One of the things that many growing businesses focus on is how to reach their target customers effectively. And while some may opt for traditional forms of advertising, like print ads, the majority of them now take advantage of digital marketing. This method is said to be easier and better, considering the huge number of prospects online. So if you’re a small business owner, this vast marketplace is something you shouldn’t overlook.
That being said, know that digital marketing is a rapidly evolving field wherein there are a lot of things to learn about it. To help with such matters, we’ve listed the top ten most asked and important questions in the field, which we also grouped by different digital marketing topics.
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the approach of optimizing a website for it to get higher rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Or in other words, this is what you do if you want to improve the visibility of your business site for relevant searches. Aside from websites, other channels that may benefit from this include infographics and blogs.
1. Do I need SEO?
Not including SEO in your marketing strategy is much like surrendering to your competition straight away. Search engine optimization is a big opportunity for you to take your business to the next level. So yes, you do need it, especially if you own a start-up or a small business.
Good SEO can help you get organic website traffic, provide a better user experience, increase customer engagement, establish brand credibility and trust, and most importantly, stay ahead of your competitors.
2. How long does SEO take?
As much as we want to give you a definite answer to such a question, truth is, SEO is actually a continuous endeavor. Yes, some may say that it can take around three to four months if you have a well-executed SEO campaign. Still, this may vary depending on various reasons. Every business has different challenges to overcome, from the current website design and quality of content to industry competition.
Nevertheless, with continuous effort, SEO is absolutely the best method to have lasting online visibility for your business and attract qualified leads as well.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
This type of digital marketing strategy focuses on engaging with your target market or potential customers. Here you are promoting your products or services through the use of social media platforms to drive traffic, generate leads, and boost brand awareness. Some of the social media channels you can use for this include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
3. How can social media marketing help my business?
Social media marketing actually provides tons of incredible benefits for both small and big businesses. It can help increase your business visibility, reach out or interact with your target customers, boost brand loyalty, and provide healthier customer satisfaction, as well as improve your SEO rankings.
However, take note that such can only be achieved with a good social media campaign. You can start that by creating social media profiles and regularly engaging with your customers.
4. How do I start a social media campaign?
The first thing to do when starting a social media campaign is to create quality posts regularly. Such content must not just be catchy or fun but also highly relevant and engaging to the target audience. If you can include meaningful links into your posts, that would be better.
Aside from that, you may also consider adding some ads to your campaign. Promoted tweets and Facebook ads can give you nearly ten times the click-through rates compared to web ads. Other social media platforms you can use are Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+, and Tumblr.
EMAIL MARKETING
There’s more to email marketing than just sending emails to subscribers. This process is used to promote discounts and contents and to direct the target audience towards your website. Email marketing is all about delivering vital information to people to enhance brand loyalty and increase sales. Several types of emails you can send include customer welcome emails, blog subscription newsletters, holiday promotions, follow-up emails, and tips or other series emails for further engagement.
5. How can I grow my email list?
If you want to grow your email list organically, the first thing you should do is to create a lead generation campaign. This basically involves the creation of content offers and publishing them on relevant pages on your website. You should then come up with enticing calls to action (CTAs) with a great copy so you can encourage your targets to opt in for the list. At the same time, make sure that your site has a contact or email address form to further help you stay connected with existing customers, and get new ones.
6. How often should I send the emails?
You can send them as often as you can—just as long as you won’t look annoying to your targets. Bear in mind that the last thing you want to happen is for people to unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.
Still, it can be different for everyone. For some businesses, daily emails work just fine, while for others once a month is a better move. Test the waters to see what really works for your niche audience.
CONTENT MARKETING
This marketing approach is centered on creating and promoting content assets, which are relevant, valuable, and engaging for the target market. Content marketing is particularly done to generate brand awareness, lead generation, traffic growth, and regular customers for one’s business. Several channels involved in such marketing strategy include blog posts, infographics, e-books, videos, and even white papers.
7. What should I do to develop a content marketing strategy?
Before anything else, make sure you have identified your target market first and assess your current position. What types of content do you already have? How are they working? After that, you can then figure out what new types of content you should produce. Ideally, they should be valuable, relevant, well-written, actionable, and shareable. It also helps more if you create a content calendar so you can track when to write and publish the content.
Next, properly distribute and market your content. You can use social media or email marketing for this. Last but not least, don’t forget to measure the results. Check the performance of your content by using Google Analytics and see if you’re hitting your targets or not.
8. What qualifies as “content”?
While blogs are definitely one of the most effective types of content to utilize, this is not the only form that you can use in your content marketing strategy. Keep in mind that any valuable information, no matter what medium you use for it, can be regarded as content. These may include articles, videos, webinars, PDFs, podcasts, infographics, e-books, slide shares, and white papers.
In addition, make sure that no matter what type of content you use, it should always be unique, enticing, and relevant to your target audience’s interests. Doing so won’t just allow you to share information with your customers but also enable them to know more about your business or brand.
PAY PER CLICK
Pay-per-click is the form of digital marketing wherein advertisers or businesses pay a publisher each time their ads are clicked. This may apply to paid ads on social media such as Twitter Ads campaigns, paid ads on Facebook, or sponsored messages on LinkedIn. But apart from that, Google AdWords is another way for businesses to have ads that stand out from the rest.
9. What’s the difference between Google Ads and organic rankings?
Google Ads is a platform wherein businesses can run ads for their websites by paying for a fee. Such ads will be displayed on the search engine results page’s top or sidebars and will show that those aren’t organic. Nevertheless, it is still a great way to target niche audiences based on particular keyword searches. Plus, it only works on a pay-per-click basis.
Organic rankings, on the other hand, refer to the results you get from the generated traffic of your website. This may be based on the brand recognition you’ve established, the appeal of content title and meta description, implementation of white hat SEO, or the services you offer. These “natural” results can be seen underneath the ads in the result pages.
10. Does Google Ads mean immediate traffic?
As mentioned above, Google Ads can actually get you that overnight traffic. This specific solution will allow you to get your ads on top of the SERPs when users search for keywords relevant to your site.
However, your ads must be created and optimized carefully so you can take advantage of such traffic and increase your sales eventually. Don’t just publish ads without doing in-depth research on the right keywords to use and hope for the best.
Transform Your Marketing Campaign Today!
These are just some things that you should know about digital marketing, and there is more to learn. Stay informed on the best marketing practices and the current insights so you have a better chance of reaching your goals and growing that business! If you want to learn how to improve your current online marketing strategy or create a new one, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team here at Feedback Systems.
That being said, know that digital marketing is a rapidly evolving field wherein there’s a lot of things to learn about it. To help with such matter, we’ve listed the top ten most asked and important questions in the field, which we also grouped by different digital marketing topics.
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the approach of optimizing a website in order for it to get higher rankings in the search engine results pages. Or, in other words, this is what you do if you want to improve the visibility of your business site for relevant searches. Aside from websites, other channels that may benefit from this include infographics and blogs.
1. Do I need SEO?
Not including SEO in your marketing strategy is much like surrendering to your competition straight away. Search engine optimization is a big opportunity for you to take your business to the next level. So yes, you do need it, especially if you own a startup or a small business.
Basically, good SEO can help you get organic website traffic, provide a better user experience, increase customer engagement, establish brand credibility and trust, and most importantly, stay ahead of your competitors.
2. How long does SEO take?
As much as we want to give you a definite answer to such question, truth is, SEO is actually a continuous endeavor. Yes, some may say that it can take around three to four months if you have a well-executed SEO campaign. Still, this may vary depending on various reasons. Every business has different challenges to overcome, from the current website design, quality of content to industry competition.
Nevertheless, with continuous effort, SEO is absolutely the best method to have a lasting online visibility for your business and attract qualified leads as well.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
This type of digital marketing strategy focuses on engaging with your target market or potential customers. Here, you are promoting your products or services through the use of social media platforms with a goal to drive traffic, generate leads, and boost brand awareness. Some of the social media channels you can use for this include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
3. How can social media marketing help my business?
Social media marketing actually provides tons of incredible benefits for both small and big businesses. It can help increase your business visibility, reach out or interact with your target customers, boost brand loyalty, provide healthier customer satisfaction, as well as improve your SEO rankings.
However, take note that such can only be achieved with a good social media campaign. You can start that by creating social media profiles and regularly engaging with your customers.
4. How to start a social media campaign?
First thing to do when starting a social media campaign is to create quality posts on a regular basis. Such content must not just be catchy or fun, but also highly relevant and engaging to the target audience. If you can include meaning links into your posts, that would be better.
Aside from that, you may also consider adding some ads to your campaign. Promoted tweets and Facebook ads can give you nearly 10x click-through rates compared to web ads. Other social media platforms you can use are Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Google Plus, and Tumblr.
EMAIL MARKETING
There’s more to email marketing than just sending emails to subscribers. This process is used to promote discounts and contents, and to direct the target audience towards your website. Email marketing is all about delivering vital information to people to enhance brand loyalty and increase sales. Several types of emails you can send include customer welcome emails, blog subscription newsletters, holiday promotions, follow-up emails, and tips or other series emails for further engagement.
5. How can I grow my email list?
If you want to grow your email list organically, the first thing you should do is to create a lead generation campaign. This basically involves the creation of content offers and publishing them on relevant pages on your website. You should then come up with enticing CTAs with a great copy so you can encourage your targets to opt-in for the list. At the same time, make sure that your site has a contact or email address form to further help you stay connected with existing customers, and get new ones.
6. How often should I send the emails?
You can send them as often as you can – just as long as you won’t look annoying to your targets. Bear in mind that the last thing you want to happen is for people to unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.
Still, it can be different for everyone. For some businesses, daily emails work just fine, while for others, once a month is a better move. Test the waters to see what really works for your niche audience.
CONTENT MARKETING
This marketing approach is centered on creating and promoting of content assets, which are relevant, valuable, and engaging for the target marketing. Content marketing is particularly done in order to generate brand awareness, lead generation, traffic growth, and regular customers for one’s business. Several channels involved in such marketing strategy include blog posts, infographics, eBooks, videos, and even whitepapers.
7. What should I do to develop a content marketing strategy?
Before anything else, make sure you have identified your target market first and assess your current position. What type of content you already have? How are they working? After that, you can then figure out what new types of content you should produce. Ideally, they should be valuable, relevant, well-written, actionable, and shareable. It also helps more if you will create a content calendar so you can track when to write and publish the content.
Next, properly distribute and market your content. You can use social media or email marketing for this. Last but not least, don’t forget to measure the results. Check the performance of your content by using Google Analytics and see if you’re hitting your targets or not.
8. What qualifies as ‘content’?
While blogs are definitely one of the most effective types of content to utilize, this is not the only form that you can use in your content marketing strategy. Keep in mind that ‘any’ valuable information, no matter what medium you use for it, can be regarded as content. These may include articles, videos, webinars, PDFs, podcasts, infographics, eBooks, slide shares, and white papers.
In addition, make sure that no matter what type of content you use, it should always be unique, enticing, and relevant to your target audience’s interests. Doing so won’t just allow you to share information with your customers but also enable them to know more about your business or brand.
PAY PER CLICK
Pay Per Click is the form of digital marketing wherein advertisers or businesses pay a published each time their ads are clicked. This may apply to paid ads on social media such as Twitter Ads campaigns, paid ads on Facebook, or sponsored messages on LinkedIn. But apart from that, Google Adwords is another way for businesses to have ads that stand out from the rest.
9. What’s the difference between Google Ads and organic rankings?
Google Ads is a platform wherein businesses can run ads for their websites by paying for a fee. Such ads will be displayed on the search engine results page’s top or side bars and will show that those aren’t organic. Nevertheless, it is still a great way to target niche audiences based on particular keyword searches. Plus, it only works on a pay-per-click basis.
Organic rankings, on the other hand, refer to the results you get from the generate traffic of your website. This may be based on the brand recognition you’ve established, the appeal of content title and meta description, implementation of white hat SEO, or the services you offer. These ‘natural’ results can be seen underneath the ads in the result pages.
10. Does Google Ads mean immediate traffic?
As mentioned above, Google Ads can actually get you that overnight traffic. This specific solution will allow you to get your ads on top of the SERPs when users search for keywords relevant to your site.
However, it’s imperative that your ads are created and optimized carefully so you can take advantage of such traffic and increase your sales eventually. Don’t just publish ads without doing in-depth research on the right keywords to use and hope for the best.
Transform Your Marketing Campaign Today!
These are just a number of things that you should know about digital marketing, and there is more to learn. Stay informed on the best marketing practices and the current insights so you have a better chance of reaching your goals and growing that business! If you want to learn how to improve your current online marketing strategy or create a new one, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team here at Feedback Systems.
