You’re good at what you do. That’s clear. You’re so good at what you do, in fact, that you’ve started your own business because you back your skills so highly. However, being good at what you do is only half of getting your business to a successful place. After all, what good is it to be great at something if nobody knows how great you really are?
That’s where marketing comes in. Marketing used to be cold calling, print advertisements and cards in newsagents windows. Now, marketing your small business is almost exclusively done digitally. After all, internet usage has more than doubled over the past decade and this change has massively affected how people purchase products, book services and generally interact with businesses.
So, what is digital marketing? Very simply, digital marketing is striving to achieve what old school marketing techniques did, but digitally. Marketing, and therefore digital marketing as a branch of this, is a way to build a bridge of communication with and influence your potential customers. The real difference is, you connect with and influence those customers often without approaching them first.
Great digital marketing means a customer will come to you.
What is Digital Marketing?
In a nutshell, digital marketing refers to any online marketing strategies or assets. This may include email marketing, social media advertising, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing and or blogging. Marketing can be anything that directly contributes to helping introduce people to your company and convince them to buy.
Here are some of the most effective marketing tools to consider when setting up a new business:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The big one. Our (unsurprisingly) favourite form of digital marketing. What’s better than having to direct people by a pay per click system?
Getting them onto your site for…free?
Now, free can be taken with a pinch of salt. If you’ve set up a company that specialises in flat pack furniture, you can’t just go above Ikea in search listings for free. A campaign that large would require extensive time and money.
However, a local SEO campaign can be done reasonably effectively from the comfort of your home. You can read our guide on how to optimise your local business here.
For a more ROI driven, bespoke SEO campaign to generate guaranteed results, speak to one of our SEO experts in Essex today.
Pay-Per Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is actually a broad term that covers any type of digital marketing where you pay for every user who clicks on an ad. For example, Google AdWords is a form of PPC advertising that many people use to promote their services to the top of a Google search. Facebook Ads are another form of PPC advertising called “paid social media advertising”. Both of these are done by a pay per click module and can often become quite costly when competing over expensive keywords.
Social Media
Most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat all offer a paid advertising subscription. Paid social media advertising is great for building awareness with audiences that might not be aware that your business, product or service exists.
Like SEO, social media marketing can be done for free and is an organic way to use social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to market your business. And, just like SEO, organically marketing your business on social media can be done professionally too if you don’t have the time or understanding on what might make a successful social media campaign.
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the art and science of improving your online user experience, most often once they are on your website. Most of the time, businesses use CRO to get more conversions out of their existing website traffic. Conversions don’t always have to be a transaction or a booking, they can be instead, a completion of a contact form, someone clicking your telephone link or sending you an email.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is quite a broad digital marketing term. Content marketing covers any digital marketing effort that uses content examples, such as blog posts, infographics or videos to build brand awareness or drive traffic to the site or conversions once the user is there.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the original form of online marketing. Just because it’s the oldest, doesn’t necessarily mean its outdated. Email marketing can still be incredibly effective in advertise special deals, highlight a new service you now offer or promote an event.
