What is Digital Marketing?
To simplify your understanding without making mud, Digital Marketing is Online Advertising. Digital Marketing is the process, strategies, and tactics used to get your business found online. Together, these account for one component of your overall Marketing Mix, and how you plan to reach your core audience to influence awareness, consideration, intent, and purchase behaviors.
Digital Marketing carries a lot of different names, jargon, and acronyms that make it even harder to learn, here are some simplified terms:
- SEO – Is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. The strategy is getting your website to show up in organic search results when people search for the products or services you sell. The tactics used for executing your specific strategy will vary from one industry to the next but they center around the content of your website and how it is written to appeal to consumers and computers.
- PPC & SEM – Pay Per Click Advertising, and Search Engine Marketing are the same tactics. These are the “ads” that you see at the top of your Search Results Page after performing a web search. You don’t pay to be seen here, you only pay when someone clicks to visit your website.
- Display Advertising – Is the strategy of using visual ads placed on the internet, to reach users who are searching for, or engaging in specific forms of content. There are a number of tactics used in display advertising that can make it confusing like: Programatic, Retargeting, GeoFencing to name a few.
- Social Media Advertising is more straightforward, it’s the act of advertising through social media outlets like Facebook & Instagram. Again though, there are many different tactics used on these digital channels that help businesses market strategically. Depending on the campaign’s goals, different tactics may be used to target different demographics.
- Contesting and Display Advertising are commonly used across Social Media to reach and engage audiences at different points in the buying cycle.
- Contextual Advertising is the strategy of producing content for the purpose of linking it back to your website to promote a product and service. You might post blog articles to your website that are then advertised, or you might produce digital media that will go on other sites, linking back to your website. The goal here is to position the business as an expert, thought leader, or problem solver and to use that content to drive traffic to your website.
There are millions of websites and thousands of ways to be found online.
So, how will you ever get ahead? The answer is very simple – work with the right people to eliminate the noise and understand what is important to your customers. It can be hard to do! But seriously, unless you have bottomless pockets to spend online, you have to participate in fewer places in order to create an impact. As the saying goes “Would you rather be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond?” You likely understand, most people will never see the small fish in the big pond, and that fish is more likely to be eaten. So, how do we do it?
Torque Media makes Digital Marketing easy for Business Owners to understand while producing impactful and functional campaigns.
We have two different kinds of clients, those that prefer to blaze their own trail and those that trust our experience. We’re happy to spend as much time as you would like providing an education of what the products are and how they work, but the chances are, the more you learn, the more confusing it will become. This is why our customers choose Torque Media to manage this task on their behalf. It’s taken the best of 15 years working with $500 to Multi-Million Dollar campaigns to craft our marketing approach. When we meet, we’ll explain our approach, and with the questions below, we’ll begin building your digital marketing strategy!
Understand where your customers are spending time online.
This can change monthly, seasonally, and annually as interests and platforms evolve, it’s also dependent on the products/services you are selling. Torque Media has a pulse on the Internet and can quickly help you figure this out. For instance:
- Using a Search Engine is the #1 way people find things online – What is the number 1 search engine used in your area and how are you, as a business, using it?
- There are two websites online where people spend most of their online time – How is your business leveraging these websites to connect with your customers?
- What kind of content do your customers consume online? Are they skiers? If so, what do skiers look at, where do they shop, what kind of content are they consuming? You may not know these answers but, the answers are out there and we can help you uncover them.
With these 3 questions answered, we’ve already begun to assemble your go-to-market strategy.
Your strategy includes using the following types of Digital Marketing to reach the core audience of your business: Search Engine Marketing, Online Directories, Vertical Search, Social Media, Display Advertising, Re-targeting, and Geo-Targeting. Now, let me ask that question again, what was your budget? The chances are that budget is well spent with plenty of room to grow into. Sure, you can get on Snapchat, but how is your Facebook and Instagram game? How frequently are you posting, and what does your engagement look like? Who is engaging with your content? Does it make sense to create more work to reach a much smaller audience, and will your Facebook & Instagram audiences suffer as you learn and cater to this new channel?
Just like owning a business, one person cannot do it all. At the end of the day, Torque Media’s goal is make digital advertising easy to understand, and easy to tackle. With a bit of help, your only limitation becomes your budget. Feeling like it’s time for help? Contact Us today!