Over three decades ago, marketing was primarily done through billboards, TV commercials, and magazine spreads. Then, along came the internet, and digital marketing was born.
As the name implies, digital marketing uses digital channels to reach customers. In this article, we’ll cover the different types of digital marketing channels and resources to help you get started, along with essential digital marketing tactics to consider when promoting your business.
Digital Marketing Channels and How to Get Started
Before diving into digital marketing strategies, it’s important to first evaluate the various digital channels you can employ to promote your business. We’ll also discuss many free resources you can use to get started on these channels.
Websites
The creation of a website is usually the starting point for any digital marketing strategy. Given that websites are typically where customers make purchases, it is crucial to direct traffic toward this central pillar of your campaign.
Luckily, you don’t need to be a coding genius or a design guru to get a website going. Many website builders provide templates and intuitive interfaces to quickly launch and edit your website. Popular ones include Wix, SquareSpace, WordPress, and GoDaddy, to name a few. If you’re just looking for a simple landing page for purchases, consider platforms like Shopify, Etsy, or Amazon.
Email Marketing
Even though email marketing has been around for a while, with over 4 billion daily users, it should not be overlooked as a key component of your digital marketing strategy.
While sending an email may seem easy enough, the real challenge lies not only in ensuring that emails do not end up in the dreaded spam folder, but also in getting customers to open and click on your emails. Given these challenges, several email tools exist to help build, design, and analyze your emails. Forbes Advisor recommends MailChimp for an all-in-one email marketing platform, and GetResponse specifically for small or medium-sized business owners.
Social Media Marketing
If you’re on a tight budget, social media is one of the most cost-effective channels you can leverage in your marketing strategy. All major social media platforms are free to join and you can immediately begin posting content to access more than 4.89 billion worldwide users.
Platforms like Canva and Adobe Express can help you quickly design and develop eye-catching content in minutes without requiring a large social media team.
Mobile Phone Marketing
The three aforementioned channels can all be–and often are–performed on a mobile phone. Other means of reaching your customers on smartphones include SMS and MMS text messages, mobile app alerts, and more.
Though texting should be done sparingly to avoid overwhelming customers, several text automation services exist. According to Forbes Advisor, Textedly is the best choice for small businesses, and ClickSend is the best value overall.
Strategies for Digital Marketing
While it can be easy to set up a website, send out emails and texts, and jump on social media, a digital marketing campaign that lacks strategy won’t necessarily generate leads and conversions. By leveraging the techniques below, you can begin to see fruits from all your digital labor.
Content Marketing
Rather than focusing singularly on selling, content marketing has shifted the paradigm to focus first on providing helpful, useful information to customers, and then selling.
For example, let’s say a culinary company wants to sell more kitchen appliances. They can simply run ads with their newest blender outlining its features and benefits. Or, they can create blogs and a video series centered on fresh recipes that require a blender.
These recipes may not directly be focused on selling the blender, but they are more useful to someone looking to use a blender. Over time, customers will purchase from brands they know and trust.
Content marketing takes time and effort to build; however, there are huge long-term payoffs. While there are many forms of content, here are some important ones to consider:
- Blog posts
- Video series
- Podcasts
- E-books
- Infographics
- White papers
If this is an overwhelming list, choose one piece of content to start with, like a few blog posts. You’ll quickly find you can repurpose this content into a longer e-book or a video series.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The first spot on Google has a click-through rate of 28.5%, compared to 15% and 11% for the second and third spots, respectively.
Essentially, getting higher in search engine rankings makes a big difference.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a tactic for ranking higher in search engines to gain organic traffic. While there is no golden set of rules that automatically rank you first, there are some important considerations to evaluate:
- Quality of content
- Mobile-friendliness
- Number and quality of inbound links (number of outside sources that are linking to you.)
While it is easy to get jumbled in the SEO landscape of keywords and links, remember that humans, not algorithms, will be consuming your content. Building content that is relevant and valuable to people means they are sharing and clicking, which is ultimately used by algorithms to rank pages higher in search engines.
Pay-per-click Marketing (PPC)
Although most digital marketing tactics are free, pay-per-click marketing, or PPC, is a digital marketing technique where you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad.
One of the most popular forms of PPC marketing is Google Ads. Rather than relying on organic traffic to land the top spot in a Google search, companies can pay to be auctioned in that top spot. (Have you seen the “Sponsored” links at the top of a Google search? That is PPC marketing in action!)
However, this top spot is not determined simply by the highest bidder. The algorithm considers factors like ad quality, keyword relevance, and landing page quality in addition to the bid amount, so crafting quality content is still important.
Over to You
This may seem overwhelming, but remember that an effective digital marketing strategy does not get built in a day. If you need to, start small and be tactful. Keep in mind that every blog, social media post, email, or text should ultimately be centered around your customer. By building strategies that resonate with your customers, your product will be flying off the shelves in no time.
