Digital Marketing Explained...

See how Digital Marketing could change your business

With the advent of the internet, the customer journey has changed dramatically. At the click of a button we all now have 24/7 access to our favourite things; shops, entertainment shows, games, newspapers, movies and music and better still we can now access them through our laptops, mobile phones and tablets. Shops never close when you visit them on the web!

The speed at which we communicate with each other now is much faster due to the convenience and the nature of the internet. With this, our expectations as consumers are higher. If we engage online we expect our questions to be answered almost instantaneously via an email or even a live chat facility, we don't have the time to wait on a letter or a phone call, we're far too busy...

This means the way items are presented to us needs to have changed as well. Traditionally, marketers used print and press as their main advertising medium but this has all changed. How does a car dealer advertise a car if people are logging on to the internet instead of reading the paper? You guessed it Sherlock - Digital Marketing!

This radical change in the marketing and communications channel has caused some serious problems for businesses who aren’t fast enough to respond to this new challenge. At the same time the internet has also opened the ‘door of opportunity’ for those innovative and switched on companies who are hungry to reach new levels of success.

Digital marketing plays a huge part in the success of businesses who have a presence online. There are several definitions for digital marketing and they’re all variations of the same thing. Here's one we made earlier:

“Digital marketing is the promotion of products or services using an electronic device with the internet as the main marketing medium”.

Digital Marketing is a vast area with many different aspects to it. We've outlined some of the main ones below:

Websites: your website is obviously the focal point of any digital strategy. The campaigns you set will drive the customers to your site and here they will find out all about you and your business. Your website is your most important digital marketing tool.

Social Media: a social media profile allows you to show case your company’s personality and increases interaction with your audience and visibility with prospective followers.

SEO: search engine optimised content is designed to work with the browsers algorithms improving your rankings organically in search results.

Paid Search: this method will drive traffic to your site in a relatively fast period of time unlike the organic search and content on your site which relies on key word analysis and your browsers algorithms.

Content Marketing: this includes videos, imagery and text. Content marketing is a great way to showcase your products and services or to simply introduce your business to your audience.

Email Marketing: is used encourage repeat purchases by emailing existing customers with offers and news. It can also be used to attract new customers with unmissable offers.

Analytics: this allows you to really get under the skin of your campaigns and decide how you can improve them or if you need to re-evaluate the direction of your marketing strategy.

How do you make Digital Marketing work for your business?

The key to making digital marketing work for your business is to approach your campaign with a solid online strategy in mind. One particular approach that works for us is our own D.A.E.C model which we have tried and tested producing some great results for us along the way.

These letters stand for Define, Attract, Engage and Convert.

Define - this is all about taking a strategic view of how you plan on generating interest and actions through your marketing message. You need to have clear aims and objectives in mind. Do you want to attract more traffic to your site? Do you want to sell more goods? Do you want to create a database through data capture? You will need to nail this crucial stage in order to be able to organise your communication plan effectively and exploit all possibilities effectively.

Attract - this is how you plan to entice your audience to your website. What digital marketing methods do you plan on using? There are various methods mentioned above such as SEO, email and content marketing but if you're looking for fast results in a short period of time the PPC method will return visitors quickly. If you go down this route, don’t forget the content on your site has to be interesting and relevant or you’ll find it hard to keep visitors on your site, making your PPC pointless and a waste of money!

Engage - this is how you retain the attention of your audience using clever content after you've attracted them to your site. Engaging your audience can include; videos, text, imagery and info graphics – the more the better but be careful you don’t end confusing your customer. Your landing pages should all have relevant and useful content to encourage your visitors to read more and stay on your site longer. Just make sure your site doesn't end up looking like this...

Convert - if your prospect has followed the path right through to this last stage -conversion, your next aim is to convince the user to communicate with you to discuss their needs. There are two aspects to conversion i) leads and ii) sales. Depending on your approach and the type of products and services you sell it may be better to use your website to generate leads that you can then take offline to make a sale, whereas other companies products may be more suitable for a direct sale. It's your call but something you will have already worked out during the 'Define' stage of the digital strategy. If you are going for lead generation why not consider including a ‘freebie’ such as an E-Book or Template in return for their information and this will allow you to get in touch with them. Your main aim in the engage step is to encourage the user to transition from a visitor to a lead and to provide you with their contact details as they do so.

For those selling directly on their site, if their visitors are at this stage they are obviously interested in your product or service – so now you need to show them how beneficial your product is for them and their business. How will your product or service make their life easier? You should have already subtly sold the benefits of the product or service to the customer via your content in the attract and engagement process but now they’re at the final stage and this is the part that really counts! The more experience you get you will begin to identify through your ads what works for your customers and what doesn't.

To Summarise

Look out for more in depth blogs on Digital Marketing about these topics in the near future and don't forget the process isn’t over now. This should be the beginning of a wonderful relationship between you and your client and it's where the hard work starts! You need to look after their every need throughout your relationship and make sure they receive great customer service. Have a read of our blog on customer service excellence using social media for some inspiration.

To conclude, if you're not willing to invest the time, money and effort on your digital marketing strategy or fail to grasp the importance of it all you really will get left behind and find it difficult to compete. Your company may fail to make an impact with consumers if you are resistant to change so - be proactive rather than reactive. Regardless of the size of your business, if you embrace emerging technologies and keep up with the pace you will succeed.

We would be interested to hear what challenges you have faced in the last few years with your digital marketing? We’d love you to let us know below.