A Learner’s Guide to Digital Marketing

It’s no wonders if you’re creating an online marketing blueprint for a business you are going to launch in next few weeks as its not hidden from anybody as to how imperative a digital marketing strategy has become making the traditional marketing to seem more expensive & ineffective. However! Whatever we are going to discuss in this article is not just meant for our entrepreneur friends but even all those folks who want to re-acquaint themselves with the basics of digital marketing. So do you remember a decade ago when we use to talk about digital marketing we had to kind of give its definition first as not everyone was aware with it. Let me give that again! 😀 “Digital marketing is marketing over the internet through various digital devices.” So like it used to happen earlier there were products & services that needed to be sold, there were people with need for different products & services but there were no common platform as such except for the physical stores. It’s all the same with digital marketing but the seller & the buyer now share multiple common platforms such as website (the online store), social media and so on. Now, let me talk about how exactly we go about digital marketing. Before any kind of execution you create a strategy for a smooth execution! Right? This is how we go with digital marketing as well! You create an overall strategy and then you create segregated strategies for different parts of digital marketing. So, let’s have a look to the main steps we work upon in digital marketing one by one:

Creating a keyword strategy

Digital is all about online and online is all about keywords, for end of the day its technology based marketing and instead of humans we have bots & crawlers. And yes do you need a definition for keyword as well? Let me brush it off anyway! A keyword is a word or phrase used by a person to gather information on a topic online. Person here means the one who embarks upon web to gather some information.  Whatever common or specific terms they enter in search engines like Google, Bing or social media sites like twitter, facebook, linked in etc. to hatch the information they are looking for are keywords. There are various tools offered by the search engines like Google that help you figure out the right keyword for your business.

Optimizing your website for its visibility

The second thing after you have figured out the right keywords for your business and have a keyword strategy at place is optimizing your website for its visibility based on those keywords. There are various digital marketing tactics that will help you increase visibility for your keywords such as search engine optimization (SEO), Pay per click (PPC) advertising etc.

Creating a Blog and marketing offers

You don’t need to think twice about publishing content on web as now it comes free of charge with blogging platforms like wordpress and blogger. All you need is high quality immaculate content that contains some kind of education for the readers in it and is going to help them with one or the other thing they are going through. Blogging and other content such as eBooks and webinars are quite effective in bringing consumers to our business online.

Promoting content through Social media

Now you also have a blog and various other forms of content that you can use to your advantage. As far as doling out you business content is concerned you have this platform called social media at your disposal and that too for no charge. So you can always use it to spread your marketing message increasing the community of brand advocators.  This is a common platform where you can easily & directly interact & engage your customers, prospects, businesses or their employees and the idea is the platform drives a great content distribution and brand visibility online.

Converting website traffic into leads

So, now a considerable amount of traffic has started coming to your site and that you should think about converting them to sales but before you convert them to sales you need them to qualify as potential leads to save time. At this point your customer is at the top of the sales funnel and you need to move them down smoothly for which you need a gripping offer, a compelling call-to-action and a relevant landing page with a form where visitors will submit their information.

Nurturing leads with targeted messages

Up till now you have put so much effort but don’t forget your work is still not done until you make sales and that your small ignorance too can flush away all your effort. So before you convert your leads to sales first see whether you have abandoned them somewhere abandoning your lead cart, by mistake. Don’t you ever forget your leads like that! Instead follow up with them consistently with the help of useful, relevant and targeted messages. Nurture your leads by nurturing your relationship with them as it builds trust and don’t forget trust is equivalent to purchase intent.

Optimizing your marketing for Mobile

Don’t forget Mobile! 75% of Internet users went online via a mobile device at the end of 2015. In 2016, mobile devices are not just the most popular or commonly used device, but also they’re starting to overtake all other devices in terms of time spent online (GlobalWebIndex). It’s quite apparent from the above study by GlobalWebIndex as how crucial it has become to optimize our marketing strategy for mobile devices. Make sure you have a mobile -friendly content strategy at place.

 Analyzing & refining strategies

Last but not the least you have made the sale doesn’t mean your work is over. You have done so much till now. Now, it’s time to identify what worked and what’s not to allocate your marketing budget accordingly as well as optimize your marketing campaigns for that matter.

Afterword!

This was a gist of the complete digital marketing mix. Go ahead! Strategize and execute your digital marketing blueprint, step by step and take your business to the next level.