Digital marketing is about promoting your business or brand through the internet and other forms of digital communication to connect with potential customers. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.
So, if you have a business or are planning to start one, then you don’t have to worry about it at all.
But, you should know how to use those marketing/communication channels to catch your audience or target customers.
Let’s have a look on what kind of marketing helps you in growing your business.
1. Content Marketing For Business
Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing and distributing content for a targeted audience online.
It is often used by businesses in order to:
- Attract attention and generate leads
- Expand their customer base
- Generate or Increase online sales
- Increase brand awareness or credibility
- Engage an online community of users
Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract customers.
You can simply write good content about your business’ products with nice pictures to define them in more detail and to make it more catchy for your customers.
2. Social Media Marketing For Business
Social media marketing (SMM) is a digital marketing strategy that involves using social media platforms to connect with your customers, build strong relationships with them and eventually promote your products to them.
Just like any other marketing strategy, profit generation is the end goal of all the SMM activities. However, there are also several goals that SMM seeks to achieve – increasing brand awareness, improving brand image, etc.
Social media marketing is the popular and effective digital marketing.The key advantages of social media marketing include:
- It’s cost-effective. Unlike a lot of traditional marketing, you don’t need to invest millions and millions of dollars to get sufficient results.
- It’s scalable. Social media is a platform with millions of users, all of which are open to receiving large amounts of content. If you manage to make your social media marketing campaign go viral, you can easily increase your outreach.
- It’s amazing for improving brand awareness. Social media is centered around likes and shares, and exposing your account to the people who might be interested in seeing it. Therefore, if you adjust the content you share to fit the interests of your target audience, you can grow your exposure quickly.
- It’s a great way to obtain inbound traffic. Social media platforms give you a unique opportunity to reach out to the customers who don’t usually belong to the circle of your loyal brand ambassadors.
- It’s a potent customer relationship management tool. To an extent, you can think of your social media presence as a part of your CRM strategy because it helps to build stronger, closer relationships with your target audience. If people leave comments under your posts and you react promptly, giving a valuable and relevant response, they will see more added value to the products you’re selling.
- It increases trust levels. People tend to trust more of the brands they know. If you succeed in showing your customers who you are behind the avatar and multiple posts, they will get that feeling of familiarity!
- Thought leadership. Social media platforms are great for showing your proficiency and professionalism.
- Increased conversion! A lot of social media platforms are now offering built-in stores that allow you to sell right then and there.
If you want to leverage the power of SMM, you need to ensure all the following components are in check:
- Strategy
- Planning and publishing
- Listening and engagement
- Analytics
- Advertising
So go ahead and use all social media platforms to grow your business faster.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
For promoting your business, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is employing tactics to help your site rank better in the search engines when specific phrases (keywords) are searched on.
It includes keyword research, content optimization, technical issues (coding, site architecture, etc.), inbound links to a site, and more.
SEO has become increasingly complex as search engines have become more sophisticated. Early on, it was really just about strategically placing keywords in the right places in the code and content and getting websites, ANY websites, to link to your site.
Today’s search algorithms aim to deliver higher quality results and have made it more difficult to rank. Now it’s not about using keywords a certain number of times but to build authoritative content around those phrases.
It’s not about getting as many links as possible but having high-quality, high-authority sites link to yours. It comes down to the age-old quality over quantity and providing a site that satisfies the user, not one that is designed only to rank in search engines.
This makes it difficult for sites to succeed with SEO tactics alone. SEO should be complemented with strong content, social media promotion, and even paid advertising.
Why not promote your business through SEO?
4. Email Marketing For Business
Email Marketing is a marketing strategy that involves sending emails directly to a list of clients, customers, or prospects. When properly implemented, it can be very effective, because you are directly contacting individual people rather than posting on a social media account that potential customers may or may not see.
Setting up your email marketing campaign is fairly simple. You can set up a newsletter, or include an opt-in on your website for visitors to enter their name and email address.
Once you have a mailing list, it’s time to start sending out emails on a regular basis. You don’t want to overwhelm or irritate your prospects, but you don’t want them to forget about you, either.
What should be included in the content of your emails? Ultimately, your goal is to generate sales, but avoid turning every email into an advertisement. You can also use email marketing to develop a more personal bond with your customers by offering a behind-the-scenes look at your business or sharing personal anecdotes.
Taking the time to respect your email recipients by offering them genuine and valuable content will ultimately make them more likely to buy from you when you do present them with an offer.
Email marketing is an excellent strategy for creating a personal connection with people who have demonstrated interest in your business, establishing your expertise in your field, and eventually leveraging those factors in order to generate sales.
5. Pay-per-Click (PPC)
Pay-per Click (PPC) opted by many businesses to create brand awareness among the consumers and get website traffic in a short time.
It is termed Pay-per-click as the advertisers pay to the clients only when internet users click on their ads.
Along with Google, people opt for PPC marketing in other online platforms like YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn.
There are different types of PPC advertisements which are practiced by different organizations.
- Search ads: It is the most common form of PPC advertising. Those who are searching for products relevant to your industry, will receive search ads that show your business on top. This helps most in generating leads and creating an online brand identity.
- Display ads: This is the most basic form of online ad, which shows up on different platforms during user activity. It captures the mind of the people as it consists of both graphics and texts. It is regarded as a useful mode of digital advertising.
- In-stream ads: In-stream ads, also known as YouTube ads that appear when somebody searches or views a video on YouTube. It captures people’s attention quickly and has the maximum retention ability.
- Social Media ads: Here, ads are placed on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. Through social media advertising, you can post ads to people who are interested in your business or products. So, it is a niche-based online marketing method.
These are some of the effective PPC advertising models. Consult with an experienced online marketing agency to reach your consumers within a short time.
6. Affiliate and Influencer Marketing For Growing Business
Affiliate marketing is online commission based marketing where you promote the products of other people /companies to customers via online & when customers buy the product, you receive the commission.
Active players involved in Affiliate marketing game:
- MERCHANT: Could be product Creator, seller, brand, retailer or vendor.
- AFFILIATE NETWORK: Act as a mediator between merchant & Affiliate marketer. It handles payments & product delivery. Also, it is a platform where large numbers of products are listed through which Publisher or Affiliate marketer can choose which products they want to promote.
- AFFILIATE MARKETER OR PUBLISHER: Who is involved in promoting the products to customers & who receives the commission.
- CUSTOMERS: End-users who buy the product.
Thinking of it as a complicated cycle? But it’s not. Wash your hands under this process –
1. Select any of the affiliate network platforms like Amazon associates, Click bank, Commission junction, etc. There is a vast list of affiliate networks. One can Google the same to get to know more about the affiliate network.
2. Select the product from affiliate network sites that you want to promote.
3. When customers land on your product which you have promoted & customers buy it.
4. You receive the part of the sale commission. Commission’s rates are set differently for different products.
In short, when customers buy your product which you promote, Affiliate marketer or Publisher receives a commission from a merchant whose product you are promoting.
In this way, a cycle of the affiliate gets completed. This is just a crux of how affiliate marketing works. If we go in detail, then there are step by step stairs one needs to land on while entering into the gate of affiliate marketing.
CONCLUSION
It’s just as easy as that!! Use these kinds of marketing for your business and you are good to go.
Modern Marketing is helping every business grow in this difficult time. So, if you want to learn more about Digital Marketing and you’re eager to grow your business, visit our website now!
www.thedigitalmarketinginstitute.org
By Anum Mughal