Using Digital Marketing to Promote your Business
Are you left frustrated after doing everything to boost your business? Try the digital medium to grab the attention of your target audience. Some people think that Digital Marketing is a beast to tackle. Firstly, you have to know about the process of Digital Marketing and its advantages and disadvantages. Where do you even start?
To give you a clear idea, we’ve compiled a handy list of the various types of Digital Marketing that a thriving business would do good to utilize:
Content marketing focuses on text, pictures, & multimedia, which adds value to your targeted audience. If you’re in B2C (business to consumer), content means social media, blogs, articles posts, and fun videos. But if you’re in B2B (business to business), it may look more like white papers, reports, webinars, and educational videos.
SEM is all about getting your website to appear at the top of the google search results when future customers search for your brand, products, and services. It is very suitable for B2B. It includes organic search (search engine optimization, or SEO) and paid search (pay per click, or PPC) and is optimized for both desktop computers and smartphone interfaces.
PPC is essentially a paid search advertising, for instance, Google Adwords or Bing Ads. It looks the same as the natural search results, and it appears at the top of the page in a little box that says ‘Ad.’ You can earn a top-ranking position through an auction-based on keywords with geographical location and demographics. It is mainly suitable for e-commerce and local businesses.
Display advertising, typically seen as banners, appear as traditional print ads. Here you can target specific publications that you know your audience reads. It has become much more refined with programmatic advertising, where ads are booked, analyzed, and optimized automatically using algorithms, also known as retargeting. For example, when you look at a pair of shoes on your favorite department store website and those shoes follow you onto every site you visit for months to come.
It’s as broad as digital marketing itself with a few other features. It involves all the marketing strategies you employ on your desktop but adapting it to mobile. There are also mobile-specific traits such as in-app advertising, sending text messages, and using social messaging apps. It covers your young adult demographic who statistically spend considerably more time on their phones.
Adds a new dimension of engagement and interaction with your audience. Rather than broadcast messages to a mass audience, you can interact with customers directly to gain insight into what they have to say. There are many platforms for social media marketing, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Don’t forget the organic options in Facebook groups, page posts, stories, and Messenger as well as Facebook ads.
Email sounds old school in a world where everyone is instant messaging or Snapchatting. Still, email marketing is one of the most effective tools, especially for e-commerce sites. Retail brands are seeing a lot of success with pushing seasonal promotions and discounts.
Influencer marketing involves opting celebrities, experts, and authority figures who have an existing audience to promote your business. When they promote your product on their platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, or YouTube, their followers are likely to trust the recommendation and buy from you. Influencers can also be useful for B2B. Be sure to partner with more serious and specific thought leaders or experts in your industry.
Affiliate marketing means outsourcing to other companies to promote your products in return for a commission. It’s especially popular with bloggers and e-commerce sites. The affiliate promotes your product on their website, and after a customer clicks or buys, they will automatically get a commission for driving that sale.
Video is the key to any show these days. Whatever your business is, it’s likely you will need video in some capacity. It can be in a short clip or a longer format. This practice goes beyond merely making a TV ad and reposting it online; instead, you’re creating bite-sized content catered specifically to your digital platform.
Audio may be one of the oldest forms of marketing aside from physical banners. As old as it is, though, most people still listen to the radio, especially after the growth of internet radio. Traditional radio advertising is still an excellent medium and can be easily replicated on similar outlets such as Spotify. Audio marketing can always be much broader, including podcasts and smart home assistants like Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
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