SIMCEL ONLINE

In the world of business development and branding, digitization is everything. So what is a digital marketing and how can we use it to grow our business?

Digital Marketing Defined

Digital marketing is the advertising and promotion of companies and their brands through digital media channels. Digital media today includes websites, social media, radio, television, mobile, and even non-digital media such as billboards and billboards. Basically, any marketing campaign that is delivered electronically is considered digital marketing.

This leaves only the different types of person-to-person (P2P), print, and direct marketing media outside the digital marketing umbrella. Even then, print ads, direct mail, directories, billboards, and billboards were beginning to merge with their digital counterparts. With things like URL landing pages, QR codes, web banners, online directories, and text codes, traditional marketing, and advertising almost always has a connection to digital marketing.

Why rely on digital media?

Changes in digital media are being driven by marketing agencies, business owners, and consumers. The increasing desire to demonstrate quantitative results makes going digital a dream for digital marketing companies. Many digital mediums, including websites, social media, and mobile media, are easier to track than traditional marketing mediums such as print media.

Many forms of digital advertising are affordable for business owners. Having a web presence, and engaging customers in conversations through social media and email marketing is a cost-effective way to post ads and direct messages. These digital channels are available to businesses of all sizes, even supporting the playing field for startups, small businesses, and independent consultants looking for new business.

For consumers, the pace of life makes digital advertising a necessity. When consumers are looking for products and services, gone are the days of flipping through phone books to find them. Now we type out our mobile devices or go to our computers for answers – and we find them quickly.

Using digital media to build your business and brand

Regardless of the size of your business – large or small and business/corporate (SMB or SME) – you can effectively market your business through affordable digital channels. The foundation of your marketing efforts will be your website. Invest wisely in your website and make sure it does the following:

Represent your company and brand effectively (look and feel message)
Speak effectively to your audience
Searchers can be found through search engines
It’s fresh and easy to navigate
Provides multiple channels for customer communication
Connect with other marketing efforts
It is recommended to work with a professional developer who has experience in web development and search engine optimization. Because your website is the foundation for other digital channels, it should be considered one of your highest business investments.

Once you have your website up and running, the next step is to launch a monthly or bi-monthly email campaign and engage with customers through social media. If you’re really on a budget for shoes, these are the endeavors that can be done at home (by someone with the right knowledge) or at a low cost by a company. Make sure all your efforts bring customers back to your website, where they can engage with your business, products, and services, and choose the channel through which to contact you.

If you are passionate about search engine marketing, you can spend a few dollars on digital marketing for search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. Most businesses today rely heavily on internet marketing to attract new customers. A common misconception among business owners is that just having a website means customers will find it. It’s not like that. Your website will be built with relevant keywords and phrases, meta data, page content, and linking strategies that will help it achieve the highest search rankings.

Since many keywords and phrases face stiff competition for top rankings in search results, you should complement your organic search optimization efforts with pay-per-click advertising. Getting started with pay-per-click advertising can be a little risky, but with a little time, effort and guidance, this can be done in-house or, for a reasonable cost, by external digital media companies.

Aside from email, social media, and search engine advertising, you can dive into many other digital marketing efforts. Mobile advertising, radio, television, electronic bulletin boards, and many others are like marketing sites. Whatever digital effort you choose, they all need to be connected to your foundation – your company website.

If you have money, tiny, the money and wisdom would be to enlist the services of a digital advertising agency to aid in your marketing efforts. Today, many digital businesses offer multiple tiers of service to accommodate large and small businesses.

Credit: Kris McCurry