Online marketing, online advertising ... whatever you call it, marketing your company online is a big deal these days. After all, internet use has more than doubled over the past decade, and this shift has profoundly affected the way people buy products and interact with businesses.
Digital Marketing Assets
Almost anything can be a digital marketing asset. It just has to be a marketing tool that you use on the internet. That being said, many people don't realize how many digital marketing assets they have at their disposal. Here are some examples:
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Branded assets (logos, badges, acronyms, etc.)
Video content (video ads, product demos, etc.)
Images (infographics, product photos, company photos, etc.)
Written content (blog posts, ebooks, product descriptions, testimonials, etc.)
Internet products or tools (SaaS, calculators, interactive content, etc.)
Reviews
Social media pages
As you may have guessed, this list is only sketchy. Most digital marketing assets will fall into one of these categories, but smart marketers are constantly coming up with new ways to reach customers online, so the list continues to grow!
Paid search advertising
Google, Bing, and Yahoo allow text ads to appear on their search engine results pages (SERPs). Paid search advertising is one of the best ways to attract potential customers who are actively looking for a product or service like yours.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you don't want to pay to appear on SERPs, you can also use search engine optimization (SEO) to try and organically rank pages or blog posts on your site. You don't have to pay directly for every click, but getting a page ranked usually takes quite a lot of time and effort (for a deeper comparison between paid search and SEO, check out this article).
Paid social media advertising
Most social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat allow ads to be placed on their sites. Paid social media advertising is great for raising awareness to audiences who may not know your business, product, or service exists.
Media Marketing
Like SEO, social media marketing is a free and organic way to use social media like Facebook or Twitter to promote your business. And, just like SEO, marketing your business organically on social media takes a lot more time and effort, but it can yield much cheaper results in the long run.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the art and science of improving your online user experience. In most cases, companies use CROs to get more conversions (leads, chats, calls, sales, etc.) from existing website traffic.
Content marketing
Content marketing is another fairly broad term for digital marketing. Content marketing encompasses any digital marketing effort that uses content resources (blog posts, infographics, ebooks, videos, etc.) to build brand awareness or increase clicks, leads, or sales.
How do I get started?
The good news is, getting started with digital marketing is pretty easy. Most online advertising platforms make it easy to sign up and create your first campaign (this is how they make money, after all). Here are some links to beginner's guides on various digital marketing strategies:
Paid search advertising
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Paid social media advertising
Media Marketing Conversion optimization
Content marketing
Advertising mailing
However, the essence of every successful digital marketing campaign is not a guide. Regardless of which strategies you decide to use, here are 4 questions you need to answer before you start digital marketing:
Conclusion
Digital marketing is the marketing of the future. In addition to all the benefits we've discussed in this article, you can track the results of your digital marketing efforts with incredible accuracy, which means it's easy to see which strategies are yielding profitable results and which ones need some tweaking. By the way, if this article convinced you that you need digital marketing (or need to improve your digital marketing game) but need help figuring out the right approach, let us know here or in the comments! We love helping businesses grow with digital marketing.
Am I missing something in this article? Have additional questions about digital marketing? Let me know in the comments!