Introduction to Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands
via one or more forms of electronic media. Digital
marketing differs from traditional marketing in that it involves the use of
channels and methods that enable an organization to analyze marketing campaigns
and understand what is working and what isn’t – typically in real time.
Digital marketers monitor things like what is being
viewed, how often and for how long, sales conversions, what content works and
doesn’t work, etc. While the Internet is, perhaps, the channel most closely
associated with digital marketing, others include wireless text messaging,
mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital
television and radio channels, etc.
Why Digital Marketing Is Important?
Digital media is so pervasive that consumers have access
to information any time and any place they want it. Gone are the days when the
messages people got about your products or services came from you and consisted
of only what you wanted them to know. Digital media is an ever-growing source
of entertainment, news, shopping and social interaction, and consumers are now
exposed not just to what your company says about your brand, but what the
media, friends, relatives, peers, etc., are saying as well. And they are more
likely to believe them than you. People want brands they can trust, companies
that know them, communications that are personalized and relevant, and offers
tailored to their needs and preferences.
Tools of Digital Marketing
1. Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a strategic
marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and
consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and,
ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
What Should You Learn?
# Know Your
Audience:
For brands, knowing and
understanding your audience will allow you to build the foundation of your
content marketing strategy. To get that knowledge, here are a few tactics to
use:
·
Perform keyword research: Keyword research not only
uncovers the search volume behind your most important keywords, but it can also
offer insights into keyword opportunities and search intent.
In addition, perform your own
searches for various keywords and look through the results to see who’s ranking
at the top.
·
Conduct a competitive
analysis. Research
your top three to five competitors through their website, social media pages, news articles and search results.
How does your brand stack up?
·
Dig into data and analytics:
Get
familiar with your website’s analytics to gain insights about the users you’ve
already managed to attract to your site. Look at the most popular pages, the
pages with the highest bounce rate,
and the pages with the best and worst conversion rates.
# Strive to Be the Best Answer:
For brands, being the best answer
means providing relevant, quality content wherever and whenever their audience
is searching for it. Use the research you’ve done to identify where those
content opportunities lie. In addition, don’t be afraid to engage your existing
audience. Use social media to pose questions or send out a current customer
survey to get feedback and insight. The more you know, the better you’ll be at
providing the right information.
#Write for the Reader
Content is organized to help
readers easily flow through the article and photos are often used to add a
visual element to the story. Long-form pieces are often broken down into
sections with headers, which is more pleasing to the eye and helps with
scanability. In addition, content is written in a way that tells a story—not in
a way to please search engines.
For brands, the bottom line here
is to create content that’s a good experience for your audience to read. SEO is
important, but usability and user experience is more important.
#Mind the “5Ws and H”
Who, What, Where, When, Why and
How—the 5 Ws and the H. These are the foundation of every article a journalist
will ever write. And they can certainly be applied to your content marketing
strategy.
As you map out your strategy, ask
the following questions for each piece you plan to create:
·
Who is my audience?
·
What does my audience want to know?
·
Where am I going to publish and disseminate?
·
When am I going to publish and disseminate?
·
Why am I writing this? (Drive
traffic? Increase brand awareness?)
·
How will I measure results?
#Follow the Story
Brands should use their audience
knowledge, keyword research, and their website data to hone in on their content
strengths and opportunities. Choose a handful of topical areas to get started
with—and create as much content around that topic as possible. This will allow
you to begin showcasing yourself as an expert in specific areas and eventually
you’ll be able to expand that to new areas.
#Add Perspective
The best news articles have a face
and provide perspective. Journalists use people close to the story and expert
sources to give their articles credibility and depth. Brands can do the same
with their content by working with influencers. Influencers not only lend
expertise and authority to content, but they can also help that content reach a
larger audience.
Don’t just reach out to your
influencers in times of need. Engage with them on their social platforms. Share
their content. Shoot them an email to check in. Just as a journalist works hard
to build a network of credible sources, brands should remember that building a
relationship with influencers is an ongoing journey and there needs to be value
for everyone.
Career Benefits of Content Marketing
Most obviously, a marketer's
career in content (or a content creator's career in marketing) can take the
form of being a writer. You could establish yourself as a jack of all trades --
not a bad place to begin if you're just getting started and trying to find your
super power -- but as your career progresses, you might consider specializing
if you want to stay in a writing function. This specialty could take a few
forms; here are some of the most popular:
·
Short-Form Content: things like blog posts, tip
sheets, copy for emails, newsletters
·
Long-Form Content: things like whitepapers,
ebooks, or even real books (the ones
you can hold in your hands ... or download on your tablet)
·
Content for an Industry or
Persons: specializing
in a certain audience, like the C-Suite, or analysts, or perhaps gaining
expertise around a particular industry, like manufacturing, insurance, or pharma.
·
Content Format Types: Carving out a niche in
specific content format types, like ebooks and
whitepapers, research reports, or webinars
Whether you choose to be a
generalist or a specialist, focus on creating the highest quality content.
While cranking out a high volume is certainly important -- dilly dallying
around doesn't cut it when a bottom line is at stake -- it doesn't matter how
much you create if the quality is poor.
2. Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing, or SMM,
is a form of internet marketing that implements various social media networks
in order to achieve marketing communication and branding goals. Social media
marketing primarily covers activities involving social sharing of content,
videos, and images for marketing purposes, as well as paid social media
advertising.
What should you learn to skill?
·
Planning – As discussed previously,
building a social media marketing plan is essential. Consider keyword research and brainstorm content ideas that will
interest your target audience.
·
Content is King — Consistent with other
areas of online marketing, content reigns king when it comes to social media
marketing. Make sure you are offering valuable information that your ideal customers will find interesting.
Create a variety of content by implementing social media images, videos, and
infographics in addition to classic text-based
content.
·
Consistent Brand Image — Using social media for
marketing enables your business to project your
brand image across a variety of different social media platforms. While each
platform has its own unique environment and voice, your business’ core identity
should stay consistent.
·
Blog — Blogging is a great social
media marketing tool that lets you share a wide array of information and
content with readers. Your company blog can also serve as your social media
marketing blog, in which you blog about
your recent social media efforts, contests, and events.
·
Links — While using social media
for marketing relies primarily on your business sharing its own unique,
original content to gain followers, fans, and devotees, it’s also great to link
to outside articles as well. If other sources provide great, valuable
information you think your target audience will enjoy, don’t be shy about
linking to them. Linking to outside sources improves trust and reliability, and
you may even get some links in return.
·
Track Competitors — It’s always important to
keep an eye on competitors—they can provide valuable data for keyword research,
where to get industry-related links, and other social media marketing insight.
If your competitors are using a certain social media marketing technique that seems to be working for them, do the
same thing, but do it better!
·
Measure Success with
Analytics —
You can’t determine the success of your social media marketing strategies without tracking data. Google Analytics can
be used as a great social media marketing tool that will help you measure your
triumphant social media marketing techniques, as well as determine which
strategies are better off abandoned. Attach tracking tags to your social media
marketing campaigns so that you can properly monitor them.
Career benefits of Social Media Marketing
Companies and businesses hire
social media marketing managers to establish a more effective online presence.
Consider how Facebook grew from a small company to one that caters to over 800
million users. All of these users don't simply connect with friends anymore,
but actively engage with companies about products or services they like.
Social media marketing managers
help develop social media pages, manage those pages, and work with teams to
create content on those pages. They track target demographics, and introduce
them to content they enjoy, pushing them to interact more with a brand.
As managers, they work with a
variety of other social media outreach specialists, including:
Introduce with Some Social Media Marketing Platform
We’ve put together a brief
overview on how to use social media for
marketing according to each platform’s unique environment. Various social
media marketing sites will require different techniques, so develop a unique
strategy tailored for each platform.
Facebook’s casual, friendly
environment requires an active social media marketing strategy that begins with
creating a Facebook Business Fan Page. You will want to pay careful attention
to layout, as the visual component is a key aspect of the Facebook experience.
Social media marketing for business pages revolves around furthering your
conversation with audiences by posting industry-related articles, images,
videos, etc.
Facebook is a place people go to relax and
chat with friends, so keep your tone light and friendly.
# Google+
Google+ is the new Facebook
competitor, and it promotes the same fun, casual atmosphere. On Google+ you can
upload and share photos, videos, links, and view all your +1s. Also take
advantage of Google+ circles, which allow you to segment your followers into
smaller groups, enabling you to share information with some followers while
barring others. For example, you might try creating
a ―super-fan‖
circle, and share special discounts and exclusive offers only with that group.
You can also try hosting video
conferences with Hangouts and experiment using the Hangout feature in some fun,
creative ways. Some social media marketing ideas: if you're a salon, host a
how-to session on how to braid your hair. If you own a local bookstore, try
offering author video chats. If you're feeling adventerous, invite your +1s to
your Google+ Community. Google+ Communities will allow you to listen into your
fan's feedback and input, truly putting the social back into social media.
Pinterest is the latest in social media
marketing trends. Pinterest’s image-centered platform is ideal for retail, but
anyone can benefit from using Pinterest for social media purposes.
Pinterest allows small businesses
to showcase their own product offerings while also developing their own brand’s
personality with some unique pinboards.
Twitter is the social media
marketing tool that lets you broadcast your updates across the web. Follow
tweeters in your industry or related fields, and you should gain a steady
stream of followers in return.
Mix up your official-related
tweets about specials, discounts, and news updates with some fun and quirky
tweets interspersed. Be sure to retweet when a customer has something nice to
say about you, and don’t forget answer people’s questions when possible. Using
Twitter as a social media marketing tool revolves around dialog and
communication, so be sure to interact as much as possible
LinkedIn is one of the more
professional social media marketing sites. LinkedIn Groups is a great venue for
entering into a professional dialog with people in similar industries and
provides a place to share content with like-minded individuals.
Encourage customers or clients to
give your business a recommendation on
your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations make your business appear more credible
and reliable for new customers. Also browse the Questions section of LinkedIn;
providing answers helps you get established and earns trust.
# YouTube
YouTube is the number one place
for creating video content, with can be an incredibly powerful social media
marketing tool. Many businesses try to
create video content with the aim of having their video ―go viral,‖ but in reality
those chances are pretty slim. Instead,
focus on creating useful, instructive ―how-to‖ videos.
These how-to videos also have the added benefit of ranking on the video search
results of Google, so don't under-estimate the power of video content!
# Reddit
Reddit, or similar social media platforms
such as Stumble Upon or Digg, are ideal for sharing compelling content. With
over 2 billion page views a month, Reddit has incredible social media marketing
potential, but marketers should be warned that only truly unique, interesting
content will be welcomed. Posting on Reddit is playing with fire—submit spammy
or overtly sales-focused content and your business could get berated by this
extremely tech-savvy community.
If you have content you believe
the Reddit community (majority is young, geeky, liberal, and internet-
obsessed) would enjoy, you could reap tremendous benefits and earn valuable
traffic.
Using social media in marketing
does more than improve site traffic and help businesses reach more customers;
it provides a valuable venue for better understanding and learning from your
target audiences. Hopefully this guide has helped you better understand how
using social media for marketing can improve your business.
3. Search Engine Optimization
SEO
stands for ―search engine optimization.‖ It is the process
of getting traffic
from the ―free,‖ ―organic,‖
―editorial‖ or ―natural‖ search results
on search engines.
All major search engines such as
Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local
listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most
relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.
What Should You Learn?
#
Relevance
One of the most important factors
when it comes to SEO is relevance. The search engines don’t only want to see
that you’re using specific keywords but it also wants to see how relevant your
content is when it comes to specific search queries.
In order to do this, search
engines don’t only look at the text on your website itself. They also look at:
·
How your website is structured
·
What keywords are used within your URL
·
How your page is formatted
·
What keywords are in the headline that are also found within the
content of that given page
# Backlink
When it comes to SEO, keep in mind that it is
constantly changing. As a result, the
techniques that worked last month might get you penalized this month.
However, one thing that all search
engines will rely upon is authority AKA, the number of backlinks that you have. Therefore, contrary to what you might
hear, SEO still relies heavily on links.
Search engines will determine just
how credible and authoritative a
website’s content is simply by calculating the number of inbound links that you
have from other websites. (By the way, an inbound link is a link pointing to
your site from a 3rd party site.)
However, this doesn’t necessarily
mean that the more backlinks you have the higher rankings you will get.
Search engines also look at how
authoritative these other websites are linking to you. Meaning a link coming
from the New York Times is a lot more
authoritative than one coming from a little website that was created a few days
ago.
There are other components, such as what anchor text is being used
(this is the text inside the a tag) to link to your website and
how old your domain is.
# Technology
Even if you have
perfect site content, URLs, and strong inbound links —your internal structure
is important. Think about it: in order for Google to crawl your site and index
it properly, it has to have semantic
HTML.
# Meta Tags
Meta tags are nothing more than
HTML markup tags that give search engines more information about a web page.
However, this information is not
visible to viewers of the site. Instead, it is written to assist search engines
in understanding a web page.
Meta tags are placed inside
the head element in a web page and contain a name and content
attributes. For example, the meta tag for this post that you reading could be: meta
name=”description” content=”SEO for programmers”.
Meta tags are one of the most
important aspects on a web page because they give search engines a short
description about the page. In addition to the description meta tag, there is a
meta robots tag and the title tag.
# Schema Markup
Schema markup is one of those SEO
techniques that you will seldom hear about, but it can be one of the most
effective techniques for getting quality traffic.
Schema markup
is code you can put in your website’s HTML that will help the search engines
understand exactly what the information on your website means. It then helps
the search engines to return more useful results to the user.
4. Affiliate Marketing
To define affiliate marketing is
that it’s a technique where other publishers and websites will promote your
business. Basically the way it works is that an affiliate is rewarded every
time a visitor, customer or sale for your business is generated through an
advertisement on their web site. There are many different ways compensation is
provided, but the concept remains consistent—you pay them for generating
business for you. If a viewer is at the affiliate’s web site, and the affiliate
doesn’t quite have what they’re looking for, they can easily click over to your
web site. It’s an increasingly popular technique for those seeking to maximize
they’re staying power on the web.
What should you learn?
# Pick a topic
Firstly,
pick a topic that you’re interested in that also has a lot of market potential.
Think of something that you like, and consider whether there would be many
products associated with it, or much of an audience. You can find a topic (or ―niche,‖
as affiliates call it) with a little research.
# Find products to promote
Once you’ve got a niche all picked out, find some
products that you can promote. There are websites full of these (called
affiliate networks) to browse, and you can find advice here on how to choose
the best ones for you. Once you’ve got a couple that are right for you, you’ll
be able to get an affiliate link for them.
# Build a website
Next
up, you need to build a website! I thought this would be extremely confusing
and difficult, but it really wasn’t. WordPress and similar sites make it super
simple for anyone to build a quality website.
# Fill your website with relevant content
Fill
your website with content that will be useful to the people who are interested
in your niche, and place your affiliate links throughout in the most relevant
places. That way when someone interested in your content clicks your link, they
go to a sales page for a product that they might also be interested in, and if they buy it you get a commission!
# Promote your website
When
you’ve set this up, all that’s left to do is promote your website so you can
get more people to your content, and more potential for commissions from
referred sales. There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there,
from advertising to social media, but you won’t have to worry about this part
of it straight away.
The
most important thing is just to get started. Let me give you an example of how
this process could go.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a way to reach
consumers directly via electronic mail. Unlike spam, direct email marketing
reaches those interested in your business’ area of expertise. The information
is sent out more like a laser-guided missile than a bomb: No matter what you’re
selling, it is a way to reach thousands of potential customers directly at a
relatively low cost when compared to advertising or other forms of media
exposure. It brings your business’
message through an attractive mix of graphics, text and links directly to
people who may have never heard of your business or considered your products,
but are knowledgeable and interested in your business’ area of expertise. Once
you understand– what is email marketing?–you
can start to implementing these practices to reach more customers.
Email marketing
also provides an easy way to track how effective it is. By keeping track of how
many hits your website gets after a
mass mailing, it’s easy to gauge whether this technique works for your company.
It’s also a good way to guide existing customers back to your business. Many
companies also provide an
―unsubscribe‖
option for viewers in an effort to focus
only on interested potential customers. Also,
your company can opt to have a feedback mechanism where potential customers can
tell you directly what they liked and disliked about a particular advertising
campaign.
· Video Marketing
Video marketing can be defined in digital marketing context as all
uses of video contents to promote a brand, product or service.
Video marketing can take many
different forms. It has been empowered by the increase in bandwidth and video
consumption
Videos can be used for advertising
purposes by buying ad spaces (in-stream video, in-banner video, etc.) or by
simply posting a video on a video platform (e.g., YouTube) and looking for
viral dissemination.
Videos are also used for showing
and promoting products and services on commercial websites. For some products
or services it can help transformation.
Finally, video can be used for educational
purposes in a content marketing strategy. In this case, videos can be placed on
the seller’s website or/and on a video platform (e.g. YouTube channel).