The ABCs of Digital Marketing
We spend a lot of time thinking and writing about various aspects of digital marketing. What it is, how to do it better, how we can help you achieve your digital marketing goals. But in this piece, we’re going back to basics. Define some terms. Show you what is important. Outline the building blocks. In other words, the ABCs. Or, as they like to call it in the digital world, the FAQs.
- What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the promotion of companies and their brands through digital channels. Those include websites, search engines, social media, email, and online paid advertising.
- Why is digital marketing important to my business?
Digital marketing increases brand visibility, allows targeted marketing to your customers, provides measurable results and is cost-effective.
It also provides an effective method of building better relationships with customers, past and present, build strong and loyal followings, reach deeper understanding of your customer’s wants and needs, and reach them more effectively.
- What are the types of digital marketing?
Within the various channels used in digital marketing, the strategies include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), display and pay-per-click ads, search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, email marketing and social media management.
- What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO is the act of improving your web pages and its content to rank higher on search engine results pages. Search engines (robotic web readers utilized by Google and all other web browsers) use algorithms to determine which web pages hold the most relevant information (for a search term) and then rank those pages in providing search results.
To make your web pages more easily findable, they must rank high in technical configurations, content relevance, and link popularity. This will result in better-qualified traffic being driven to your website and an increase in your brand’s credibility.
- How do I improve my SEO ranking?
Techniques for improving SEO results include keyword research, on-page optimization, and link building. Keywords are the words and phrases your customer types into his search browser to find relevant pages, images, videos or other kinds of information and content.
- What determines search engine rankings?
A good question and one possibly unanswerable, since Google and the other search engines don’t tell us what their algorithms are. But experts generally agree that rankings are based on relevance and authority. That is, does your content relate to the searcher’s entered keywords? And is your company and brand reputable and well known.
- What mistakes do digital marketers make?
The main mistake marketers make is blowing their own horn. That seems counter-intuitive, since the main purpose of any kind of marketing is to separate and promote your brand from all others. But changing a brand-centric, salesy approach to one that is customer-centric, trying to meet the needs of the customer, seems to get much better results.
The second big mistake many digital marketers make is to start and stop. If you get in to the digital marketplace, and you should, you should develop a steady, content rich, always on strategy, updated frequently and always responsive.
Those, as we said, are just the broad strokes defining digital marketing. To get deeper into the weeds, refer to some of our other recent blog posts.
And you can always call Fuel Media for consultation and advice. We have been serving our customers for more than ten years, creating and implementing digital campaigns for companies large and small.
