Understanding digital marketing is paramount to any business or brand’s success. Linchpin SEO’s experts break down the ins and outs of digital marketing in the article below.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Consumers research, compare, and shop on their devices. Therefore, you must understand and utilize digital marketing to reach consumers and achieve your goals.
Digital marketing uses online channels to tell your brand story and engage with customers through helpful and valuable content and great experiences. It empowers you to build relationships by taking the knowledge you provide offline and recreating it online to grow your business.
There are two marketing strategies with digital marketing: outbound and inbound marketing. We examine the differences below.
Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing is used in digital marketing as well as in traditional marketing. In outbound marketing, brands push a message to a specific target audience to bring awareness to their product, service, or brand. Most outbound strategies employ drive product recall through audience reach and repetition.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing works oppositely. Inbound marketing pulls audiences toward your content or brand. Through this method, you attract consumers who are already interested in your products or services.
Inbound marketing strategies include blogs, search engines, email subscriptions, online reviews, and word-of-mouth recommendations. Inbound marketing is the most critical aspect of digital marketing.
Types of Media
You’ll find three media channels within digital marketing, each working harmoniously to create a holistic, successful digital marketing campaign.
Owned Media
Owned media is content that you create and manage. Think blog posts and social media accounts.
Benefits of owned media include
- Cost efficiency
- Flexibility
- Longevity
- Authenticity
Paid Media
You pay for paid media to drive visibility, clicks, and traffic. Paid media helps expand your reach, presenting your brand to people you believe will find your goods, services, and content relevant.
Examples of paid media:
- Social media advertising
- Paid search
- Display advertising
- Paid influencers
Earned Media
Earned media is the ultimate goal for digital marketers. When you’ve created content that users interact with, engage with, and share, it’s considered earned media.
Earned media can include shares, reviews, mentions, and reposts. It’s a valuable avenue for digital marketing because it has an established level of trust, something a paid ad can’t bring to the table. In addition, earned media is organic, has credibility, and typically has a longer lifespan than paid or owned media.
You get high-value engagement when your owned, paid, and earned media results converge.
Digital Channels
Audience research empowers you to decide which digital channels to utilize and prioritize in your marketing campaigns. Below we explore the digital marketing channels successful brands use in their campaigns.
Email and Automation Marketing
Emails and automation boost both conversions and loyalty. Email campaigns engage with customers strategically, leading them to a favorable purchase decision.
Emails raise interest, convert sales, and increase customer retention by directly putting your brand, goods, and services into their inbox.
Paid Search (PPC)
Paid search, or pay-per-click, targets consumers already interested in your brand. PPC marketing helps you earn high-value traffic from a customer base likely to spend with you.
As a user actively searches keywords, paid search helps bring your content to the top of the SERPs when buyers are ready to take action.
Organic Search (SEO)
Any brand with a successful online presence prioritizes search engine optimization. Good SEO leads to discovery, awareness, interest, and conversion without fees.
There are many components to a successful SEO strategy, with no two methods being the same. Partnering with a firm like Linchpin allows you to create a unique, achievable SEO strategy tailored to your goals.
Website Optimization
Your website is often your first –– and sometimes only –– impression to potential buyers. Optimizing your website creates an engaging, navigable environment where visitors can engage with your products and brand.
Building a site that is easy to navigate and empowers users to take action helps drive those actions and leads to better performance. Optimizing your website for speed, responsiveness, content, and conversion processes provides users with a seamless, fuss-free experience, promoting engagement and sales.
Display Advertising
You can customize display advertising according to each site visitor with targeted ads. Display ads can target audience interests, age, gender, lifestyle, culture, etc. The ads are highly relevant to the user, captivating their attention and driving interest and traffic.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is critical to your digital marketing efficacy. Content drives an inbound marketing strategy, and as we discussed above, inbound marketing is the cornerstone of digital marketing.
Original, captivating, informative content brings users to your site. Your content directly informs the audience’s perception of your brand and the level of quality you can provide. Content communicates your brand’s values, experience, authority, and trustworthiness, all crucial to earning a positive customer perception.
Your content answers the questions consumers are asking and preemptively addresses the questions they haven’t yet asked. Content influences all stages of the buyer’s journey, so understanding how to create compelling content for your target user will contribute to your digital marketing success.
Social Media Marketing
Social media channels allow you to connect with users more personally and intimately. On social, ads can be targeted and re-targeted according to your goals.
Your social media channels also provide existing customers with information and updates from your brand, which can rekindle interest and make the most of your customer retention strategies.
Conclusion
Understanding digital marketing is a non-negotiable for your brand or business. Partnering with Linchpin SEO gives you access to twenty years of expertise, empowering you to set, achieve, and surpass your digital marketing goals.
Contact our team today to begin creating a digital marketing strategy that gets you the results you’re after.