Welcome to the digital age! Surfing the internet on your phone. Scrolling through Instagram or TikTok. Watching YouTube videos. We’re digital creatures now! Gone are the days of relying solely on print, billboards, TV and radio ads to reach your target audience. Digital marketing is taking over the world faster than the Virus That Shall Not Be Named, and opens up a whole range of possibilities to connect with customers and grow your business.
If you aren’t leveraging digital marketing, you’re basically leaving money on the table and giving your competitors customers that want YOU! So let’s fix that by educating on what exactly digital marketing is.
Digital marketing refers to any form of marketing done through electronic devices. This includes marketing efforts on the internet (Google, anyone?), social media, mobile apps, email, and more. While there are many different types of goals that a business might use digital marketing to achieve (such as brand awareness, or building an online community around their brand), the #1 aim for many companies is to use the power of digital to get more leads, more sales, and more revenue, for the best possible return on investment. At the end of the day, your business has to make money, right?
But how does this online marketing work?
You know how you’re shopping for a pair of shoes on a website, then later that day, a picture of those same shoes is following you around on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? It’s magic! Well… not quite, it’s digital marketing! Those texts alerting you to amazing 2-for-1 deals at your favourite pizza restaurant – digital marketing. Your favourite TikTok personality telling you about their latest recommended cleaning product – you guessed it, even that is a form of digital marketing!
What makes up digital marketing?
Digital marketing contains a wide mix of disciplines. Some of the most common digital marketing services include:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Making changes to your website and content to become more visible on search engine results pages, like Google and Bing, through tactics like keyword research, site optimisation, link building, content creation, and more.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM): This includes running text and display ads through search platforms like Google and Bing. You can choose for your ad to appear when users type in certain search terms (like “accountants near me”), or when they visit certain websites.
- Content Marketing: This involves planning, creating, and publishing content on your website and other online platforms. It’s usually a mix of free, valuable content as well as more promotional content, and includes blog posts, videos, podcasts, whitepapers, and more to attract and retain your target audience.
- Social Media Marketing: Sharing content on social media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X – formerly Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest to name a few) to inspire your target customers to engage, build loyalty, and take action. It can be paid (which allows you to target people based on specific requirements) or free (“organic” as those in the biz refer to it) .
- Email Marketing: This involves sending emails like newsletters, promotions, and customer re-engagement campaigns using email marketing software. Inboxes truly are the new sales funnel and a great cost-effective way to nurture your prospects.
Those are just the beginning. There is mobile advertising, remarketing, influencer marketing, and so much more! That’s why choosing a digital marketing agency that stays on top of trends and new platforms is so crucial in helping you gain, and retain, a competitive advantage.
So if you’re ready to use digital marketing to get you more leads and more sales than ever before, for an incredibly sexy ROI, then you don’t need to learn every single part of digital marketing… you just need to pick up the phone, and call Living Online for an obligation-free chat about how digital marketing can work for your company.
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