You have an incredible product or service to sell. In your mind, the experience with this product or service changed your life. That’s why you want to share it with the world. So, how do you get the word out online to find others also in need of your helpful creation? You start at the beginning using digital marketing basics.
Summarized Digital Marketing Basics
In a nutshell, digital marketing basics begins with the following:
- Website
- Content
- SEM/PPC
- SEO
As you grow your business, you add inbound marketing (aka sales funnels), email marketing, social media marketing and video marketing. You can activate these tools at any time. For now, let’s simply review with digital marketing basics.
Website
If you had a brick and mortar store, you would start with a building. Whether you have a building or not, a website helps get the word out online about your company. Nowadays, a website is a basic necessity for ANY business wanting to capture online customers. Since people shop from their smart devices over 65% of the time, you really do need to include a website in your marketing tool bag.
Have you named your business yet? Consult with experienced marketing experts. They can help you publish your website using the right name for your target market.
When you use digital marketing basics, you save time, money and frustration by getting knowledgeable expert advice. This begins by understanding your business and the DIFFERENCE in your business compared with your competitors. By promoting the DIFFERENCE that can only be obtained through your unique business, your business CAN succeed.
Online, your website will be your branded domain. Your proprietary brand makes you very visible. Creating a customized domain name for your website helps you rank higher in the minds of your ideal prospects. For this reason and more, your domain name needs to be easily recognizable for your ideal business fans. Consulting with marketing experts is a smart move. These experts help you avoid buying domain names that don’t help you be favorably branded.
Content
The thing you’ll publish on your website is content. Content includes images, videos and text (also called copy.) Highly trained writers called copywriters create a specific type of writing for your website. This writing helps your website rank better on Google. The more visible you are online, the greater your chances are for making sales.
Google wants to see contextually relevant content published on your website. That means if you sell waffle irons, you do NOT also want to publishcontent about anything unrelated to waffle irons such as galoshes. Galoshes are unrelated and bear no relationship to waffle irons. Since you DO want to be seen on page one in Google’s online directory, investing in marketing and copywriting experts’ services again, saves you time, money and frustration.
Also, content should always be updated, especially with blogs. Google doesn’t like a static website. They want to see new information posted regularly. How often depends on one’s industry and budget. But a good rule of thumb is once a week.
SEM/PPC
The fastest and most effective way to be seen by your ideal buying prospects requires business advertising. Online SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or PPC or Pay-Per-Click ads speedily gets your business name in front of the RIGHT people who already want what you offer. So, create an advertising budget. You’ll need to invest regularly in some form of online advertising. PPC experts help you get the traffic you need by consistently optimizing the ads.
SEO
You’ve probably heard the term SEO. This stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO involves many different steps to getting and staying connected to your target market. It is the language of connection online.
In conclusion, treat your website and its content like it is a living, breathing, evolving resource. You want to keep placing new information there to give people a reason to return often. For this reason and more, your website, its content the PPC and SEO work you do needs ongoing work.
PPC ongoing work is consistently and regularly analyzing and optimizing the ads. SEO is creating backlinks every week. In order to keep getting “Google Love” it’s necessary to give Google what it wants. It wants to see consistent, ongoing, relevant new backlinks added. Just like your customers to whom you give what they desire, give Google what they desire. In return, they will keep ranking your website high up in internet searches.