The business world has changed a lot over the past few decades. This probably isn’t a statement that anyone would argue with, right? Sure, the ultimate goal has remained the same: to generate profits by selling to customers. However, the methods of doing so have changed a whole lot, amongst other aspects of the process.
In fact, marketing is probably what has changed the most, if you can believe that. Today, we’ll be talking about some of the ways that marketing has evolved over time, as well as how you can strive to keep up with the shifting needs and wants of consumers. While this isn’t necessarily the easiest task, it’s definitely something worth keeping in mind, as you can read about here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/940/1/012065/meta.
What is Digital Marketing?
The first thing we’d like to cover here is, of course, this: what is digital marketing in the first place? As you can probably guess, digital marketing is the practice of promoting products or services using digital technologies and channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. Those are just a few of the many examples that we’ll talk about in further depth later on.
There are various online marketing strategies that we can utilize, including search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, and those are just a few of them.
At the end of the day, the goal of digital marketing is to reach and engage with a target audience, increase brand visibility, drive traffic, generate leads, and ultimately, contribute to business growth and success. It’s pretty simple, right?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Out of all of the strategies that we’ll be discussing today, if you’ve heard of any of them, this is probably the one you have heard about. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s one of many free methods that we can utilize to drive more organic traffic to our website. What is it, though, and how does it work?
If we put it simply, it’s the process of optimizing a website or online content to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages. Sometimes these are known as (SERPs).While it involves various techniques, both on-page and off-page, note that it tends to increase the quality and quantity of organic traffic to a website.
SEO is a critical part of any profitable digital marketing funnel, and there are a few reasons for that. First, think about some of the different components to how search engine optimization really works. You’ll need to consider keyword searches, optimization of your page itself, optimization in other avenues and applications, the structure, and technical aspects of your website, and creating quality content, just to name a few things here.
Social Media Marketing
If there’s one place that a lot of our customers inevitably end up, it’s on social media. What better place to reach them then, right? That’s not a wrong assumption in the slightest, but it can be a complex space to navigate.
You see, social media isn’t just a place where any old company should stroll in and create an account without having some sort of game plan. Consider what type of “personality” you want your brand to have – will you be sassy, will you be friendly, will you be informative, will you be funny – any of these are valid strategies. You’ll have to decide for yourself and determine what would best reflect the values of your brand and company.
Plenty of studies have been done on the matter, as you can see on this page. It can be hard to choose what specific strategy to utilize. The important thing is that you find professionals who are well-versed in social media management so that you can make the most of the accounts that you open on behalf of your business.
Interaction with customers is probably the most valuable facet of having these pages on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok these days. Just remember that it’s a careful tightrope walk, since public opinion is very fickle on these websites, and it can be easy to turn into “meme” material (and not in a good way).
Content Marketing
At first glance, content marketing can seem somewhat similar to social media marketing in that sometimes, the content you create will be posted on these pages. However, they are functionally quite different. Allow us a moment here to explain how it works and why it’s such a big deal when considering modern digital marketing.
To offer a brief definition, content marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on creating and then disbursing content to attract and engage a target audience – as long as it’s relevant and valuable. Of course, you do need to know who said target audience is before you start to create the content in question. Essentially, the goal of this style of marketing is to drive profitable customer action by providing informative, educational, or even entertaining content that addresses the needs and interests of the audience.
How do we accomplish this, then? Well, if you or someone in your team is up to the challenge, you can do at least a portion of the content creation on your own. Remember that you’ll want to have real people do it, since the algorithm tends to punish anything that is obviously AI generated.
Another option is to have social media influencers collaborate with you in content creation. Whether you directly sponsor them, send them PR products (when businesses send influencers free products in the hopes that they’ll be discussed at some point), or anything in between, this is one of the most popular methods of getting customer attention these days.
Overall, it’s important to branch out and try several different styles of marketing. Don’t be afraid to explore and try new things, either – especially when it comes to the internet. We’re all learning, growing, and changing together, even our customers! As long as you’re willing to listen to and accept feedback, then you should be fine.