You probably wondering how you can build a effective digital Marketing strategy that works. Well on this article we’ll explain more about digital strategy that you can apply for your business.
But first, before we go deeper into the strategy we should explain some of the small stuff. This will help you understand fully what you have to do from the get go.
What is Digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the use of digital technology to do business promotions or product awareness through electronic devices such as mobile devices, television, billboards, other electronic devices including the internet.
There are some differences between digital marketing, internet marketing or online marketing. The main difference is that internet marketing focuses mainly on the online tools and tactics meaning it uses internet technology. While digital marketing includes all electronic technology to do marketing with the internet technology included since is digital.
As a marketer you need to broaden your marketing strategy beyond the internet and mobile devices if you want to use digital marketing. In today’s world there’s a perception that digital marketing is only Internet based, which is untrue. Digital marketing is been in use prior to the World Wide Web which was introduced by Tim Barners-Lee.
This is why in this article we’ll cover some of the digital marketing techniques to give the reader a wider understanding of this topic.
Mobile marketing
This type of marketing has become one of the most common marketing techniques in recent years. Mobile marketing uses mobile technology which is in high use by mobile telecommunication network companies and other companies.
Since the number of mobile device users are increasing on daily bases this makes it easy for user to send and receive short message services(SMS) and MMS.
With this type of Digital Marketing Strategy marketers can reach a very high number of users with less cost. It can cost you from thirty cents to any amount per sms depending on a mobile network and a country you are at.
Mobile devices allow users to open their messages from anywhere and can be used by any age group. This is the reason why your digital marketing strategy should include a customer persona.
Mobile optimization
As a company you should also consider optimizing your website for mobile device so that it can be mobile-friendly. Applying mobile seo techniques on your site would mean mobile users can view your site in any mobile device.
Digital Television marketing
If we go down history we can see that television marketing is part of this very same marketing strategy. Television ads can be described as outbound marketing which is a type of marketing that sends adverts to the viewers.
In this type of advertising viewers have not much options which ads they want to see. You as a product owner you together with broadcaster can make most of the decisions.
As a marketer you have most control on how or what time you want your ads to be display. Everyday prime time is the most targeted time period to get ads to the viewers.
This is the time where most people are at home watching their TV’s. What you should also consider is the cost from the broadcaster and the return on investment (ROI).
Depending on the type of product you are promoting and the type of people you want to target based on their life style and salary range and so on, the public broadcaster might still be the best option.
Electronic billboards or screens
There are vast technologies to choose from, which some of them are overlooked. Electronic screens can also be used to promote a product.
This type of advertising might be slightly similar to the television marketing which is part of outbound marketing. The electronic screens are placed in high traffic areas, like the highways, subways, bus stations, train stations, main entrances of public places and more.
This are the areas where a high number of people pass on daily bases. Having your product displayed in some of the billboards can be a good way to get it noticed.
If you are not the one who’s doing the digital marketing business. You can find a affordable digital marketing company that can offer you this type of service in your area.
How the internet plays a good part in digital marketing
When you do digital marketing you can not exclude internet marketing which plays a major role. The internet technology gives marketers the power to promote to the masses at a minimum cost and with a high ROI.
There are several ways one can promote their products or services through the internet. This includes email marketing, social media, search engine optimization, pay per click and more.
Unlike native advertising which can not be traced when a sale has been made or how much traffic it brings. Most of the online marketing techniques can be analysed through online marketing tools, of which some of them are free.
With a analysis tool like Google Analytics you are able to see which devices, areas the are from, browsers, how much time they spend on your site, etc.
Websites and Blogs
Every company now requires a website to have or build online presence. Websites play a vital role in a digital marketing strategy, it helps improve its online marketing strategy. If you have not started a blog yet you could be missing out.
This is where the company share with the public their services, what they are about, what they stand for and is one of the ways to contact them.
They can share all the latest news through their company blog, “blogging” which is very important for any website to have. Blogs offer ways to create content and marketing for businesses.
Blogging makes a website to be dynamic and helps get traffic to the website organically.
The good thing about websites and blogs is that is easy to track their performance. There are many tools to help you see how it gets traffic and which part needs improvement.
Email marketing
Electronic mail or email as is known has been in use for over forty decades. It has been the leading marketing tool, there’s close to 5 billion email accounts in the world.
Email marketing has been one of the widely used marketing techniques by marketers. Is easy to build a list with email and create product awareness through email marketing.
You can also build customer relationship and communicate effectively with clients and potential customers with it.
Using email marketing comes with it’s own pros and cons, of which any marketer should be able to handle. Some of the advantages of using email is that it is cost efficient. It makes it easy to personalise your messages, it can be opened from desktop, mobile device and anywhere from office or home.
Some of the disadvantages include the open rate of emails, email users have the tendency of ignoring email messages.
Another setback is that you need permission from your subscriber to send them advertisement messages, through opt in forms. Any unsolicited email messages might be considered as spam.
The email system is govern by law in every country which should be considered. Any failure to do so might be costly to the party sending the unauthorised emails.
Social media
There’s over 200 social networks and social bookmarking sites globally, with Facebook leading the way. Most of those social networks business model is base on social media advertising.
In this regard they are able to offer marketers a platform to promote their businesses to the social network users. There are different kinds of social networks including microblogging used by Twitter, which plays a good role in delivering news fast.
Some of the social networks charge anywhere from $5 a day per ad to any amount you wish to use. Social media is part of the Web 2.0 which also works as inbound marketing to attract potential customers. Any company can appoint a social media manager also know as community manager. This is a person who can thoroughly plan and create social media content for different social networks.
They should create social media campaigns that will meet the standards of their online digital marketing strategy. Every business requires a social media marketing strategy that can send traffic to their website and make sales.
Search Engine Marketing
Part of the online marketing strategy are the two types of search engine marketing(SEM), search engine optimization(SEO) and pay per click(PPC). Both of this marketing strategies are important in their own right.
Search engine optimization focuses on the free, “organic traffic” techniques to send traffic to a website through search engines. SEO might take much more time to build traffic but once built it can last longer.
While pay per click focuses on using “paid search”, marketing offered by search engines to get traffic to a website through the very same search engines like Google. Pay-Per-Click requires a budget but it can also benefit you if you do it right from the get go.
Both of this SEM strategies requires proper keyword research and analysis. By choosing the correct keywords and creating good quality content you stand a chance of getting and keeping traffic.
Online Banners or Media Buy
Years ago when people spoke about online advertising, they spoke of this type of advertising. This is a type of online advertising whereby someone sells advertising space in the form of banners.
It is part of the digital marketing which one can use to promote their website to send traffic to it. There multiple ways you can find good quality ad spaces on the internet. It requires a budget just like pay-per-click and your site will be removed ones you run out of the set amount.
You can find media buy companies which are companies that sell different size ads and are in association with other top websites or blogs with high traffic. Then you can buy some of those ads spaces and your ads will be displayed in those high traffic websites.
The types of banners that are used can be animated images, videos, text ads and more. They are also of different sizes like, 125 x 125 ads, 400 x 60 ads, skyscraper ads, etc.
Some of the popular media buy websites are BuyAds.com and SiteScout.com. If you don’t want to use media buy companies your can find top individual internet marketers who provide similar services. This type of advertising yields good results if you choose the right companies with high traffic.
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