Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience where they are, and today that means on the internet. So, these days we spend significant time and effort on digital marketing. Officially, digital marketing is defined as the promotion of a company’s product or brand on digital platforms and channels, including websites, social media, email, and search engines. Sounds simple, but you can’t just go at it blindly – the internet is constantly evolving and changing, and a good strategy can make the difference between achieving a solid ROI and a lot of wasted effort.
A digital marketing plan can maximize your marketing budget by helping you to meet and engage your customers where they are – online.
To build a successful digital marketing strategy, first you must understand and define your business goals, your target audience, and what your audience wants. Then you can use high level thinking and a big-picture perspective to integrate all the elements and platforms involved in building and maintaining a presence in the digital marketplace.
A comprehensive digital marketing plan should include the following essential components:
- An up-to-date website
- SEO
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Search engine marketing
Let’s take a closer look at each…
Website
Your website represents your business. It is the foundation of your online presence and the backbone of your digital marketing strategy. It should be engaging, compelling, up-to-date, relevant, and should clearly convey your company’s brand and values. It should be responsive so that it looks good whether viewed on desktop, tablet, or phone.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO helps to grow the quality and quantity of organic (free) traffic to your website by improving the site and its contents so that it becomes more visible and ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for the search terms used by the targeted audience. A Google Business Profile enhances local SEO by making it easier for potential customers to discover your business online.
Content Marketing
Content marketing involves creating original, valuable, and relevant digital content to attract an audience, engage customers, create and build brand awareness and trust, and generate leads. The content can include infographics, e-books, blog posts, videos, podcasts. An additional benefit is that when done right, content marketing provides material for social media and email campaigns and is a solid building block for SEO.
Email Marketing
Email is often described as the most effective component of an online marketing strategy. A well-designed strategy builds long term loyalty and encourages repeat business. Email can be used to build brand awareness, promote content, announce sales and events, and enhance a company’s relationship with former, current, and new customers.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is not about posting content on Facebook and Instagram just for the sake of posting… it is about engaging your targeted audience on the social platforms they prefer. Social media marketing builds brand awareness and loyalty and provides an additional set of venues for promoting your business and products. It accomplishes this by creating and sharing timely and relevant content that is custom tailored for the different audiences and requirements for each social platform.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of digital marketing that uses paid search advertising to drive traffic to your website. SEM is often used in conjunction with SEO. A benefit of Search Engine Marketing is that it offers a quick solution for building visibility, whereas other channels commonly require a significant time investment to achieve results.
Ready to build your digital marketing strategy? Contact us today to learn how The Marketing Collective uses proven tactics to build and implement a creative and unique campaign that will help you meet your business goals.
