Digital marketing for beginners (aka, where the #$!@ do I even start?)
Since completing my MBA, I suddenly found that I have a lot of free time on my hands. No more spending long nights and weekends studying at the campus library (hurray!).
I want to fill my free time combining one of my earliest passions (writing) with my current passion (marketing).
Over the past few years I’ve learned how to strategize, implement, monitor and report across multiple digital platforms. I know from personal experience it can be daunting task.
As I pivoted from my job as a newspaper editor to marketing, I remember thinking what does CPC, CPM, CTR and CPA even mean?
There was a lot of Googling involved. I found a ton of information on the subject, but often I had to give my email address in exchange to download a PDF (which, by the way, is a highly effective tactic to build your email database!) or found the information was too high-level without addressing my needs.
I also have friends and family members who started their own businesses and turned to me to find out how they can use digital marketing to attract new customers and gain visibility online.
I wanted to put together a guide for people who wanted to learn the basics of digital marketing while providing actionable advice to get your campaign off the ground. So without further ado, here is my first post in my “Digital marketing for beginners (aka, where the #$!@ do I even start?)”
I’ll start with the basics.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is exactly what it sounds like — marketing (or promoting) a product/business/service online.
(Okay, okay. I promise to keep the gifs to a minimum).
In all seriousness, have you ever saw a pair of shoes online and they started stalking you across the internet? Or have you Googled something, like “How to build a terrarium,” and the first search result is a blog post on a flower store’s website? That’s all digital marketing.
You can use paid tactics (such as purchasing ads through Facebook or Google), or you can use unpaid tactics (like creating compelling content on your website people want to consume).
While there’s a lot of hype about the latest and greatest digital marketing techniques, keep in mind the goal is always the same — marketing is used to promote a product or service to potential customers.
What are the different types of digital marketing techniques?
People consume content online in different ways. The biggest categories of online marketing are:
Social Media Marketing: Social media has been growing like gangbusters (there are 2 billion+ active Facebook users!), and there’s no sign of slowdown. Marketers use social media (and not just Facebook) to drive user engagement and share their content. People are more likely to trust a brand or purchase a product from them if their friends like or promote a product.
Email Marketing: We’re all familiar with email marketing. Email marketing helps you connect with your audience and promote your brand or product. But let’s be real -- a lot of those emails feel spammy, and we’re inundated with them. The average office worker receives 121 emails per day. That’s a lot of noise to cut through. But email continues to be the number one digital channel for ROI. To the tune of $40 for every $1 spent.
SEO and SEM: The difference between search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) can be confusing to understand. They work hand-in-hand with each other. SEM refers to paid search (paid search advertising, pay-per-click, cost-per-impressions). SEO refers to the practice of driving traffic to your website using organic (unpaid) tactics.
Content Marketing: If you are familiar with my background, you could probably guess this is my favorite type of marketing. Content marketing is educational. It’s not about selling or pushing a service on them. It’s about connecting with your audience, and providing information they care about. The goal is to build trust with your audience and to stimulate interest in your business. So when the time comes that someone is interested in purchasing a product, they think of you first.
Pay-per-click: This is a type of digital advertising where you only pay when your ad is clicked by an online user. You bid on certain keywords users type into search engines to have your ad displayed to those users.The goal is to draw the users to your website.
I’ll go over each of these more in depth in future posts.