When you’re looking to create an effective digital marketing strategy, many businesses miss a fundamental step which is market research. You need to know your customers before you can sell them anything.
1. Search-Based Marketing
The first pillar of digital marketing is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO helps you increase your web presence by making it easy for people to find out about your business through the search results pages.
This is done by using keywords in page titles, descriptions, throughout your content, as well as optimizing images with metadata that contain relevant keywords throughout your website.
All these things help search engines like Google to better understand what your business is about so that you rank higher on the search engine.
For an even greater depth into your search performance, there are plenty of SEO tools out there to help you gain that advantage.
Also under this digital marketing pillar is search engine marketing (SEM). SEM is an umbrella term that refers to the many ways you can promote your business on search engines. This includes pay-per-click (PPC) ads and many other forms of paid advertising.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of those essential content-based services you need for your business. It should form the building block to your overall marketing strategy.
The content should be valuable and relevant to your customers. This can help them solve their problems which will result in a win-win situation.
When you provide value, people are more likely to come back because they know that they can find the information that fulfills their needs.
At the same time, content marketing can help improve search engine rankings since the content is a ranking factor for Google’s algorithm.
3. Relationship Building and Outreach
In today’s world where companies are trying to reach as many people and create relationships, it’s important that they make a good first impression.
This way an outsourced set of online connections can strengthen your company’s presence. This also helps you to get valuable backlinks or mentions from these bloggers and journalists when posting content on their social media channels which can create a huge impact and improve SEO results.
Email outreach is a powerful way to start relationship-building and share valuable content with the right people. In return, they will do some outreach for your company as well.
This can be used as an opportunity where you can create real relationships with other professionals in the industry that may lead to other business opportunities later on down the line.
4. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) is an incredible way to create brand awareness. For example, if you want to get more social traffic visits, you can create an Instagram profile and post carousels or posts that are hot topics within your industry.
To be successful at SMM you need to know your target audience and hang out on the same social media platforms that they do.
It’s also important to engage with the people you follow on social media as well. It will improve your social authority.
When you have an excellent online presence, it goes beyond just being found in search engine results for certain keywords. It means having an extensive network of followers, fans, and customers.