The importance of digital marketing

Digital marketing is the method of connecting your customers to digital channels. This isn't just limited to a website, it can be anything like Email Campaigns, Online Brochures, Online Advertising, Social Media Management and many others all fall under the umbrella of Digital Marketing. 

Marketing has changed over the years, in the age of the internet traditional marketing methods are becoming less and less popular in favor of cheaper and more analytical Digital Marketing techniques. The internet is now used for anything and everything, shopping is done online, social interactions are done online, even daily media streams have been taken over by the digital age. That's why it’s important to make sure your business is deploying effective digital marketing strategies. It opens up a bucket load of potential for your business to grow, unlocking untouched audiences that will help your business gain the growth you are looking for.

Different types of digital marketing

Digital marketing is a term used to categories different marketing techniques across digital platforms. Choosing the right marketing strategy depends on the requirements of your business. How much budget you have and the type of audience you're looking to reach plays a role in what strategy will work for you and the success it will likely bring. Let's take a look at some of the more popular methods of Digital Marketing to see what ones would be right for your business.

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Marketing is the practice of building your website's rankings within popular search engines like Google or Bing. SEO requires a lot of effort to ensure a successful marketing strategy as ranking your site is a highly competitive method of marketing as you’ll normally compete with hundreds of other companies trying to get the prestigious first page rankings.

SEO will also usually need to run together with other marketing strategies in order to be successful as SEO can heavily rely on good quality content creation, email marketing, social media marketing and targeted landing pages. 

In short, SEO is a long term solution (sorry), it requires a lot of effort to set up correctly and maintain. However, if you do manage to see success with page rankings you could be reaping the rewards for a very long time. 

Social Media Management

Social media management is the process of managing the engagement and interaction of your social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest, to name a few.

Social media management can almost fall into its own category as there are so many different aspects that you can factor into a successful marketing campaign. Take a look at our post on social media marketing to get a depth guide on social media marketing.

Social Media can play a vital role in any successful digital marketing campaign, it’s important to consider investing effort into your social channels to maximise your digital marketing success. A good digital marketing strategy will almost always include some form of social media marketing, it’s an important aspect for any business. From marketing products to celebrating company culture, there is always a place for social media within your marketing strategy.

Paid Advertisement 

Another effective method of digital marketing is paid advertisement. Paying for your ads on Digital Platforms such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc can be a sure-fire way to get your brand in front of potential customers. It’s the most reliable way to ensure your brand is getting awareness across digital platforms.

Paid ads are great but they come at a cost, a very expensive cost. Because of the reliability of ads over other, more organic marketing methods it makes for a very attractive option for businesses, unfortunately that means that you’ll typically be paying a premium for high quality ads and you’ll also have to factor in the time or the costs of hiring an agency to manage, build and maintain your ads.

If you’re looking for a quick solution then paid advertisement could be one of the best options for you. Just make sure you have the budget to sustain a Paid Advertisement Campaign as it can start to burn a hole in your pocket very quickly.

It’s also worth mentioning that a popular strategy for digital marketing is pairing a short term solution like paid ads with a more organic long term solution like SEO. Paid ads will work right away, you’ll start to see results as soon as you start investing money but they are harder to sustain over long periods of time due to the large monthly costs to maintain so that's where you could introduce a slow-starting SEO campaign to couple with paid ads. This way you can get short term results with paid ads but slowly phase them out as your SEO marketing strategy starts to pick up the pace.

Email Marketing

While generating outreach to potential customers it’s also important to make sure you keep engaging with current customers. Keeping them updated with your latest products and company news is a great way to generate repeat business and brand trust. 

It can also be a great way to drip feed leads into new customers. By slowly sending leads valuable information about your products or services can help make your brand more memorable to the potential customers so when they are ready to make their purchase they will remember your brand. This gives you a much better chance of turning leads into customers. It shows you care about your customers and are willing to go the extra mile. 

When creating a good email marketing campaign be sure that the content you are sending your customers is useful and insightful... Sending out spam that offers no real value to the customers will only lead to a loss of engagement with customers. Nobody wants to be continually opening up their emails to spam deals and offers, it will only lead to a lack of trust between you and your customers and leads.

Email campaigns offer a great way to build up relationships and trust with your current customers or leads. It can be a cost effective solution to get the most out of your marketing efforts, ensuring you’re doing everything possible to get the most out of your current customers and generating new customers. It’s the cherry on top of the cake. You need a good marketing strategy behind an email campaign but if the foundations in place are good, then an email campaign will make sure you’re getting the most out of your digital marketing efforts.