Digital Marketing Fundamentals is a wide term describing a set of marketing processes consisting of all available digital channels such as websites, email marketing, social media platforms, SEO, PPC, etc. to promote services or a product with the purpose of building a digital brand. Applied to political campaigns, digital marketing can be easy to manage, data-driven, cost-effective that is crucial for any election campaigning. For both brands and poll candidates, all activities are designed for catching the audience, connecting with the target viewers, and closing on them. Online marketing or Internet Marketing, is the online promotion of goods and services and is closely associated with online advertising. Messages are transmitted by the business on the internet for its target audience.
Know the difference between Inbound v/s Outbound Marketing. Master Inbound marketing methodologies for drawing qualified visitors, generating leads, and maximizing conversion.
Digital Marketing Fundamentals: Basics
Digital Marketing encompasses the following activities:
Search Engine Optimization.
SEO builds businesses and attract new customers through web traffic. Improvise ways to analyze and optimize your site and generate effective strategies for your SEO endeavors. Understand how search engines work and improve search rankings with SEO techniques. Follow best practices for performing keyword research, get links, analyze results to advance your search engine positioning, and increase and evaluate on-page ranking factors.
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Pay Per Click Advertising and Display Network Advertisements.
PPC Campaigns assist in connecting products and services with prospective customers who browse the web in search related to their needs. Write captivating ad copy that attracts good quality scores.
In-display advertising publishers of websites or blog reserve and sell certain locations on their site to advertisers for the promotion of a particular product or service. Generate revenue by monetizing your website with Google AdSense.
Ads are sold based either on the number of clicks they receive (CPC) or the particular amount of views or impressions that advertisement receives (CPM).
Online banner advertising necessitates the embedding of Ads into a web page. It is intended for the sole purpose of attracting web traffic to a site by linking to the site of the advertiser.
Optimize your website with analytics tools such as Google Analytics. Set up paid search campaigns that are effective with Google and Bing Ads.
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Social Media Campaigns
Audiences decide how and when they want to receive information. The campaign must be specific that tend to delight, get together, and share content. This enables consumers to take action leading to conversions. With measurable goals and a tracking program, campaigns aimed at building communities to create awareness and drive people to your website.
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Content Marketing
Create a story around your content such as newsletters, video content, blogs, social, etc that audiences would love to share. Write and create photos, videos, and audio that are engaging and provide for a memorable experience.
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Email Marketing
Make the most out of email marketing campaigns and grow your list. Create targeted messages that add value and produce results that can be measured.
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Mobile Marketing
Promote products on the go with mobile marketing techniques that work the best. Make provision for discounts based on location, add QR codes, and set up push notifications.
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Web Analytics
Does web Analytics determine what takes place on your website? Why it occurs? and What can be done to fix it? This enables you to provide solutions and make more wise decisions about your business.
Google Analytics provides you with instant data that can be acted upon. Interpret and measure the various metrics in Google Analytics, such as actions and conversions.
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Affiliate Marketing
A performance-based marketing technique where affiliates are paid for directing customers to another site for the purchase of goods or services. Make money online through your website or a blog by following best practices that result in a successful affiliate marketing strategy.
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Web Design & Development
Build a business website that uses software (DreamWeaver, Kompozer) and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal), testing, prototyping tools, and master the four core web technologies- HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript. Focus on a niche website, if you can get the desired number of customers for your business.
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Web Images & Graphics
Graphics that look attractive get downloaded quickly and contribute to a user-friendly interface experience. Understand concepts such as image compression and formats. Style your images with CSS and use the principles of responsive design and be sure your image looks pronounced.
Selecting a color palette, using vector graphics editor (Adobe Fireworks), infographics design, etc are ways to explore for the presentation of images on the web.
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7 Steps to a Digital Marketing Plan
Digital Marketing Fundamentals is dynamic and things change faster in the digital world with the addition of new technologies and tools that call for a proactive digital marketing plan
Step1: Digital Marketing Fundamentals – Goals
Use Inbound marketing practices and set up S.M.A.R.T goals that need to work for your business.
If you want to ‘measure’ then you need to set ‘Goals’. Based on your user experiences which could start from the top of your sales funnel and the journey your prospect takes only to get converted into customers at the bottom of the funnel.
Step2: Target your Audience
Conduct a SWOT analysis for your business. Research your audience demographics to target your ideal customers. The modern technique of buyer personas has taken audience selection to the next level by way of contacting the prospects directly or through surveys. Decide who your prospects are and target them by segmenting them into groups so that you can have the right product and services for them.
Step3: Competitor Analysis
Research your customers to make sure you have something different and unique to offer than that of your competitors so that you can attract visitors to your business.
Step4: Visibility
Blogging interesting content regularly will increase the visibility of your website which in turn will serve as a platform for future marketing campaigns. Feedback on your campaigns and sharing content should be made easy so that your customers can reach and contact your business. Connecting with the right prospects will prompt you to resort to paid advertising in the following ways:
Social Media like LinkedIn “pay to advertise” helps you to target business companies whilst if you have a Facebook community you can best target them also through “paid advertising”. Your users show up in your community of social media platforms from where they start to trust your business by going through the content you place on such sites. Use Buffer to schedule posts to Social Media Accounts.
Adwords – Set up an account in Google or Bing and pay only when someone clicks on your Ad.
Retargeting allows you to target users by showing ads who left your site without converting.
SEO allows you to show up for free in search results. The need to rank keywords that are popular is considered to be very difficult as many companies bid for the same keyword. On-page SEO calls for optimization of your web pages whilst Off-page SEO allows you to rank your website by considering page and domain authority. Use popular WordPress SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack. Influencer Marketing can help reach your target customers by partnering with similar businesses.
Step5: Website
Websites are a part of your marketing structure that needs to be optimized. Keep it as simple as possible and make it clear to the user what their next step should be with a CTA on each page for conversion. Research your loyal customers and test logos, images, color combination, and other elements along with the A/B test to determine what works best to convert.
Analyze your website activity and performance by diving into Google Analytics and take a look at the following metric:
Go to Audience > Active Visitors and see the number of users on your site.
These users need to be tracked and converted to your mailing list using the services of an autoresponder. Lead nurturing can contribute to the growth of your business and Email has the best ROI. The next step is to convert these users into customers which will let you know if you have engaged with the right audience. Assess this using a CRM that will help you to combine your marketing data in one place from Email, social media & other channels. Some customers may be eager to refer your business to new prospects which you can find out by conducting surveys.
Step6: Digital Marketing Fundamentals – Tools
-MozBar is a browser extension showing how authoritative a site is in the eyes of Google.
-Alexa tool in addition to spying on your competitors measures traffic, keywords, links, etc, and obtain data on international competitors and an overview of the ranking of any web page.
-SpyFu needs an understanding of SEO and Google Ads/ [PPC Advertising] account. Read more about SpyFu by clicking on keywords-SpyFu.
-Analytics SEO allows for a competitive site audit providing a gamut of competitive intelligence.
-Google Alerts is similar to Social Mentions for reviewing mentions of their hashtag, brand, campaign, or competitor names by entering keywords.
-Feedly keeps an eye on a competitor’s content without checking up their blog repeatedly.
Many businesses are opting for Marketing Automation in their routine jobs and thus reaping huge benefits. An example is email marketing which should not be done manually. Use of autoresponders such as MailChimp will grow your mailing list and respond to users from time to time. Smartphone conversion is an opportunity as the use of mobiles is increasing to that of desktops.
Step7: Measure, Track & Evaluate
Analyze the channels both organic and paid that you have been using in the past responsible for sending visitors to your business. It could be search-advertisement or AdWords or any other forms of free or paid ads, social media accounts, websites, etc.
Continuous monitoring to ensure that the plan is working towards goals that have been set. Try to identify setbacks if any and find room for improvements.