What is Digital Marketing? Your questions explained
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital is a very vague jargon word. We have been inundated with digital transformations in a digital world but when you examine further, the word can mean something very different to each community you discuss it with.
When I speak to customers about digital marketing, they typically consider it one of two things. They think of Google Ads (previously AdWords) or social media. Yes, these two topics are definitely a part of digital marketing, but the way Cittadina Marketing considers it, is much more. I dive into the different areas below to explain digital marketing in easy words and to help you start to create your digital marketing plan.
Digital Marketing and Social Media
Social media has become an important part of any digital marketing strategy. However, as the platforms have evolved, many companies feel like they need to be represented on all platforms. This is really only necessary if you are a large global company with a massive following represented on all the platforms AND have the team and resources to create an excellent experience on each one. We believe that creating a community on a social media platform can be beneficial to your brand but also that you need to take time to understand where you want to invest your resources for building that community. While it may seem your audience is on multiple platforms, consider how they might use each one and what you want your brand to do while on that platform.
What if you don’t like social media?
When building your online properties, we have to remove our own personal bias. One customer was getting a lot of traffic and sales through Facebook but wasn’t spending a lot of time investing in their presence there as they personally didn’t like using Facebook in their own time. I had to say, sorry, but this channel is making money, we’re now going to spend some time here fostering this community of followers who are already interested in your brand.
Are there personal biases that are getting in your own way of creating an active and interested community? Can you take a few months to test your presence on a certain platform to see if the investment is right for your company? More importantly, can you realise when a platform is not working for your company and then either audit, adjust, and optimise or even decide to leave the platform? We work with our clients to help to understand how each part of their social media identity works for their brand and company goals and make sure that each channel has a part to play.
Digital Marketing and Google Ads
We consider any kind of search engine advertisement as part of digital marketing. It can be an extremely effective way of driving traffic to your website, increasing sales and awareness of your products and services.More often than not, I hear from customers that they don’t believe in PPC, but when we explore their reasons or past campaigns, I often find these mistakes:
The haven’t made clear targets for what they want their PPC to do
They have set campaigns and never optimised them
They have not determined how PPC works into their broader strategy
The action they want someone to take after they click an ad hasn’t been thought out
The customer experiences hasn’t been thought through (e.g. sending customers to the wrong landing page, the check out process is too complicated, etc)
The user journey for making purchases on the website hasn’t been designed with the user inmind
The website isn’t ready for the traffic PPC can bring (load time, design, clear CTA, etc)
With every campaign, I ask our customers, what it is we want to achieve? The success of a PPC campaign is no different. We’re really lucky to work with amazing PPC partners at Booster Box who test every element of every single campaign to continually optimise for the best results. In the words of the CEO, Gianlucca Binelli: “We are the right agency if your PPC is running like a Nissan but want it to run like a Ferrari.” (Let me know if you’d like an introduction!)
But remember that PPC is far broader than Google Ads, it is any kind of biddable automated buying to put your advertisement in front of prospective customers online. This could be on social media channels like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, blogs, new sites, and yes, search engines.
Digital Marketing and Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful channel. To create a humming email marketing programme can be a lot of work and one that needs clear goals and success factors communicated at the beginning of your project. But it is widely reported that for every $1 you invest into email marketing you get a $38 return.
Types of email marketing
Emails can be sent out any time (to your GDPR approved database) for one off campaigns such as inviting customers to take a survey, attend a grand opening, attend a webinar or other singular events. Most companies opt to create an email newsletter. This should be set up as a regularly paced communication with consistent messaging. Create a dependence as to what to expect in your email newsletter so that customers can open and digest based on their expectations. The biggest mistake I see is customers confusing their newsletter as a nurture programme.
Nurture email marketing
Nurture programmes, I’ll admit, are one of my favourite parts of digital marketing. A nurture email marketing programme considers every part of a customer journey, divides your content up through multiple factors and then can be automatically programmed to be sent to your audience based on a variety of triggers. Your weekly newsletter is part of a communications stream, but it is a regular cadence of information.
In a nurture programme, the way a customer interacts with your website or in a current email can trigger a different email to be sent to that customer. Consider an email educating your audience about a new product or service. One part of it discusses the features of the product or service, another part shares a case study and another part highlights an upcoming event to learn more. If three different customers click through each part, a nurture would send a different message next depending on what was clicked. The person who clicked the feature area might get an email that goes deeper into the benefits of each feature and use cases of each. The person who clicked the case study could receive more information about other testimonials and case studies in their sector. And of course, the person who clicked on the event but did not register, may receive a personalised invitation for that event with a special VIP session beforehand.
It’s a really exciting part of the marketing mix to map out the different customer journeys, alongside the benefits of your product or thought leadership. Then of course, adding in different triggers, tests and learnings as we go along.
Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a key way to drive organic traffic and the building blocks of keywords when you start to analyse your paid search advertising. The core thing to remember about SEO and search engine optimization is you’re trying to be at the party everyone is already at. When people are looking for information, they may start with search and your job is to try to be where they are searching when they are searching for your related products or services.
Organic SEO can be broken down into two portions, back end and content. Though some sites may say ‘on-page SEO’ and ‘technical SEO.’ The back end or technical SEO refers to how different portions of your website is coded and how easy it is for search engines to index your site. Best practices may include that content is easy to read across devices, that speed of your site is fast and the organisation of metadata.
Content SEO or on-page SEO is a cousin to content marketing (next sectio) and is a way to analyse different user experiences. These include use of keywords in your content, formats of web pages and questions and phrases that your potential customers may be searching for online either through search engines or their voice activated assistants. When considering the content you want to reach your audience, you may start with some keywords (this blog started because of SEO and people searching for the phrase ‘what is digital marketing?’) or topics that you want to be associated with your brand, products or services.
Digital Marketing and Content Marketing
Content marketing is creating a trove of information to help your customers learn about your products and services, your brand, values and any other information they might need to be a part of your community. Content marketing is a long term investment as according to SiriusDecisions, 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer even reaches out to sales. This means creating and providing content that aids in the information that a customer or advocate may need to educate and aid every step of the buyer’s decision making process. Anytime you encounter anything online that makes you stop and look- that’s engaging with content marketing!
Content strategy can be made through a variety of frameworks. We prefer to use the Help, Hub, Hero method and educate our customers on the variety of ways that content can be created. Cittadina Marketing offers Content Marketing Workshops to help companies get started with their content marketing or refresh their current strategy.
Digital Marketing and Webinars and Online Events
Webinars have long been a part of the digital marketers bag of tricks, but with Covid-19, online events have been pushed to the forefront to create experiences for your customers. Webinars can act for any part of the decision making journey as an introduction to deep dive product feature discussions. This is a great way to engage with your customers through meaningful content and allow them to ask questions. When defining the success metrics, remember that webinars are a platform to meet ‘face to face’ but also an opportunity to pull your prospective audience into your database and nurture and marketing programmes.
Digital Marketing and Your Company
Wow! Digital marketing is genuinely a LOT of different things. We didn’t discuss affiliates, other types of marketing automation, or how PR fits into your marketing plan. However, what we did cover hopefully showed that the most important part is to define what digital marketing is to your company. Are you going to use digital marketing channels to build awareness? To be a part of your sales process? To build a community?
You don’t need to be everywhere, but I would suggest making an investment to be present where a majority of your customers are hanging out on line. Maybe social media isn’t the right place for your customer as they don’t want to be public. Maybe affiliate marketing isn’t right for you as you’d like to own the face of your products or services and want to only have a direct channel.
Whatever you choose, be sure to make sure your goals and objectives are clear as you begin to develop your online identity. Cittadina Marketing can develop the right mix for you as you set up your business or are able to audit and suggest some areas to fine tune as we build a digital marketing plan right for your company.
If you have any questions about what digital marketing is and how it can help your business please do get in touch on our form or email us at hello@cittadina.co.uk. I offer one off Marketing Mentor sessions to help you define your strategy that is right for your business as well as ongoing Growth Champion sessions to guide you through digital marketing best practices.