Did you know that the digital marketing industry in the US was valued at more than $43 billion in 2019? Today it’s run by as many as 5,500 companies spread all over the United States. This industry is expected to grow even more as thousands of websites need high-quality promotion on the internet.
But why has digital marketing become so popular? Because it works! If you have an online business and know the basic digital marketing concepts, you have a great advantage over your competitors. Keep reading to learn what is digital marketing and how you can implement a few tips for digital marketing to boost your online business.
What Is Digital Marketing?
In simple terms, digital marketing refers to all the strategies and techniques used to promote products and services on the internet. It’s the opposite of traditional marketing which involves using “offline strategies” such as distributing flyers, installing large billboards, radio ads, etc.
Digital marketing has become so popular because more and more people have access to the internet these days. It makes sense for companies and businesses to use digital marketing to promote their products and services on the internet because that’s where most people are most of the time.
What Are the Benefits of Having a Solid Digital Marketing Strategy?
As you can probably imagine, knowing the basic digital marketing concepts can help your business greatly. It’s worth collaborating with an experienced digital marketer to promote your business. You should do that because it’s more cost-effective than using traditional advertising.
Believe it or not, many digital marketing strategies such as running a blog or promoting on social media are free up to a point. When you do start to invest, the amounts you’ll pay are very small in comparison with running a radio or TV ad which usually costs thousands of dollars.
Apart from being more affordable, digital marketing is also easily trackable. This is important because you need to know if one or more of your advertising campaigns reach the target audience and have the impact you have.
Digital marketing allows you to track certain metrics, target different audiences, and fine-tune your advertising campaign on the go. As a result, you get a better return on investment (ROI) and you can grow your business quicker.
Lastly, digital marketing is also more powerful than traditional advertising. It’s possible for you to enter foreign markets with brand new products and services with just a few clicks. Since billions of people are connected to the internet already, digital marketing allows you to make most of them become paying customers without having to keep physical stores, headquarters, and so on.
What Are the Basic Digital Marketing Concepts You Should Know About?
Now that you have a decent understanding of digital marketing and how it works, let’s take a look at a few basic concepts you should become familiar with. This will help you build your future digital marketing strategy and reach your ideal customers more effectively.
1. Understand the Value of Content Marketing
Content marketing is paramount for the success of your business. In this case, content refers to all the written, video, and audio materials you can produce to promote your brand. As a good example, you should start a blog and update it regularly.
People like to get information by reading. A blog full of informative articles about your products, services, and anything related to your industry will naturally attract customers. You can write how-to articles, tips-and-tricks articles, and anything else that you think your reader might want to know about.
At the same time, content marketing also refers to other types of materials you can use to promote your business. For example, podcasts are increasingly popular these days. So is video content. You don’t even need a professional camera or video setup, just a good script, a nice voice, and a desire to help your clients.
Lastly, guest posting is also another great way to attract more traffic to your website. Guest posting involves writing an article on a popular blog for free. The blog owner gets a free article from you and you get a lot of visitors coming to your website. It’s a win-win scenario.
2. Become Familiar With Social Platforms and Social Media Marketing
It’s almost impossible to make it far online if you don’t have a few valid social media accounts. Billions of people are exchanging information and content on various social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and more. You need to get a piece of this traffic back to your website too.
How do you do that? By being active on your preferred social media platforms. For example, you can promote the blog posts you just wrote. You can post the videos in which you explain how to use the fitness equipment you sell.
You can also engage with your audience and ask them questions or requesting feedback. You can reply to comments and create meaningful relationships with potential customers. Social media marketing involves being active on platforms where millions of potential customers spend time every day.
Apart from sharing your own content for free, it’s also possible to pay for ads that are run for certain periods on social media. These campaigns work well with other marketing tools you might use and they can redirect a lot of traffic to your website, thus increasing your ROI.
Check out Falcon Digital Marketing for more details on how to promote on social media platforms effectively.
3. Take Advantage of the Power of Email Marketing
Did you know that nearly 300 billion emails were sent every day in 2019 alone? That’s nearly 12.5 billion emails every hour. Most of it is spam, but some quality emails find their way to the inbox of people who are interested in receiving them.
That’s why you should take advantage of email marketing. You should do your best to create a list of comprehensive emails from visitors to your website and past customers. Send periodic emails and don’t abuse this service. You should only send important emails on what might interest your audience.
For example, you can send an email about an upcoming product that’s very popular on your website. One week later you can send another email with an announcement your audience might like to hear. 10 days later you can send an email with a huge discount you run on your website for a limited time. You got the picture.
4. Get to Know How Effective Search Engine Optimization Is
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the techniques and strategies used to make your website rank higher on search engine return pages. In other words, SEO increases the likelihood of having your website among the first three displayed when someone types a search query on Google.
As you probably already know, most people don’t go past the first results page when they search for something on the internet. If your website is not on this page, your online business is virtually non-existent.
SEO strives to make your website more attractive to search engines, so they will rank it higher. For example, using certain keywords that belong to your industry or field is a good way to optimize your website for search engines.
Having a structured table of contents for your website, using appropriate headers and catchy headlines, making your text easy to read, all of these are good SEO tactics. Ideally, you should collaborate with an experienced SEO specialist to help you make the most of your website.
At the same time, remember that SEO strategies are not a magic bullet and they don’t work overnight. They are very effective, but you can see significant results after a few weeks or months. That’s when all these little changes in website layout and structure will add up and boost your website’s ranking higher.
5. Make Sure That Your Website Is Attractive and Easy to Use
Believe it or not, your website is like an online business card. It can create a quick and powerful first impression. In most cases, this is the last impression for customers as well. Whether this first impression is a good or bad one, this is something you have the power to decide.
For example, make sure that your website is simple and easy to navigate. Don’t display pictures after pictures on all web pages, text in different colors, and multiple links that don’t seem to be related one with the other.
A simple website is usually one that performs best when it comes to selling products and services. Settle upon a color scheme right from the start. Ideally, these colors should be the same as the ones displayed on your logo.
Have dedicated web pages that can be easily seen by interested customers such as “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Shipping Info”, etc. Place a link to your blog in a visible place on your website as well, so people can easily see it.
Don’t forget that many people navigate the internet on their mobile phones or tablets. That’s why you should make your website responsive. This means that the website will automatically detect the device is used to access it and it displays a format appropriate to the screen size of that device.
Many website hosting platforms offer responsive layouts right from the start, so you just have to pick yours and build your website from there. Just like with SEO services, if you don’t have experience or time to build a website, work with a professional who can do a great job for you.
6. Try Your Luck With Pay-Per-Click Ads
You read earlier that you can use paid ads on social media platforms to attract customers. You might be happy to find out that this strategy works on search engines as well. You can run pay-per-click campaigns and have traffic redirected to your website at an affordable price.
For example, your website is displayed among the first results in Google searches when someone is looking for services similar to the ones you provide. If they click on your website, you pay a small commission and get a potential client.
You can also pay for 100 or 1,000 impressions of your website online. For every 1,000 times your website was displayed, you pay a small commission. Since your website name has been displayed 1,000 times, chances are that at least a few people have clicked on it and became potential customers.
Running paid ads is a vital strategy for those who have larger marketing budgets, but it shouldn’t be your only marketing tactic. It should be used in conjunction with other strategies such as SEO, running a blog, social media marketing, etc.
7. Take Advantage of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another way you can make money with your website. It involves becoming an affiliate of another entity and selling its products and services through your website or social media accounts. If you make a sale, you receive a commission from that entity.
Affiliate marketing is great because it provides a relatively easy way to make money. You just have to do simple product promotion, place an affiliate link in the right spot, and pocket the commission if someone buys.
The most important thing about affiliate marketing is to promote products that are similar to your niche. You cannot sell electric toothbrushes if your website is about floral arrangements. Also, you need to win the trust of your audience and let them know that you are paid a commission for each sale.
If you don’t do this, your potential customers might think that you’re just another salesman looking to make a quick buck without being interested in delivering the services useful for them.
Now You Know the Basic Digital Marketing Concepts
As you can see, there are plenty of digital marketing concepts and strategies you can take advantage of to promote your business. It can be hard to navigate through all of these techniques on your own, but that’s why you should probably work with a digital marketing agency.
To expand your knowledge regarding digital marketing, how to run a successful blog, and promote on Facebook more efficiently, make sure that you check out the other articles on our website.