10 ways to engage your customers and promote your business with Digital Marketing

If you are wondering what digital marketing is; it is the advertising delivered through digital channels. Channels such as social media, mobile applications, email, web applications, search engines, websites, or any new digital channel are used for digital marketing.

Digital marketing campaigns are easier to set up, run, monitor and the results are traceable and measurable in a way that non-digital marketing and advertising can’t offer. Put simply, we are truly in the digital age.

The core problem that prevents most companies from investing in digital marketing is that they don’t know what they need.

We realize there’s a lot of difference in the types of digital marketing and can be categorized among 11 categories. And these are as follows:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing 
• Influencer/ Affiliate Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
  
  
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO consists of both on-page SEO and off-page SEO tactics: while the former is all you do with/on your website to win customers over, including authoring on-point, useful and engaging content, and the latter is what you do outside your website, including linking activities. The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase the number of website visitors by ranking highly in Google (or other search engines’) SERPs (search engine results page) for certain target keywords.
  
  
• Pay Per Click (PPC): PPC, or pay-per-click, is a form of advertising on search engines, like Google and Bing. It’s a way of moving to the top of search engine results pages by paid means. It’s called PPC because your ad account is charged every time one of your adverts is clicked. The cost of each ad, or CPC (cost per click), depends on the quality score of your website and the selected keyword’s competition. PPC campaigns can be a short-term solution, and many use it to shift products or seasonal deals, as a way to boost revenue. There are around 4 spots for Ads on Google, so getting your website selected with the keywords can be challenging. SEO work is about your ranking being ‘earned’, but in PPC your ranking on the first page is bought.
  
  
• Social Media Marketing: Everybody is on various social media these days and this can only mean one thing for new businesses – promoting their brand on appropriate channels to gain a vast fan following is a no-brainer. Paid/sponsored ads on social media are a viable option as they reach the demographic you intend to target and run for the duration you have set. Frequently posting compelling, topical, on-trend content will lead to it being shared by people on social media and subsequent brand recognition or awareness.
  
  
• Content Marketing: Content marketing is the backbone of digital marketing as it can lend itself superbly to other branches and help in transforming passive website or social media page visitors to active customers. No matter what type of content you create, blog posts, vlogs, picture montages, you name it, if it adds value to the lives of customers and enhances their experience, it is a win for you. It is important to remember here that content marketing is a continuous process and it pays to invest in a good content marketing team.

• Email Marketing: It’s a form of direct marketing that sends information, offers, blogs, etc. directly to your mailing lists inboxes. Through a sea of emails, your marketing email will appear, but the trick is getting it to read. Yes, it may emerge alongside 100s emails, and if you can’t create an email that’s eye-catching, then it will be lost. Luckily there are email marketing tools to help you.

• Influencer / Affiliate Marketing: Both influencer and affiliate marketing utilize those in a position of ‘power’, usually social media influencers or industry experts, etc. This is to assist you in marketing a product or service to your audience. It’s become more and more popular in recent years, through sites like Instagram and YouTube, where companies will enlist a well-known influencer, to promote their products or services on their social pages or affiliate websites.

• Mobile Marketing: Sending marketing messages through SMS and push notifications is a time-tested way of getting the recipient’s attention, especially since more than 90% of such messages are opened right after receiving them. Sending customers news about deals, discounts, coupons, and sales, loyalty point updates, etc. are a great way to engage with your customer. Simply make sure that you give enough thought to annoying and intrusive pop-ups, mobile site responsiveness, and slower internet/data speeds on the go, etc. while attempting to incorporate mobile advertising into your overall marketing plan.