It may seem crazy that people are still just gaining access to the internet, but it is true. The purpose of marketing has always been to connect potential customers to your business. And with more and more people utilizing the web, it has changed the way consumers shop. This change has made traditional marketing tactics less effective. Therefore, new marketing tactics to reach users online were developed. These online marketing tactics are what is known as digital marketing. Below we will discuss what exactly digital marketing is and how it can help take your business to the next level.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing encompasses marketing strategies on all online platforms including search engines, social media, emails and other websites. Digital marketing has several major benefits the first being that it allows you to target audiences that are more likely to purchase from your business. With many of the traditional marketing methods, such as in a newspaper, magazine or radio commercial, there is less control over who the ad is served to. Yes, you can target based on location or other specific demographics, but ultimately there is still less control over targeting than when utilizing digital marketing tactics. Your business will be able to complete research to determine who your target audience is and then refine your strategies to reach them more effectively. You can even divide your audience into smaller sections and target each one specifically.
Digital marketing is also more cost-effective than other traditional marketing forms. It is also easier to monitor closely to determine the effectiveness and therefore make any changes necessary to improve performance. Unfortunately, with traditional marketing methods, the same measurements and changes are not easy and in some cases not possible. Also, with digital marketing, your business gets to choose where it spends its marketing dollars. It also allows your business to reflect and make strategic changes to ensure you are getting the most out of your money.
Another benefit of digital marketing is how measurable it is. The measurability of digital marketing is one of the biggest advantages in comparison to traditional marketing methods. When using traditional marketing methods, there are no guarantees that a person in your target audience saw your ad or even paid any attention to it. With digital marketing campaigns, you can measure multiple key metrics such as impressions, clicks, shares from beginning to end and at every step in between. You can even get results in real-time. In addition to measuring the performance of your digital marketing campaigns themselves, you can measure other aspects of your online marketing strategy such as your business’s website. With the help of digital marketing analytic software, you can measure how many users visited your website, how many pages they viewed, how they got to your website along with other metrics.
The next benefit of digital marketing is that it evens out the competition. In traditional marketing methods, smaller businesses may have a harder time gaining visibility because they do not have the budget to compete with the larger companies. With digital marketing, there are many strategic ways smaller businesses can outrank the larger businesses. Some of these methods include targeting relevant long-tail keywords and creating high-quality content. These methods are useful because search engines do not prioritize brands, they prioritize content and how relevant it is to a user. Digital marketing is a great way to spread the word about your product even if your industry has many competitors. Now that you know the benefits of digital marketing, let’s go over the different types of digital marketing.
Types of Digital Marketing
There are many different tactics your business can utilize in digital marketing. Below we will briefly explain the most common ones used today.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Using a set of metrics, search engines determine the relevance of a website to a user’s search query and rank it's position on the page. SEO is used to improve your website’s ranking in the search results and is used to target organic website visitors which means no ad is actually used. There are multiple different measures your business can implement on its website to optimize for SEO such as incorporating keywords into website content, providing images with alt tags and reducing the time it takes your website to load.
- Pay-Per-Click Ads (PPC)
PPC ads are ads that show in the search results from a search engine. Your business will need to utilize Google Ads to be able to leverage PPC advertising. PPC requires you to create a text or display ad that links to pages you select on your website. Next, you will choose relevant keywords to target in hopes that when a user inputs the keyword you are targeting, search engines determine your ad is relevant and valuable to the user and it is shown. The benefit of PPC ads is that they are cost-effective because you are only paying if the user clicks on your ad, not just if your ad is shown.
- Social Media Marketing
Similar to PPC ads, social media ads are text or display ads that include images or videos. The main difference is that these ads are shown exclusively on social media platforms as can be assumed based upon their name. They include a link back to your website or your business’s social media page depending upon the goal of the campaign. It is also as cost-effective as PPC because you are not charged if the desired action is not performed by the user.
Conclusion
Now that you know the basics of digital marketing, it is clear that every business needs to implement this form of marketing into their business’s marketing plan. It is the best way to increase brand awareness, reach a specific target audience and be able to see real results about the effectiveness of your campaigns. While we have only mentioned a few ways your business can utilize digital marketing, there are many more that can be helpful but are complex. When it comes to these tactics, it is recommended that your business choose to collaborate with a website agency that specializes in providing high-quality digital marketing services. TechArk Solutions is an award-winning digital marketing agency located in Norfolk Virginia. Their team of experts has helped countless businesses get more out of their websites and improve their online visibility. If your business is interested in adding digital marketing to your marketing efforts, contact TechArk today.
