Every business should have a well thought out marketing strategy, but why exactly is digital marketing one of the best types of marketing for small businesses?
Digital marketing is simply marketing that takes place entirely on digital platforms, such as social media activity, as ads on webpages, via emailing lists, endorsements by digital content creators, etc. In today’s age of technology, digital marketing is quickly becoming the most effective way of finding and connecting with customers. It is widely agreed that if a business is not utilizing digital technologies, they are wasting time, and potentially falling behind their competitors, and this idea naturally extends to the use of digital marketing strategies – with nearly half of the global population using digital devices, and the internet, every single day, it is clear that the digital world is a treasure trove for businesses looking to find their audience.
There are many different types of digital marketing, so it can be difficult to ascertain what approaches should be prioritized over others. Below is a list of some of the top digital marketing tools that businesses should consider as their priority.
Web Analytics
Everything that happens on the web creates data – this includes, and is certainly not limited to, web traffic and web usage, such as the demographic of people visiting a site, how many people visit a website in a given day, week or month, where they are coming from, how they discovered the website, and how much time users spend viewing a site or page before leaving.
All of these metrics are very valuable. Knowing how people interact with your website can tell you what is working, and what needs improving – you can implement changes and monitor in real time what effects they are having on web traffic and usage.
Email Marketing
With all the digital marketing tools out there, one of the most effective ones concerns one of the oldest forms of digital communication: Email. The practice is simple; a business composes email messages of a commercial nature to a group of people – who could be other businesses, or individual customers who have signed up to a mailing list. Email marketing is the digital equivalent of traditional mail as used by commercial businesses, but have the advantage of being much cheaper. The main goal of email marketing is to raise brand awareness among target audiences, and built loyalty & trust among existing customers.
Social Media Management
Social media is used by 4.5 billion people across the globe – that’s more than half of everyone in the world; a lot of potential customers and audiences, in other words. This is why it is critical for businesses that want to succeed to maintain a strong and consistent presence on social media. The trouble is that social media is highly time consuming if one is not implementing any type of automation – it requires consistent creation of content, as well as a schedule for posting content, and potentially even engagement with other users. Social media marketing can be made much easier using a social media manager – they enable you to schedule content to post automatically, thus saving a lot of time.
Content Analytics
As mentioned above, the creation of content is an important factor for digital marketing, and doing it the right way is critical. If a business is creating content for social media and other digital channels which are not engaging their target audience, then their efforts are being wasted. Creating content that engages users and captures their attention and imagination is a big step towards winning loyal customers, but how exactly does one do that? Content analytics enables businesses to review content that is currently trending on social media, according to specific topics one can search.
Keyword Planning
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. Keywords are the way in which search engines connect search queries with search results, and they are the secret of search engine optimization – the practice of maximizing traffic to your website. Due to this, businesses need to know lots of relevant keywords that their audience are using, so that they can direct as much traffic to them as possible. For instance, if a business specializes in IT, and their target audience is in London, they might start with a keyword like ‘IT Support Services London’, and use it to find other keywords that people are using.
Keyword planning requires a lot of careful consideration – businesses should look for trending keywords, ones with the best search volumes, and high rankings on search engines.
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