As the years go by, you would notice how social media has taken the world by storm. Everyone is busying themselves with the different content present online, and lots of businesses have used this occurrence to their advantage. This is where digital marketing enters, and it is the latest tool for effective marketing.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is an online technique that businesses use to market their products and services through digital channels. These can come in the form of websites, mobile devices, social media and search engines.
In essence, digital marketing is still similar to its traditional version because the former still pushes itself to know its consumers and how they behave online. Given that people are mostly on their phones all day, then it would make sense for businesses to publicise themselves on multiple digital platforms.
How does digital marketing work?
Now that there are a lot of people online, you would probably think about how businesses would make themselves present on multiple channels. To answer this question, here are the different ways or techniques that make digital marketing work:
- Search engine optimization
Search engines such as Google would always show you the relevant results based on what you are looking for. The top positions on the first page are what companies aim for because they want to be as relevant as possible. To do that, they use this digital marketing tool or technique called search engine optimization or SEO for short.
Search engine optimization is all about making your website more visible when consumers search for products or services related to your business. If your site’s visibility is top-notch, you have better chances of landing on the top results of Google, Bing and other popular search engines. Consequently, more people will be familiar with what you can offer, and it can give more attention to what you are selling.
At this point, you are asking how search engines work, and the answer to that question is here:
- Crawling
The moment a person searches, all search engines will begin the crawling phase. This is when bugs or spiders on the web will explore the library and find if any websites are related to what the person is looking for.
- Indexing
After crawling, everything that the bugs have found will be collected and indexed. The data gathered during this stage will be filtered out during the ranking stage.
- Ranking
The last step is to rank everything within the index based on the relevance or relation to what the person is looking for.
All three phases of search engines happen in just a matter of seconds, which makes it critical for businesses to focus on improving their visibility. To make that possible, Macromill South East Asia is here to provide you with effective SEO tips:
- Make use of keywords
When it comes to improving your visibility in search engines, you should always think exactly like your target consumers. This means thinking about what are the possible keywords they use on search engines.
With that said, you can be overwhelmed with the multiple keywords that people use to search for what they need. To lessen your problem, there are a lot of SEO tools that will do keyword research for you. All you have to do is provide a topic, then the tools will reveal all the relevant keywords to you.
- Improve your metadata
The first thing that people look for whenever they search is the metadata of a website. This is the small snippet located below your title and link. If they can find what they need from the metadata, they will be prompted to click on the link to know more about what they need. With that said, you should see to it that the metadata contains exactly what the searcher is looking for.
- Making your website load fast
One thing that repels people from the internet is when websites load too slow. This is an inconvenience for them since the time they lost can be used to search for better sites that contain what they need. Having that said, you need to be aware of your links load fast, so you will not lose possible customers.
- Write for humans first
While SEO may sound technical, you should not let this ruin the quality of your content. Make sure to remember that the content you are making is for humans, so it is still important to make it relatable.
2. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
Another digital marketing tool you should look into is the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising method. Moreover, this lets the marketer or advertiser pay a fee every time their link is clicked. This is a good method to gain traffic since it will make your website more visible everywhere.
The best way to see an example of PPC advertising is by going to search engines. By simply searching for food or any service, you will find that there is a dedicated spot at the top that states ‘Ad’. These are under this type of advertising, and the owner of the website has to pay a small fee to the search engine whenever a user clicks on the link.
3. Website marketing
If you happen to have a website for your business, you should know that this is a huge asset. In the realm of online shops, having a number of purchases per day is a priority because this is what makes the money circulate. But to guarantee a sure buy, you need to improve the customer experience on your website.
Improving the customer experience means making your website more user-friendly. As such, you have to make sure that your website is easily accessible and navigated, so people will not be discouraged to look around. The whole website improvement process is based on the nature of the business you have, so ensure that you adjust accordingly.
- Content marketing
Is it possible to create something entertaining and inviting at the same time? The answer to that is yes in the case of content marketing. This digital marketing tool refers to the act of connecting with consumers by promoting your business in different types of media. That is why a lot of brands nowadays would resort to creating content and have a product spotlight.
This type of marketing tool is great for creating engagement and building relationships with your customers. Consequently, doing so will make them more motivated to continue supporting your business without asking them. However, the challenge here is to create snappy and attractive content that will hook them in just a matter of seconds.
- Social media marketing
The most popular way to promote your business online is through social media marketing. This tool allows you to create an online presence by creating accounts on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. From there, your goal is to gain a high number of followers because this is where you can get your potential customers. By simply getting the exposure you need, you can easily attract a lot of people to look deeper into your account.
- Email marketing
Are you planning to further promote your business and connect with your customers? If so, then you should try using email marketing as a tool to improve your numbers. Keep in mind that a person would frequently visit their email and check for anything new.
So, how does email marketing work? Remember when you would shop on different websites, and they would often ask if you wanted to subscribe to their newsletter? If you say yes to this, the brand will constantly send you email updates about their new releases or flash sales. This method is convenient for both the company and the consumer since it hits two birds with one stone; the customer gets something they want while the company earns loyal customers.
Things to keep in mind when using digital marketing
Before you start using digital marketing to your advantage, here are a few things you should remember:
- Do your research
Digital marketing is still a new concept for a lot of companies, which is why it is important to do some research first. This will teach you everything you need to know about making your brand more visible online. Aside from that, researching can open new doors for improving how you can market your products and services.
- Trial and error
Not every company can instantly get fresh results whenever they use digital marketing strategies. That is why you should keep track of your mistakes and learn from them. Doing so can help you realise what went wrong, and how you can avoid that from happening again.
When you master the inner workings of digital marketing, your visibility on the world wide web will be twice as good as when you started!