Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is an investment that you can’t afford not to make. Allocating proper time and money into it and you do it right, you are guaranteed to see returns – significant ones at that. If you are unfamiliar with digital marketing, this will help you understand what it is, how it helps your business and what forms of digital marketing you should be using and what they do.

What Exactly Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing consists of an assortment of marketing strategies that are specifically designed to generate leads and sales from consumers who are online looking for products and services. While not all of these tactics are free and will require a advertising budget, some of them are. In addition, some will require more of your time and energy than others. Your digital marketing campaign can include any of the following strategies:

Why Should You Consider Using Digital Marketing?

If you want your small business to succeed, it is imperative that you engage with the digital world. If you choose not to utilize digital marketing tactics to your advantage to reach new and existing customers, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage and allowing your competitors to have a leg up on you. Here is how digital marketing can help you:

Gain exposure
Pinpoint new markets
Build a following
Establish trust
Cultivate a reputation
Increase traffic
Boost conversions

What Forms of Digital Marketing Should Businesses Utilize?

When it comes to a solid digital marketing campaign, a small business needs to use a little bit of everything. This includes content marketing (such as web content, newsletters, and blogs), SEO, digital advertising and social media. As a general rule, there are eight digital marketing strategies that small businesses should and do use for a well-rounded, strong campaign – all of which are described below.

Responsive Website Design (Mobile-Friendly Sites)

Your website is the online window to your business and is the most important part of your marketing campaign. You need to consider your website as your business’s front door. You need customer’s to enter that door and peruse your products/services. Therefore, you need to make sure your site is easy to find and navigate. Since most shoppers use their smartphones and tablets, you need to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. A responsive website design will ensure that your site is viewable on any and all devices.

Online Listings

Consumers no longer turn to the yellow pages in a phonebook when they need to find information on a business. Instead, they turn to the internet, so you need to make sure that your business is listed online in directories like Google My Business, Bing Business Listings, Yelp, Foursquare, Superpages, etc. This helps to ensure that customers are able to locate your website as well as your storefront location. Plus, these online business listings will help boost your general and local search engine rankings.

Online Reviews

Digital marketing has the ability to improve your online reputation. One way of doing this is via positive online reviews from some of your most satisfied customers. So, when you have completed a positive experience with a customer, invite them to go online (such as Facebook, Google or any other review site) and leave a positive review for your business. This will not only improve your reputation, but it will help generate traffic to your site and boost sales.

Local SEO

When a customer types in a business name on their smartphone, it uses their geographic location to pull up nearby businesses. If your business is not listed in online listings, then yours won’t appear in the search. With that being said, local SEO is a very integral part of a company’s digital marketing campaign, as it helps to increase your local search visibility.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is used to improve a website’s organic ranking in search engines. The more likely a business is listed on the first page of Google or Bing, the more likely that business will have their website clicked on. The same is true the closer they are to that coveted #1 spot. So, this is where you want to rank, and SEO is going to help you get your website there.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing, or SEM for short, is when a business purchases advertisements in order to obtain instant visibility on the results pages of search engines. In order for SEM to be successful, you need to first identify what keywords are relevant to your products and/or services – the keywords that customers will probably use to search for your business and products/services. Then, you will simply pay for a pre-determined number of impressions, which are customer views on the advertisement.

Social Media Marketing

Social media allows business to connect with their existing and prospective customers online in a way they cannot in the real world. Marketing via social media brings together authentic interactions and paid advertisements and is feasible even for businesses with small budgets for marketing. The most popular social media networks for marketing include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Content Marketing

Whether you want to simply increase your social media following, keep your customers coming back to your online website or simply give your SEO a boost, posting high-quality and informative content that is relevant to your consumers can get the job done. Online content can be a number of things – logos, videos, photos or writing, and it can be posted on your website or any of your social media networks. You just have to make sure it is engaging enough to appeal to your customer-base and make them want to come back for more.

Let Us Help You With Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Now that you are bit more familiar with the world of digital marketing, it’s time to get started with your own campaign. Just because you have dipped your toes in and you have a bit of knowledge, it doesn’t mean that you are ready to run your own campaign – and that’s okay! At WebDetail, we are experienced in digital marketing and can sit down with you to discuss what you would like your end goal to be and assist in developing a campaign that will help you realize those goals. Contact us today so that we can get the ball rolling on the success of your business in the digital realm.