There are now almost 4.2 billion people who are active internet users, and 3.4 billion who are active social media users. With that in mind, it's easy to see that a company that does not engage in digital marketing is missing out on opportunities to reach, attract and engage customers online. Fortunately, this type of marketing is inexpensive and the barrier to entry is low, especially when compared to other forms of high-reach advertising.
When used effectively, digital marketing can provide many benefits to advertisers. These include lead generation, higher engagement, increased website traffic, email list building, and even increased foot traffic to brick-and-mortar store locations. All of these benefits can be combined to increase sales and revenue. What’s more, you can even run standalone digital marketing campaigns if your company is seeking to improve one particular metric.
5 Digital Marketing Solutions to Explore
When looking into digital marketing, you'll find several popular options available. The key is to understand your overall goal - whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation or sales - and choose the solution(s) that will help you achieve them.
Social Media Marketing
Using social media allows you get to know your customers in a way that goes beyond mere numbers on a chart. Social media is also great for handling customer service, distributing content on a consistent basis, improving website traffic, and even impacting your SEO. To be effective, determine where your audience hangs out online (do they prefer Facebook over Instagram?), and choose your social media channels accordingly.
Keyword Targeting
With traditional pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you pre-select specific keywords and phrases to trigger your ads. However, if you chose the wrong ones, you could lose money and valuable opportunities to drive qualified traffic to your site. With keyword targeting, advanced search techniques are used to scan your website to deliver ads that are relevant to the keywords found on your site. This helps searchers quickly find the most relevant information on your site, and helps you maximize your budget and reach your marketing goals.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This digital marketing tactic involves using specific techniques to help your website rank highly in major search engines, including Google and Bing. It also helps to drive quality traffic to your site through organic (unpaid) search engine results. This is especially important as 39% of the total global traffic comes from search, and 70-80% of search engine users ignore paid ads and focus solely on the organic results. SEO practices are constantly changing, so it’s important stay current on each update that is released.
Display Advertising
This form of digital marketing uses banners, rich media and other formats made of text, images, video and audio to deliver ads to your site visitors. They typically appear on websites, apps and social media, and they’re great for a variety of campaigns - including branding and lead generation.
Digital Promotions
From online quizzes to submission contests, this digital solution can take many forms. Digital promotions can help you achieve a range of marketing goals, and they pair well with radio advertising to expand reach - especially when you create a consistent brand experience across all platforms and channels. Both digital and radio allow for short lead times, strong calls-to-action (CTAs), and measurable results.
Digital marketing is growing in popularity thanks to the massive online audience that it can reach. Companies today should be sure that they are engaging in some - or all - of these digital solutions to maximize their marketing results. However, it’s important to test and refine campaigns regularly to determine which solution works best for your business. Doing so will help you successfully reach your target customers, and boost the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
