up more opportunities for you to convert visitors into leads for the sales team.
EBooks and Whitepapers
These are long-form content to educate your website visitors. Moreover, you can use them to gather email addresses of your visitors and use this information for email marketing.
Infographics
Today, readers want to see what your brand’s about, and not just hear or read. Infographics are a kind of visual content that visualizes a concept for your website visitors that you want them to learn.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing promotes a brand and its content on different social media platforms to raise brand awareness, pull traffic, and ultimately generate leads for a business. Here are some social media channels you can utilize:
- Snapchat
- YouTube
If for some reason, you’re new to some of these platforms, there are tools that you can use to connect channels like Facebook and LinkedIn in one place. This way, it’s easy to schedule content for more than one channel at once and monitor analytics as well.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is a very common method used in digital marketing. Technically, it’s used to drive traffic to your website. You pay a publisher each time someone clicks your ad. A common form of PPC is Google Ads that allows you to pay to get the top slots on its SERPs.
Online PR
Online PR is the method of securing online coverage with digital publications and many other forms of content-based websites by paying. It’s quite similar to traditional PR, but this is done in the online space.
You can talk to journalists and reach out to reporters through social media. You have to build a relationship with them and eventually, they’ll publish about you and your brand.
Furthermore, you can engage with customers who are post online reviews about your products, good or bad, and respond them in a way that delivers a powerful message and protects the image of your brand.
Lastly, you can also engage in the comments section of your website. Responding to your customers is a great way to generate a productive conversation as to what their needs are.
To Sum it all
We’ve shared five approaches that can be a part of your digital marketing strategy. That being said, what’s most important is to define your business goals and identify your target marketing. This should help you in each phase of digital marketing.