Understanding digital marketing is more important now than ever before. Interacting with your demographic online, being contactable on digital channels, and creating engaging content are all necessary to succeed today. If you need to know how digital marketing can help your brand cut through the noise, you’re in the right place. Throughout this article, we will outline digital marketing techniques alongside suitable software solutions. Then, we will wrap things up by telling you how to create a digital marketing plan.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is simply the use of internet technologies in the promotion of brands, as a means of connecting with potential customers. Channels used in these strategies include multimedia messaging, email marketing, web ads, and social media marketing. Mastering this side of your business can be extremely lucrative, with some businesses seeing their traffic increase more than double.

Knowing how to create your content and where to place your marketing material will require quality marketing research. If you want to get a deep understanding of this, you can complete an MA in Digital Marketing and Data Analytics at Emerson College, which will boost your skills and help advance your career.

Search Engine Optimization

The majority of people have mobile devices with them at all times and will use them to search for solutions to their problems. When people search, they are highly unlikely to scroll past the third page. This means that you need to tailor your website and marketing content with the Google (News - Alert) algorithm in mind. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done because the algorithm is in a constant state of change. This means that you need to battle SEO from two fronts: conforming to Google’s algorithm and ranking higher than your competition.

To do this, there are plenty of SEO tools out there that will show you all the metrics to track your ranking. Our favorite tool is Moz because alongside their quality SEO solution, there’s plenty of educational material designed to keep you up to speed. To keep you on top of your ranking, their handy tool will monitor mobile and desktop keyword rankings. Furthermore, you can carry out in-depth keyword research, which means you will always know how to target your content. Another great feature that Moz brings is link-building analytics, which is a huge part of increasing your SEO ranking.

Keeping your website healthy is an integral part of improving your rankings. To make this task easier, we suggest using DeepCrawl. This tool will run a deep diagnostic analysis of your website’s health, which will help you begin making improvements.

Training

Finally, with digital marketing trends and processes in a constant state of flux, it’s essential to ensure regular training is given. For successful digital marketers, this means constantly learning and adapting their techniques. If you fail to educate yourself on new digital marketing techniques, your efforts will fail and you’ll end up spending money for nothing. Thankfully, there are plenty of online spaces where you can collaborate with others and learn new skills.

Our top pick for digital marketing training is LinkedIn learning, which contains thousands of professional video tutorials and courses. No matter what your level, you will find learning content to suit your needs. Whether you’re looking to learn about paid content, tracking your website’s traffic, or want to improve your ability to create optimized content, there’s something for everybody. As well as being a great source for learning, LinkedIn helps you to connect with other professionals in the field who are typically willing to offer their expertise.

Keeping up to date with the latest digital marketing trends is easier said than done. If you take your eye off the ball for a minute, you may find your competitors jumping ahead. Luckily, there are things you can do to stay ahead. One of the most useful tools is Google Alerts, which are email notifications set to certain topics. If you set this tool correctly, you will be emailed whenever new postings are made around your chosen topic.

Reporting

Carrying out digital marketing campaigns is all well and good, but you need to prove that your efforts are fruitful. Paying for quality digital marketing services is an expensive business, and C-Suite executives can be hesitant to authorize. Therefore, it’s important to present evidence that your marketing stream is bringing in a lucrative ROI. Without this evidence, you may find that your funding for future campaigns drops massively.

Luckily, the majority of solutions, including Facebook, Twitter (News - Alert), and HootSuite, will offer in-depth analyses regarding your campaigns. For reporting purposes, one of the best options is Google Data Studio. With this, you can gather metrics in real-time from Google Ads, YouTube (News - Alert), and Google Analytics. Further, you can integrate the tool with other data streams like Salesforce and MailChimp. Using the Google Data Centre’s well-designed dashboard, you can generate reports that you can tailor to your needs. Sending this information to the higher-ups couldn’t be easier, with simple sharing functions that eliminate the need for extra software.

Another great tool that all digital marketers should have in their arsenal is Cyfe, which tracks over 250 metrics. The tool can be integrated with Google services and other apps for great versatility. The widgets on the dashboard can be adjusted to your business needs. For businesses that don’t have the space or revenue for more solutions, Cyfe is a perfect choice.

Email

As anyone with an email address will know, there is a steady stream of marketing material flooding through the gates attempting to grab your attention. With all of the competition, it’s crucial to create content that will cut through the noise. Once you’ve got people opening your mail, you need to start converting readers into buyers.

To help you along the way, you should use MailChimp, which will help you with email automation. Alongside automating emails, you can make the most of their premade templates and design tools. Also, you can analyze the reports to keep track of how well your email marketing campaign is doing. For example, you can check to see where your emails are and aren’t being interacted with. By doing this, you may spot trends to do with sending times. Fortunately, you can set emails to be sent at different times according to their time zones.

Another great email marketing tool is Omnisend, which brings all your communication channels into one place. From the dashboard, you can view social media notifications alongside your email marketing. If you’re a startup or in need of saving some cash, this is the perfect app for combining your communication.

Social Media

Social media is everywhere, with an estimated 4.48 million users worldwide. This is good news because you can use the various platforms to reach out to countless new customers. Having a well-designed social media campaign can help boost your SEO ranking and will give another channel for customers to interact with you.

Unfortunately, knowing all of this only gets you so far. To do well with social media marketing, you need to know exactly what your aims are. For example, if you’re looking to boost brand awareness, you need to create your strategy with that in mind. By doing so, you will create a powerful and consistent brand image. 

To get the job done well, there are plenty of SaaS (News - Alert) platforms out there. Generating brand awareness through social media will require detailed reports of how well your posts are received. To achieve this, HootSuite is a great tool. Their software solution is capable of tracking 200+ metrics, which means that you can customize your dashboard to suit your needs. You can also integrate over 150 apps, making it a completely versatile choice.

Paid (News - Alert) Media

Paid media involves using paid placements, including pay-per-click advertising. Paid media is vital when it comes to doing well at digital marketing. However, you will need to know how to pick the right placement and hook your desired demographic. Fortunately, there are several tools you can use to help you get ahead of the game. By using the correct SaaS, you will be able to track your campaign and tailor your strategy accordingly.

When it comes to paid media, one of the most important things to consider is the Return of Investment (ROI). To get the most out of your investments, you will need to utilize a quality third-party platform. Our top pick is SpyFu, which is your inside man when it comes to researching your competitor’s paid content. SpyFu can fetch you all the metrics including estimated expenditure, keyword usage, and how highly ranked their ads are.

Another fantastic tool that’s great for SEO and paid media is SEMrush. Their dashboard is simple to use and the tools are endless. Their online solution will analyze your competitor’s paid ads and help you generate yours to get the greatest ROI possible. Knowing what your competitors are up to will greatly increase your chances of coming out on top.

Creating Your Strategy

Now that you know the most important elements of digital marketing, you need to put a plan in place to ensure that your efforts and revenue aren’t wasted. To do this, you will need to set concise and SMART goals. For example, “To boost website traffic by 10% within three months, achieved by placing ads on Twitter.” This goal tells you exactly what it is you’re setting out to achieve. Also, it gives you a benchmark to measure performance against.

Once you’ve got a goal in place, you need to know what your current digital presence is like. To do this, you need to analyze SEO, social media channels, website metrics, paid advertisements, and email marketing. Once you’ve retrieved your report, you will know which channel is bringing in the most profit.

The next part of this is breaking down the sales funnel, which represents the journey taken by a customer from a stranger to a frequent buyer. To make the most of the concept, you need to have a powerful brand voice. Within the sales funnel, there are four steps to understand:

• Action. This involves speaking directly to the customer to get them to act. In your content, you can include a call to action.
• Interest. You need to build up brand awareness and interest. To do this, you can work on having your brand mentioned in high-traffic publications.
• Awareness. Potential customers need to know you’re there. To achieve this, you need to be active on social media channels and rank highly on Google.
• Engage. You need to entice your potential customers to ask questions, which can be achieved through paid ads on social media.

Now that you understand the sales funnel, you need to get inside the head of your customer. To this, you need to truly get inside their shoes. Create a fictional persona and craft a narrative that deals with what they read, where they shop, and what social media they use. You can also go deeper and mention what their needs are, which can tell you potential areas for business growth.

Once you’ve got your target audience pinned down, it’s time to correlate them with the sales funnel. To do this, you need to research where your leads are coming from. For example, if you make shoes, perhaps people are searching for vegan shoes and are taken to an article that mentions your brand. Once you’ve got all of this information, you can start building your content plan.

The final stage of the journey is to analyze your campaign and present the results to stakeholders. Then, you can change your plan based on their input.

To do well in business today, you need to have a thorough understanding of digital marketing. Keeping on top of current trends is a necessity, without which your business will fail. Fortunately, with the right software solutions and knowing where to look, you can keep on top of everything. Creating quality content and posting it in an optimal place at the right time is only half of the battle when it comes to digital marketing. To do well, you need to understand the data and prove that your campaigns are doing well. After all, you’re in the business of making money, and your digital marketing campaign needs to support that.