It’s the big question: digital versus traditional marketing. Despite strong opinions one way or the other, over the past two decades there has been a distinct shift away from traditional to online marketing. And within the past few years, online marketing has become essential for businesses. Read on to learn about six ways you can introduce your brand to a larger audience using digital marketing.
1. Content marketing
Content marketing is a long-term strategy for building strong relationships with your target market through creating content on your website. In order for the content to be effective, it must offer value to people when they read it, leading them closer to buying your products or services. You’ll need a content page that gives the user an overview of your site’s blog content with links to pertinent blogs.
2. Social media marketing
Neil Patel reports that companies that are successful at digital marketing allocate at least 10% of their budget to their social media campaigns. Every action you take on social media, he adds, should be driven by a specific campaign marketing strategy. Define your target audience and reach out to all consumers that fall within that group.
Algorithm for creating and optimizing a social media profile
The Basic 5 Rules of SMO, from July 12, 2007, as formulated by trend expert and founder of Influential Marketing Group, Rohit Bhargava on Wayback Machine, are as follows:
- Increase link popularity;
- Make it easier to add content from the site to social networks, bookmarks, RSS aggregators, etc.;
- Attract inbound links (links to a website from outside resources), encourage those who link;
- Ensure export and distribution of content;
- Encourage the creation of services that use our content – mashups.
Every year the number of rules grows, adjusting to the changing interests and requirements of users.
Let’s take a closer look at the basic steps.
How to optimize your social media profiles, step by step
Selecting a user name
It is important to choose a unique one that will be easy to remember, associated with your activities and represent your business or brand. It is the first contact with the audience, so it should make a good impression and be informative.
Logo or photo creation
An image is your visual calling card on social media. Ideally, use an existing logo that is recognizable to your target audience and directly related to your activities.
Profile filling
The key to successfully finding your account through the built-in platform search features. This is an additional opportunity to capture the attention of potential subscribers and customers. It’s worthwhile to talk about your accomplishments, experience and interests using SEO analytics tools.
Use of relevant keywords
The platforms’ search algorithms will be able to properly index your profile and show it in search results for relevant queries. Keywords should fully reflect your business. Include them in titles, descriptions, and tags on your profile.
Link Optimization
Social media offers the opportunity to add external links to your website to your profile. They improve user interaction and lead to content that matches the user’s interests and needs, increasing engagement. And including links in tagged posts increases their discoverability.
Regular publication of content
New articles are a key factor in successful profile optimization. Interesting and useful information will attract the interest of subscribers and improve the visibility of the profile in search engines.
Audience interaction
Active engagement builds loyalty with existing audiences and attracts new subscribers. Encourage user interaction by posting interesting content, asking questions and responding promptly to comments and messages.
Analyzing the results
You can’t stop constantly analyzing your website’s social media optimization results. Evaluate reposts and audience engagement on posts to adjust strategy. Create similar to the most read content – this will increase the popularity of the page. For this purpose, you can use built-in analytical tools or specialized third-party applications. Bhargava also recommends repackaging user-interested content into other formats: PDFs, presentations, slideshows, podcasts.
A properly optimized profile is not a one-time action, but an ongoing effort to improve and adapt to changes in search engine algorithms and the needs of your target audience.
3. SEO
When you use SEO (search engine optimization), you’ll need to have what Moz calls an SEO-driven content strategy. Use keywords that bring in organic traffic to your site when online users search for a particular product or service. With proper SEO, you’ll increase the amount of organic traffic in measurable and trackable ways.
4. Email marketing
Email marketing is a form of off-page marketing. With a focused email marketing campaign, a target audience, and a skillfully constructed message, email marketing can effectively introduce your brand to a wider audience and engage with them on a regular basis, driving low-cost engagement and often the highest conversion of all outbound channels.
5. Pay-per-click advertising
Pay-per-click marketing, or PPC, is also called paid search marketing. PPC is effective driving traffic via search engines when you haven’t been able to rank organically via SEO. PPC allows you to place your message (the ad) directly in front of your potential audience at the very point in time when they are actively searching for a solution to their problem.
6. Affiliate marketing
As a publisher, affiliate marketing involves partnering up with companies and incorporating their linked advertisements into your content. You actually use exclusive URLs in affiliate links to track the traffic that your website sends to the advertising company’s website. When the reader clicks on an affiliate link, you get a small commission. Conversely, as an advertiser, this means working with publishers to have them include your links in their published content, driving traffic to your website and helping generate sales for you through their own engaged audiences. Unlike PPC, where you pay for a click (website visitor), whether or not that visitor converts to a paying customer, with an affiliate marketing plan, you typically only pay the affiliate for a completed sale transaction, making it a very cost-effective and low-risk way to increase your reach.
Final Words
This is just a small introduction to the ways in which you can reach a bigger audience through digital marketing. Once you start using a combination of these techniques, you’ll reach a larger target market.
For more information on how to introduce your brand to a bigger audience using digital marketing, please contact us at NEWMEDIA.