Digital Marketing Essentials: An Overview of 6 Important Channels
Launching your online store is difficult. And one of the most important aspects of any business is marketing, which can make or break how well your site performs. So to get you off on the right foot, here are six essential marketing channels to consider for your online store: search engine optimization, social media marketing, paid ads and search engine advertising, emailing and newsletters, referrals from past customers, and content marketing.
Digital marketing is an excellent way to help your online business get the exposure it needs to succeed. The key is to stay updated with the latest trends and methods; especially as technology and customer behavior change. This article provides a brief overview of each digital marketing channel, for novices and experts alike.
Digital marketing is an extremely powerful tool for eCommerce brands because the internet is the world’s most powerful medium of communication. It allows your business to reach into a customer’s life, but you must be strategic to do it successfully.
To be successful in digital marketing, you should consider how each medium works and what type of target audience you want to reach. Let’s take a look at how you can use digital marketing channels to grow your e-commerce business.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the process or activity of directing traffic to a company’s website in return for compensation.
Digital marketing channels can be divided into internal and external digital marketing channels. Internal digital marketing channels include brand management, company blogs, and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. External digital marketing channels include paid ads such as Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and Amazon ads, as well as search engine optimization (SEO) strategies for page titles, meta tags, and descriptions.
Set up a digital marketing strategy
Plan your digital marketing strategy using these five essential steps:
Know your customers. Identify your customer’s demographic, psychographic, and behavioral traits so you can create marketing that is more likely to appeal to them.
Prepare a marketing budget. Determine how much money you are willing to spend on the digital channels before you determine what your strategy will be. Start by identifying which channel is most important for the business and how much time, energy, and resources you have available.
Identify your target audience. Review your current customer database to see who you are targeting with your digital marketing campaign. Think about current customers and potential new customers separately. This will help you decide which groups of people are most important to your strategy and target audience.
Create an editorial calendar. You need a clear schedule of what content will be created and when emails need to be sent and when you need to post on social media platforms. Make sure every piece of content is consistent with the brand’s personality as well as message and tone of voice.
Create a digital marketing strategy and a plan. Follow the steps above to create your digital marketing strategy, then implement it. Make sure you know the best channels for digital marketing, which match your company’s goals and style, and learn how to build an effective ground game.
Digital marketing channels have changed dramatically over the past five years. The following are some internal and external advertising channels that are changing the way consumers use digital media.
Google AdWords is an online advertising program that allows publishers to place ads on their website or in the Google search results. Google offers advertisers the ability to advertise text ads, image ads, videos, and rich media ads. In 2008, the Google AdWords program enjoyed less than 5 percent market share of all online advertising, but as of September 2013, it has been estimated that approximately 24.1 percent of all US internet users clicked on Google advertisements during 2013.
When it comes to social media marketing, Facebook is the king of online networks. It has 845 million daily active users, which is almost 70 percent of all social media users. This is part of the reason why Facebook has over 1.6 billion monthly active users, and why it’s among the most visited websites in the world.
According to a study on digital marketing effectiveness conducted by Dr. Tim Wang of the University of San Francisco, “…digital marketing produces 103 percent higher return on investment (ROI), but traditional or offline marketing produces 105 percent higher revenues.”
Email is a proven way to generate revenue. According to the “State of Email Marketing Report” by AgilOne, a company that helps businesses increase their email revenue, email generates an average of $38 for every $1 spent marketing email campaign. Some businesses may even enjoy a high click-through rate and conversion rates.
Referrals are a great way to grow your business. When done right, they can be very powerful. However, many businesses do not do them right and fail to see the results they are hoping for. The goal of a referral program is to generate word-of-mouth advertising and increase sales. It is not merely a reward or loyalty program.
The most important thing you should know about referrals is that the people making referrals don’t want rewards; they want to share their positive experiences with other potential customers. The best way to encourage referrals is to provide great service and a positive experience.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s visibility in search engines. SEO involves optimizing web pages and their content to achieve a high rank in search engine results, which will, in turn, drive traffic to your website. SEO, however, is not only about the optimization of content. It is also about building links or pointing back to your website from other websites and creating original content that others are willing to share and link back to.
Social media marketing is the marketing strategy of using social media as a means to engage with and interact with customers. Social media has become an important means of communication for many companies, allowing them to have a direct conversation with their customers in real-time through online and mobile devices. Mobile devices have become the second-largest Internet usage category (behind desktop computers) which is driving this trend. Companies that invested in social media and mobile marketing have seen significant increases in efficiency, profitability, and customer engagement.
Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and valuable content to attract, engage and retain a target market. It is a combination of marketing with the intent of informing customers rather than selling to them. Content marketing helps companies generate qualified leads or sales through content that is shareable on social media.
Content marketing can be used for many reasons including attracting new customers, getting people to your landing pages through social media, developing brand loyalty, and increasing revenue.
Kick start your digital marketing strategy with SEA
At SEA, we understand that your business is unique and you do not want to be cut off from the rest of the world until your site is ready to launch. Our search engine marketing (SEM) team will work with you to build and optimize your website while our search engine optimization (SEO) team will ensure that it is visible in search engines.
SEA has a proprietary Pay Per Click (PPC) management platform which allows us to manage all aspects of your pay-per-click account from campaign setup through conversion tracking. Our team of experts will assist you in selecting the right keywords and determining which have the highest potential for your business.
SEA performs thorough keyword research to help select the most relevant keywords that reflect your business, product, and services to ensure that your website is found organically by consumers who are searching for information related to your industry.
We help our clients establish their online presence by creating a range of custom solutions, including state-of-the-art websites and social media profiles, creating video marketing content and developing online strategies.
If you’re ready to start using digital marketing to boost your SEO efforts, contact us online or call us today at (704) 856 9058 to talk with a strategist.
We look forward to hearing from you!
