Q: What do you know about digital marketing? Do you know how to get started with digital marketing?
What is digital marketing? Webster’s dictionary defined digital marketing as… oh you have to be kidding me. Digital marketing can’t be defined by our friends at Webster’s because digital marketing evolves continually. The internet is still an infant. A very fast learning, deranged, somewhat scary infant – but one that marketers and business owners love and hate.
Let’s start with this.
Who is your target audience? How do you approach them or try to draw them to your brand and products? Today digital marketing means creating buying personas that you use to create digital campaigns that run over the internet, through email marketing and on digital displays of all kinds to draw that target into your brand. A buying persona is a person who will benefit from your products or services, that you develop and adjust over time. You build them by researching demographics and digging into what makes them tick, what they like and what they don’t like, what they do for a living and how they spend their free time. You’re putting a name to a buying group “Kelly quick to buy,” “Sam slow to purchase” and “Isaac the indifferent.” Knowing your buyer personas will guide how, when and where you try to reach them.
There is free digital marketing that everyone should be using (SEO, Social Media, Blogs, email) and then there is paid digital (email, pay per click, social ads, digital displays (TV ads, Internet commercials). Know the difference between the two and understand that the paid is affected by the amount of money you spend and the free is impacted by the effort that you are willing to put forth. Since time is money, there is no free digital marketing after all. It takes time to research, develop, implement, measure, adjust and measure again. But effective digital campaigns can be a game changer for your business.
Q: What do you want to know about digital marketing?
Where should you start? – Buyer personas. Get them down.
- Know your audience where they go, what they do
- how often will they need your product or service?
- what leads them to the decision that they need your product or service?
- how does your product or service do it better than your competition?
- why is that important for your buyer personas?
You need to set goals – what do you need digital marketing to do for you? How many products or services do you have to sell in order for them to be a success in your mind? What is the timeframe that success needs to be achieved in? How long will it take for your buying personas to see you, get to know you and your products or services, and make a decision to purchase? These goals form the marketing plan. Digital marketing will be the tip of the spear used to influence your personas to go from a name on a list to a lifelong client/customer.
From there, you’ll develop key words as the start of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Learn the free tools from Google that start your trip into the world of analytics. Then start creating keyword-rich content– all kinds of content. Web pages, blog posts, social media posts, downloadable white papers and success stories are popular content types.
Once the content is ready, then you implement. You introduce yourself and your product or service to potential clients when, where and how they want to engage.
Finally, close the loop by measuring results. How many new likes on Facebook are you getting? Are those likes converting to sales leads? Are those leads being closed? The data will let you know what’s working and what isn’t and then you can adjust accordingly.
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