Digital Marketing

Digital or online marketing is rising with each day and it refers to advertising on the internet. 

It refers to the use of digital channels such as social media, email, search engines, and other websites to reach current and potential customers. 

Each aspect of digital marketing contributes to reaching the campaign goals. For example, content marketing deals with creating blog posts, photos, or videos. Social media marketing then promotes the created content through organic and paid posts on social media channels. Maybe even an email marketer creates a newsletter campaign around the created content and distributes it to the recipients. 

No matter the digital channel you use to start your digital marketing campaign, you have to be familiar with these digital marketing tactics:

1.Content Marketing

This refers to the creation and promotion of content assets with the purpose of traffic growth, brand awareness, and lead generation. When it comes to content marketing, you can generate content assets through:

• Ebooks

  : Ebooks and other long-form content are a great asset which you can use to exchange for reader’s contact and thus generate leads for your company.

• Blog posts

  : Having a company blog where you can publish article is very beneficial for your SEO (something we will get to soon!). Moreover, it shows your expertise and knowledge thus earning the trust of your visitors.

• Infographics

  : Sometimes readers prefer visuals rather than text. Infographics are a great way for you to communicate data to your readers in a conceptual manner.   

2. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a great tool which enables you to share the created content which in return increases the awareness of your brand and directs traffic to your website. Depending on the type of your product/service, you can opt to distribute your content on the following social media platforms:

• Instagram

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Linkedin

• YouTube

• Snapchat

• Pinterest  

3. SEO

SEO  refers to Search Engine Optimization and it is a process of optimizing your website in order to rank higher on search engine results pages. Ranking higher on the search engine results pages will bring you more clicks on your website. When focusing on SEO, you should consider two types:

• On page SEO

  : This SEO focused on all the “on page” content on your website. This involves optimizing content, meta tags, and other elements. Pay special attention to content marketing, keyword optimization, images, and page speed.

• Off-page SEO

  : Deals with activities that drive awareness and referral traffic to your website. This includes: Link-building, guest blogging, and social media.

• Technical SEO

  : Focuses on the backend of your website, and how your pages are coded. Image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization are all forms of technical SEO which increase website loading speed.

4. Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC refers to a paid method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher each time your ad is clicked. The most popular PPC method is Google Ads which allows you to place your ads high on the results page and then get charged only when someone clicks on the ad. Social media platforms also offer paid promotions. However, you first have to consider your target audience and the goal of your campaign before choosing your PPC method. If you have a B2B products or services, you might opt for LinkedIn campaigns since that is where your target audience is. However if you are looking for brand awareness, you might choose Facebook or Instagram (maybe even influencer partnerships). 

5. Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to advertisements that are featured on primarily content-led platforms which usually involve non-paid content, like BuzzFeed. The native article is written in a manner that matches regular content on that platform. The power within native advertising, however, is to inhibit a consumers' ad recognition by blending the ad into the native content of the platform, making many consumers unaware they are looking at an ad to begin with. 

6. Email Marketing 

Emails are still kicking, despite what some people might think. In fact, 102.6 trillion emails are being sent every year and that number is expected to rise to 126.7 trillion by 2022. Statistics show that 90% of the people over the age of 15 use email on a daily basis. Moreover, 58% of people check their email first thing in the morning. There are many reasons why you would want to choose email marketing as your method as opposed to others:

• Email’s have

  22.86% open rate and 3.71% click-through rate

  compared to social media’s 0.58% engagement rate

• Average 

  ROI for email marketing is 4400%

• 3.8 billion people use email compared to 3.4 billion that use social media

• Average conversion rate for email marketing campaigns is 6.05% compared to social media’s 1.9%

7. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing that works on commissions where some people like influencers or other websites can direct traffic to your website and in return receive a % commission. 

8. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is a powerful tool that can help you automate your basic marketing operations. These operations can include:

• Email newsletters

  : automation helps you send emails to your subscribers as well as cut and expand your contact list.

• Social media post scheduling

  : scheduling allows you to predefine the content and timing. This tool can help you distribute content at a specific moment, especially when you are not able to do it manually.

• Tracking and reporting

  : data is important and you can extract valuable information from it. One of the best tracking and reporting tools for your website is certainly Google Analytics.

9. Online PR

Online PR helps you in obtaining earned online coverage like blogs and digital publications.You can do this through:

• Journalism

  : engage with journalists on social media and develop a relationship with the press so that you can get earned media opportunity for your company.

• Reviews

  : engage with all reviews that your customers leave. If the review is good, thank them and if it is bad, defend your case or own up to your mistakes and apologize.

• Comments

  : same as with reviews, replying to comments stimulates the conversation and builds a relationship between the brand and consumers.