What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the promotion of brands, businesses or products on the internet using electronic devices such as computers, tablets and, smartphones. The term digital marketing or internet marketing has grown in popularity over time as more businesses use online channels in generating leads, get more sales and, increase brand awareness. Digital marketing can be broken into various channels which include: search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and, social media marketing (SMM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM includes paid advertisements like ppc campaigns and display advertising or banner ads. PPC campaigns or known as pay per click advertising, an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the publisher when the ad is clicked. Using paid advertising on search engines like Google, Bing means your ad will appear above organic results. Additionally, a new feature option for businesses to include their listings in local searches with information like store hours, contact details and user reviews. This practice allows people interested in their services to connect directly with them, while visibility in local searches can assist users who are looking to locate a convenient branch or office to fulfill their needs.
Display ads are used to promote what people see as they use different websites; this could be advertisements appearing on banner ads, pop-ups etc., or even promoted placement on other sites. Banners are what they sound like: advertisements on top of other pages. They are what people see every time they visit a business’s website and what draws their attention first; banners can even be more successful than search engine marketing due to how easy it is for them to capture someone’s attention and what they say in order to make users click on them. A banner should be eye-catching and relevant because those who look at it for five seconds or less are more likely to click on it than those who spend only a few seconds looking at what comes up in top results.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural,” “organic,” or “earned” methods. SEO involves optimizing an entire website to make sure it gains high visibility on a target market’s searching habits and ensures brand recognition. Optimizing a website may take months to do, depending on the design and what has been done to it previously by another company or individual. However, although optimization can be time-consuming it is also essential if businesses want greater success in their online endeavors. Search engines like Google are constantly changing what they consider to be important when indexing pages; therefore even if one static page states what should be said in the meta tags it could fail to meet what will probably come up in top results because what Google sees as valuable has changed over time without anyone noticing. For example, years ago people would search for “life insurance” but now what comes up is “best life insurance companies.” This means that not only does digital marketing need to be up-to-date on what people are looking for but also what the search engines consider valuable.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media is a key tool in digital marketing, bringing consumers closer to what they desire through what they follow and like on social platforms. Social media requires effective content marketing and a level of abiltiy to know your target audience to produce posts that are engaged with organically be recieveing likes, comments and shares. The more your content is engaged with the more popular or viral it will be creating more organic traffic to your social media platforms that can be strategically funneled to meet conversion goals like sending traffic to website, producing a sale or generating a lead. Social media also allows for paid opportunities such boosting posts, promoting a page, driving traffic to websites and more. Social media advertising can be particulary successful because of the unique options to target customers based on interests and some demographic information. When an effective social media strategy is developed you are able to reach more potential customers in the most cost effective way.
Using Digital Marketing To Grow Your Reach and Drive Conversions
Digital marketing’s purpose is to gather information about what consumers are looking for online and what they are buying in order to drive conversions; improve sales, generate leads, create awareness or what ever a companies primary goal is. Digital marketing has presented new opportunities for both companies interact with potential consumers more directly online through digital content, social media, e-commerce websites, apps etc. Businesses can also monitor what competitors are doing in digital marketing activity to decide what types of digital marketing activities may be effective for their own digital campaigns.
Now that you have a general understanding of what digital marketing is, what the purpose is for businesses to use it and what its functions are and what can digital marketing do for your business…Check out Lane Digitals line of services as well as packages that are designed to help your business grow.