The meaning of digital marketing is simple. Digital marketing is the act of marketing on the internet. It is a general term that includes using online channels for marketing purposes. I say channels because there are multiple avenues to help promote your business online.
The most important online marketing channels are website marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising, content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing. When utilized properly a business can expect more conversions and more traffic from social media pages to main website. These conversions can be anything from a sale, signup for a newsletter, or even an answer to a survey.
Website Marketing
Website marketing is the process of using the internet to market your business. It includes the use of social media, search engines, blogging, videos, and email. Promoting a business takes effort. There are a variety of ways to do it. Every method takes your message to the big wide web. With tons of people using the internet every day, there are huge opportunities to get your product or service in front of people who need or want it.
Social Media Marketing
As a business, it is important to have a presence in all the networks that your audience is using. Most of your audience is using one of the "big three" social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Instead of relying on traffic coming into your website, you can expand your reach and access your audience on these social media platforms. Things like gathering new followers to your business, optimizing your social media pages, and brand building on social media has never been more important in this digital age. Don't do it and you run the risk of being left behind.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (also known as SEM) is the process of getting traffic from search engines either organically(web users finding it via a search on google) or paid. Search engine marketing has two main types: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PSA (Paid Search Advertising). SEO is the way to get free traffic from search engines by achieving high rankings on search engines like google and bing. Paid search ads are the process of paying for your ads to appear on search engine results pages (SERP's). Higher ad positions and rankings mean more traffic and this has a number of added advantages including more CONVERSIONS!
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
PPC stands for pay-per-click, a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically. Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone searches on a keyword that is related to their business offering. For example, if we bid on the keyword “advertising in norfolk ne,” our ad might show up in the top results of googles results for the search.
When PPC is working correctly, the fee is trivial, because the visit is worth more than what you pay for it. In other words, if you pay $3 for a click, but the click results in a $300 sale, then we’ve made a hefty profit. A lot goes into building a winning PPC campaign: from researching and selecting the right keywords, to organizing those keywords into well-organized campaigns and ad groups, to setting up PPC landing pages that are optimized for conversions. Search engines reward advertisers who can create relevant, intelligently targeted PPC campaigns by charging them less for ad clicks. If your ads and landing pages are useful and satisfying to users, Google charges you less per click, leading to higher profits for your business.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing digital assets, such as blog posts, videos, eBooks, technical and solution briefs, and a variety of other digital content to provide information to your audience. Content marketing is essential to search engine optimization (SEO) success. To rank at the top of online search results, you need to create engaging, high-quality, in-depth content related to your industry, business, and message.
Before we can master content marketing, we need to define content. Digital content comes in a variety of forms including articles, blogs, case studies, diagrams, eBooks, free offers, games/quizzes, social media posts/hashtags, info graphics, knowledge articles, lists, music, news and opinion pieces, podcasts, reviews, slide shows, tool-kits, user-generated comments, videos, widgets, XML feeds, and cartoons.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel, a form of direct marketing as well as digital marketing, that uses email to promote your business’s products or services. It can help make your customers aware of your latest items or offers by integrating it into your marketing automation efforts. It can also play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy with lead generation, brand awareness, building relationships or keeping customers engaged between purchases through different types of marketing emails. When you want to grow your brand or sell your stuff, email marketing is one of the most popular—and effective—tools around for marketing campaigns.
Summary
Digital marketing is at the forefront of new advertising techniques and is traditionally cheaper than the old forms of advertising like TV, Radio, and Newspapers. Knowing and utilizing these techniques is very valuable to the growth of your business for the short and long term. At Hemmer Media Consulting, we strive to hit these techniques hard to help promote your business and get seen by clients and customers.