When you’re running a business and trying to get your brand out there, stepping into the world of digital marketing is essential. However, when you’re trying to read up on the tips and insights that can help you pave the path to success, a lot of them will act like you already know everything you need to know, and it’s easy to get lost. For that reason, we’re going to take it back to basics, looking at the essentials of the different digital marketing strategies you’ll encounter, what they mean, what they’re good for, and how to make effective use of them.
Content Marketing
One term you’re likely to hear a lot (and get sick of) is “content is king.” But what does that mean? Content marketing is all about creating valuable content, from blog posts to infographics, videos, and podcasts, that is relevant to your target audience. These types of content don’t tend to directly promote your product (though they can mention it as a potential means to solve the issue being addressed), but the focus is on solving problems, answering questions, and informing your audience. High-quality content attracts readers to your site and your brand, and works in tandem with other marketing strategies like SEO and social media marketing.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is the more direct approach to marketing. This is the strategy of displaying ads on platforms such as Google, social media, and website ad networks, attempting to directly sell your products and services to your audience. As the name implies, you tend to pay only when your audience clicks on the ads. These campaigns can be highly targeted, making sure that your ads only show up for specific demographics, people in specific locations, at different times of day, and even on only specific devices. This way, you can use your market research to ensure that you’re only targeting the people who are most likely to convert and become your customers.
SEO
Any time spent looking around spaces, talking about digital marketing, and SEO will stand out as one of the most important and valuable marketing efforts around. However, it can sometimes be harder to get an explanation as to how it works or even what the SEO acronym stands for. Search engine optimization is the practice of improving your website’s visibility in search engine results. This works in a few different ways, such as improving your webpages, using specific keywords your audience uses in their searches in titles, headings, and meta descriptions to make your pages more likely to rank. Keyword-driven content marketing is the foundation of good SEO, but the practice goes a lot deeper, including things like improving site functionality (like load times and mobile optimization) and getting links to your site from other high-ranking sites. As such, it’s often best to work with the professionals to get a more complete understanding of how SEO works.
Social Media Marketing
On the other hand, social media tends to be a lot easier to understand. Brands use platforms like Facebook, X/Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and others to put out content that can appeal to their audiences. This can be videos and content showing off their products and services, direct feedback and communication with customers, paid ads, and creating interesting content such as videos and infographics to share with your followers. Social media can not only help you get a direct line to your audience, but it also helps to humanize the brand, which in turn can create a new level of loyalty. It’s also a lot easier to handle in-house with tools like social media management software.
Email marketing
Although email marketing might sound positively archaic compared to some of the other techniques, it’s still one of the most cost-effective strategies. You can use email campaign tools to send professional-looking, targeted messages to customers who sign up, offering them newsletters with interesting content, product updates, special offers, and even personal recommendations. Like social media, it provides a direct line to your audience, but segmentation based on customer data allows you to tailor your messages even more specifically to every reader, meaning you’re more likely to hit them with a message that actually grabs their attention.
Influencer Marketing
Endorsements and trusted third parties have always played a role in helping brands reach their customers, but influencer marketing has taken it to the next level. This involves partnering with influencers, from high-profile celebrities to niche voices with small but dedicated followings, and having them promote your products or services. It allows you not only access to their platform and audience, but also their credibility. A third-party intermediary can do a lot more to build trust in your product and services rather than delivering direct marketing messages yourself. Campaigns can be as simple as product mentions in social media posts or as involved as co-created content. The key is finding influencers whose audience aligns with your brand values and target market.
Affiliate Marketing
Much like influencer marketing, affiliate marketing makes use of other people’s platforms to spread the word on your products and services. However, this is a much more direct relationship that sees you rewarding these partners (or affiliates) for generating sales or leads through unique tracking links. Affiliates can be bloggers, review sites, influencers, or even other businesses. Because they’re paid per conversion, affiliates are motivated to promote your offerings actively, effectively, and genuinely where possible. You only pay for actual results, rather than paying just for the effort as you would for influencer marketing. However, affiliate marketing tends not to require quite as much investment and energy from your partners, so it tends to have less impact in building your brand as well.
There’s a lot more that goes into every single one of the approaches to digital marketing mentioned above. However, hopefully this beginner’s guide helps you build the familiarity you need to start digging deeper into each topic, to figure out how each can be perfectly suited to your business and marketing goals.
