Gone are the days when marketers could only reach customers via TV commercials, radio, billboards, or print ads. The current digital age brings with it many more methods for reaching prospective customers with your company’s marketing messages. On the other hand, traditional marketing methods have also become less effective for most industries as fewer people are watching network television or reading magazines and newspapers. Thus, digital marketing has experienced a surge in popularity and importance in recent years.
Digital marketing falls under the marketing communications umbrella and encompasses all digital forms of marketing, including:
- Website
- Social Media
- Display Ads
- Paid Search Ads
- Email Marketing
- Texts
So how you can use each of these digital marketing methods to elevate your company’s digital presence and boost sales?
Website
Practically every company these days should have a website that customers can go to to view more information about the company and its offerings. Most people aren’t hitting up the yellow pages anymore and calling to find out more information. People want to be able to type the company’s name into a Google search and get what they need quickly and conveniently, including outside of regular business hours. Furthermore, having a website allows you to reach new prospective customers because of Google’s search algorithms. When a user types search terms into the Google search bar, Google makes assumptions about the user’s intent and shows recommended webpages. For instance, if you run a local shoe repair shop, and a user types “shoe repair shop near me,” Google will show the user webpages that contain those keywords (or similar) of companies that provide this service near the user. In this particular instance, Google will also show a map with the locations of the businesses. This example demonstrates a key opportunity to expand your customer base and increase your brand awareness.
Social Media
While not as important as having a company website, having company social media pages is another great way to reach new customers and provide them with easily accessible information about your business. Social media started out as a means for individuals to connect with friends and family members and see updates about their lives. Today, businesses can create their own pages on social media platforms and post content that their followers can then see.
There are three main types of social content for businesses. Organic content is content posted by the company to its business page. Paid content includes posts that are either “boosted” (a company has already posted the content to its page organically but then paid a small amount to push the content into more users’ feeds) or social media ads (posts that are made exclusively for advertising). Earned media is any post that another user of company posts about the company or its products that the mentioned company did not pay for.
Over the years, organic content has become less effective for many businesses because of changes in the social media algorithms. Therefore, paid and earned media have become increasingly more important parts of the social media marketing strategy.
Display Ads
Display ads are what you will often see on the sidebars of websites or the top of websites. These are a great way for a company to increase brand awareness and stay top of mind. Search engines like Google decide which ads to show internet users based on their search and browsing history. If a user has recently searched for “camera backpacks,” they may start seeing display ads on websites of camera backpacks from various companies.
Paid Search Ads
In addition to being able to reach new customers by appearing in search results pages on Google or Bing, companies can pay a little extra to rank at the top of search results pages or in featured locations of the search results page (like the shopping section). To create paid search ads, companies bid on key search terms they want to rank for. The highest bidder will get the top spot on the search results page, the second highest will get the second spot, and so on. The cost of these ads vary greatly depending on competition for certain keywords, but fortunately companies only pay when a user clicks on the link. Thus, companies can benefit from increased brand awareness for free even if a user doesn’t click on the link.
Email Marketing
Despite the multitude of emails consumers get nowadays from various companies, emails are still surprisingly effective and relatively inexpensive. Through emails, businesses can stay top of mind; promote sales, discounts, and new products; or provide links to useful resources like blog articles or videos.
Texts
Like emails, texts can be used to promote sales and discounts to consumers. If location information is enabled, businesses can even send customers text alerts about sales when they are near their store.
The best thing about digital marketing is all the data that come with it! Unlike print marketing, each of these digital marketing methods has detailed tracking methods and analytics reports that allow companies to see how their marketing strategies are performing. This makes it much easier to optimize and get the best bang for your buck.
