Are you looking into expanding your business online? If so, you’re heading towards the right direction.
As the world shifts towards online, businesses are doing the same thing too. It’s the place to establish a presence, grow your customer base, and turn your idea to reality!
The most efficient way to market your business is online, that’s what makes digital marketing a pillar for all businesses. This article takes you through the wonders of digital marketing, the types and gives you the kickstart that you need.
THE THREE PURPOSES OF DIGITAL MARKETING.
Why should you invest in digital? Digital marketing helps you with the following…
- Accurate market t
- Expanding your market r
BRANDING
Reputation can make or break your business.
If you’re well-rated and known, people will refer to your service. Which can lead to more potential clients – this is how word of mouth works.
Now offline, it can be more challenging and difficult to establish. You might need months (sometimes years) to reap the benefits of word-of-mouth and good reviews.
But with the internet, the dynamics of processes can be easier and less complicated.
You have platforms (like social media) which show follower counts, likes, and subscribers – which are popularity metrics.
You can use those as leverage to gain more clients in your advertising efforts!
ACCURATE TARGETING
Digital marketing provides many “techniques” that helps you gain the most per dollar spent.
An example is search engine optimization, which is necessary for website content.
This ensures that your website appears to people who are interested (and are actively looking for) your services through search engines.
Another is ad targeting. Some platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, etc.) let you pick the demographics that’ll receive the ads you paid for and optimize your search even further to target your niche.
You can define those by age, address, hobbies – and many more preferences!
Regardless of the method, the point is, you get to hone in on your most likely buyers – thus cutting your ad budget!
EXPANDING YOUR MARKET REACH
Digital marketing allows you to start an online store – or to sell your services in online marketplaces.
And that gives you a multitude of advantages…
First, it lets you expand your selling horizon from local to international. If you were previously selling in your city or neighbourhood only, you can now reach potential clients from other countries!
So you’ll never worry about your products staying in stock for too long.
Second, it can reduce the stress of local competition. You can expand to other markets, giving your business a prospect for smooth growth!
PURPOSES ASIDE – WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF DIGITAL MARKETING
Here are the main types of digital marketing you should consider for your business.
- Social media marketing.
- Email marketing.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- Content marketing.
- Affiliate marketing.
- Search engine marketing.
Let’s dig deep into the three main types.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
This is the best location to start branding yourself or your business.
Social media is a place to create content that will help advertise your products and services, engage with your customers and collect feedback to help enhance your business.
There, you give your business followers a voice, which makes them feel valued.
In essence, think of it as a place to show off customer service.
[callout] Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population is already online, and the latest trends suggest that more than half of the world’s total population will use social media by the middle of 2020. [/callout]
This gives you more reasons to not just have a social media presence, but to invest in it by creating ads – where you basically pay social media platforms to show your ads to your potential customers to help you reach a wider audience.
EMAIL MARKETING
It’s another platform to create content to help capture your audience’s attention
[callout] The number of email users reached 3.9 billion, which means that over 50% of the world’s population is now using email. [/callout]
Email marketing <https://impactst.net/email-marketing-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-useful/> helps you stay connected and in touch with your exisiting clients.
After you get a client’s attention, you can send them “automated emails” to remind them and keep them updated with your new products or offers.
And there are many online tools that can help you do that. They let you send thousands of emails with one click!
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)
Search engine marketing often gets confused with SEO because both have very similar names and both also deal with search engines. While SEO helps you rank organically for your target keywords, SEM is all about increasing your website traffic from search engines through paid means. The most commonly-used SEM service is Google AdWords.
SEM helps you put paid ads on the search results page. These paid ads look almost identical to organic search results in Google, except for an “Ad” label.
DIGITAL MARKETING – IT’S A WIDE WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES.
Consider the previous guide as a quick glimpse into the basics of digital marketing.
There’s a lot more to it, and it’s a domain that’s always evolving. So be sure to find a specialist to help you, and get started!