With the explosion of online shopping more and more internet users are choosing to buy goods and services online—which is great news for digital entrepreneurs. However, gaining and retaining visibility is an ongoing challenge for businesses, which is where digital marketing comes to the fore.
Also known as online/internet marketing, digital marketing is a tool that empowers entrepreneurs to achieve business goals by reaching their target customers and driving leads and sales. If you’re a new business owner trying to decipher online marketing, here is a quick and easy primer to help you get started.
Table of Contents
Understand SEO
The key to understanding your website’s ranking in Google’s search results lies in understanding SEO, or search engine optimization. Decoding SEO will help you drive organic traffic to your site, saving you time and money that goes into building an elaborate SEO campaign.
Learn about SEO and its components. Understand keyword search, on-page optimization, page loading speeds, mobile optimization, title tags and meta descriptions, and image and video optimization—this will your help you understand why your site ranks low in search results and how to leverage these tools to gain organic traffic.
Gain Google’s trust
Understanding why Google’s search engine bots choose your competitors’ sites over yours to show in search results is important, particularly if yours is a new business.
Google takes time to trust you as a genuine business, and the quality of your website, its contents, your Google+ listing, local citations, and quality backlinks all play an important role in convincing Google to trust you enough to index your site.
To gain Google’s confidence, ensure to stay away from marketing tactics that even remotely resemble spam and focus instead on creating quality onsite and offsite content.
Embrace social media marketing
You likely have your business profile set up on most social media platforms. But is it contributing to your marketing efforts? Social media is tricky business but it is also greatly rewarding.
You can reach your niche target audience via paid ads and by posting useful, informative and relevant content that will interest and engage your present and future customers.
Delivering value should be at the core of your social media activity, regardless of what you sell or promote.
Consider PPC (pay-per-click ads)
If your DIY internet marketing efforts are not brining results, consider launching a PPC advertising campaign, a method to advertise your website on Google and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Designing and running a PPC campaign requires in-depth knowledge of Google AdWords and Google Analytics, so to make the most of your investment, considering outsourcing the task to a reliable digital agency that serves your niche.
Get a free or paid Digital Audit
If you’re not keen to hire a digital agency owing to budget constraints, you can still assess your current digital marketing practices by requesting a consultancy for an audit.
The leading digital agency Digitrio Digital Marketing Agency offers free in-depth SEO Audit for businesses interested in knowing how to improve their current SEO campaign and make it more effective. For business owners and managers that want to outsource SEO to an experienced digital agency, they offer the full gamut of internet marketing services, including SEO, PPC, Social Media Advertising and Banner Advertising.
Leverage content marketing to gain traffic
Content marketing is a favorite with seasoned digital marketers. A free and organic form of internet marketing, content marketing helps drive visibility by creating a network of relevant high-quality content across the web that links back to your site.
Articles, videos, infographics, guest blog posts and e-books are some of the most widely used content marketing tools. While you explore this wonderful form of online marketing, be wary of low-quality, keyword-stuffed content, which is considered spam by Google and can attract penalties for your site.
Conclusion
Other online marketing tools that help businesses gain visibility and authentic leads include blogging (a free and highly effective tool to build an online audience), email marketing, affiliate marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), influencer marketing and video marketing.
Learn more about these highly effective means to promote your business online. Once you know how each works, you can pick and choose based on your needs and budget.
Understanding online marketing can be overwhelming if you try to decipher it all in one go. Instead, take one type at a time and spend time understanding how it works and whether it can be used for your business. Even if you eventually hire a digital agency, all this knowledge will help you make informed decisions.
