Digital Marketing Foundations
Helping you understand what digital marketing really is and why it is so important for your business.
If you’re a business owner new to digital marketing, chances are you’re missing out on a large pool of potential customers, sales, and exposure. On the other hand, if you are a business owner with marketing experience for your brand, you need to make sure you’re leveraging online tools correctly to make the most out of them. There’s a lot that goes into digital marketing efforts, but we’re here to break it all down for you. Let’s lay the foundation and work our way up the ladder together. At Digital Hot Sauce, nothing makes us happier than helping small businesses like you see your marketing potential and use it to grow steadily.
But in order to make that happen, we have to understand what digital marketing really is and why it is so important for your business. So, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of it.
What is Digital Marketing and Why is it Important?
Digital marketing is what its name suggests, marketing your business (whether it’s a service or a product) through digital platforms. This type of online marketing is very different from traditional marketing in the sense that it directly connects businesses with their target audience globally, and is more cost-efficient. Traditional marketing, though one of the oldest and classic forms of marketing, is becoming extinct in a world that relies heavily on digital mediums.
So, if you haven’t gathered already, digital marketing is essential to businesses today. Everything happens online. Whether you’re looking for a cafe near you or you’re researching the best rain gear to buy for the Fall, Google has the answer for you. As a business, you want to show up on those searches so more people can find you. That’s exactly what digital marketing does.
Digital Marketing will help you grow your business by:
Reaching a Wider Audience
Regardless of where you are in the world, you can reach people globally if you think they’re the right target audience for your business. Double and triple your chances of getting more exposure, and consequently, converting more customers.
Tracking Current and New Customer Behaviour
Track consumer behaviour on your website and social channels and learn what your customers like more, what works, what doesn’t, and what you can improve on. These behaviours provide you with the insight you need into altering your content and product listings to match customer needs and desires.
Getting Returns on Investments
Invest in marketing your business today, and yield returns on those investments. The more people learn about your brand and look into your website, the more likely they are to purchase your products or services. Get returns on your marketing investments by getting more customers.
Converting Website Visitors into Customers
Creating more leads through ads helps make people more aware of your brand and what you stand for. If what you’re selling and promoting appeals to the values and desires of consumers online, you’ll be converting website visitors into customers in no time.
So now that you’re sold on why you should be digitally marketing your business, let’s get into how we can develop a good marketing strategy to make that happen for you.
What are the Foundations of Digital Marketing?
In order to really kickstart your digital marketing strategies and lay your frameworks out, you need to understand the foundations of digital marketing.
Your marketing efforts depend entirely on how you manage these foundational elements and use them to your advantage to learn the ins and outs of your business and how your audience reacts to it.
Since there are hundreds of online marketing tools out there, it is important to focus on some of the important ones that get the job done effectively.
We’re here to show you which online tools to work with, without complicating matters for yourself.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the most cost-efficient and organic way of increasing your brand’s visibility. By strategically using keywords that rank higher on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and others, your website and content get shown to the right audience. The higher your brand’s visibility, the more likely it is to get higher traffic and potential customers. This is why SEO is so important. As mentioned earlier, everyone turns to the internet to research things they’re looking for or are interested in. So, using SEO to get noticed and ranked on a search will do you a lot more good than just putting your website out there and not getting any leads or traffic.
There are many ways in which you can find the keywords that rank well for your website. The first step is to find an SEO optimization website, such as Ahrefs, and search for keywords that describe your business and brand ethos well. Sift through those keywords by picking words that have higher search volumes and lower difficulty levels. This gives you a much higher chance of ranking better on Google’s search engine. There are many other websites that you can use to carry out SEO optimization. Find the one you like, and start researching!
If you’re having trouble figuring out how to go about the process, and which words to really target on your website, give us a call! We’re happy to consult with you and come up with a plan that works well for you and your business.
Online Ads
Ads pop up on your screen based on your interest and your recent searches. So basically, online advertising is tailored to your desires and needs. Now, there are many channels for online advertising, such as Youtube ads, Facebook ads, Linkedin ads, Instagram ads, and Google ads. As a business, you need to identify and recognize which platform works best for you, and what the best way is to reach your target audience. Most frequently, Google Ads and Facebook Ads are used to target audiences and get good results.
Ads are great, so make sure you create a budget for them. If you’re not sure how to go about budgeting your marketing expenses towards ads, we’re here to guide you through the process. One of the many things we do at Digital Hot Sauce involves creating ad budgets to track performances and help your business grow. So please do feel free to contact us, and a member of our expert team of professionals will be happy to have a consultation with you.
Content Marketing
Creating content that is relevant and can keep your audience engaged is the key to marketing content efficiently. You can do this in a number of ways: through blogs, newsletters, emails, infographics, and more. Similar to SEO, it is also an organic way to get traffic. The fun thing about content marketing is that it goes hand-in-hand with Search Engine Optimization. SEO-friendly content increases brand awareness, and when done strategically, can garner great results. Blogs help in making customers more in tune with your brand’s vision, products, and services.
If you’re wondering where to start, I get it, there’s a lot that goes into creating the right content. That’s where we step in. At Digital Hot Sauce, we can create a content strategy for you that matches your brand’s voice, identity, and goals. So check out our services and give us a call if you think we can help!
Social Media
Using your social media channels to effectively reach your target audience is a good way to market your brand. By staying relevant and up to date on social media trends, you can leverage your social channels to have a huge impact on your audience and increase traffic to your website. You can also track the reach of your content using analytic tools within your social media accounts, and use those metrics to identify patterns and find what works best for your business.
Pay-Per-Clicks
PPCs, similar to Ads, help increase the rankings on search engines. PPC brings your business ranking higher on the search engine page to drive more traffic to your website. You can set this up for as long as you like, depending on how long you’ve paid for it to occur. As the name suggests, every time someone clicks on your website through this PPC campaign, you’re charged a certain fee for it. The amount charged is fixed on the basis of the time period of the ad and the keywords used. Based on our previous experience, this method is good for short-term solutions such as promoting a new product or during seasonal sales.
If this is a form of paid marketing you want to take part in, it’s best to consult with an expert in the field to understand which words to target, how long to do it for, and how to go about the process.
We’re happy to walk you through this and help develop a strategy that works best for your business. Feel free to contact us for a free consultation.
Now that you know the digital marketing fundamentals that will help you take your business to the next step, it’s time to look into the tools that you can work with. Since there are so many out there, it’s important to make sure you pick the one that works best for your business.
What Digital Marketing Tools Do I Need to Help Me Grow My Business?
You won’t be able to market your brand, products, and services accurately if you don’t know who to reach and how to reach them. This is why analytics are so important in digital marketing. The analytics and data give you the ability to track and understand your marketing campaign. The data shows you what is working and what isn’t. It helps you understand where your traffic is coming from, where they migrate to on your website, which products/services are in demand, what stops them from making purchases, and much more. By understanding this data and your user behaviour, you will be able to tailor your content and marketing strategy to meet the needs, desires, and interests of your target audience.
So, if you’re ready to start tracking your website and audience behaviour, let’s get into what tools will work best for your business.
Google Analytics
The benefits of Google Analytics are immense. The platform helps you create a clear and focused marketing strategy for your business. If you’re wondering where your customers flock to on your website, where the traffic comes from, which products or services they seem to like the most, and what stops them from purchasing items in their cart, Google Analytics data will show it all to you. Learn more about your customer behaviour and what their desires and interests are, and tailor their experience based on that.
If you haven’t already, set up an account and optimize your Google Analytics profile to get the best results.
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager, when used with Google Analytics, is the ultimate dream team of digital marketing. While Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that focuses on data tracking and logging, Google Analytics houses this data and uses it to create and analyze reports. If you’re wondering what data Google Tag Manager can track, the answer is a lot of different things. Using GTM, you can gain access to your customer’s scrolling behaviour, PDF downloads, link clicks, form submissions, and even video activity.
Now is the time to set up your Google Tag Manager account to reap all the benefits it offers.
Google My Business
Google My Business allows potential customers to find your business quickly and efficiently. Your Google My Business listing, when optimized correctly, allows customers to leave reviews, answers questions and queries customers have, and provides contact information and website details. It also allows your business to show up on Google’s search engine easily, making it more accessible to the general public.
If you want to know more about Google My Business and how it can help your brand, check out our detailed blog.
So, we’ve helped you set up your accounts on these digital marketing platforms. Now it’s time to start building your marketing strategy around the data gathered. Are you ready? Let’s get into it together.
Building your Digital Marketing Strategy
Building your digital marketing strategy revolves a lot around setting measurable and doable goals, and determining your right target audience. Once you have that covered, take some time to research your competitors and set your content strategy to meet your customers’ needs and desires. Lastly, choose the right channels to display your tailored content in, and sit back and review your metrics.
If you think we’ve reached the end of it, that’s not the case. There is a lot that goes into perfecting your digital marketing strategies, but you have to know which tools to use when. Based on our experience, the following two strategies can take your business marketing campaign to the next level.
Website Heatmaps for Businesses
A Website heatmap is a data visualization tool that helps your business understand how specific pages on your website are performing. The tool uses a warm-to-cold colour palette to show the web page’s performance. The warmer colours show more customer engagement, and the colder colours show lower customer engagement.
The colours help you clearly visualize where your customers are clicking the most, whether or not they’re engaging with your Call To Action buttons, and other customer behaviour insights. So if you’re not a huge numbers person, heatmaps will be a great way to gather your customer behaviour data.
When optimized correctly, heatmaps will provide you with a lot of insights to help your business get on the right track and create a well-tailored user experience for your customers. So creating a heatmap for your business will go a long way.
Ranking Higher on Google
When you Google something, do you ever go onto the second page to view results? Like most of us, you probably find what you’re looking for on the first page and don’t look any further. We all know that websites that rank higher on the results page get more traffic, and thereby generating more business. And as a business, you want that for yourself as well.
So, how do you rank higher on Google’s search results? Well, having a well-optimized digital footprint will allow a wider audience to get wind of your business, and thereby make Google more likely to pay attention to your brand. Showing up on the first page of Google’s search engine results page (SERPs) is the ultimate goal, but it is not as simple as it seems. Becoming more visible on multiple online platforms doesn’t guarantee a place on the first page. In order to rank high, you need to make modifications to your website content. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. These modifications, along with information from your analytics, can make a noticeable difference in your site's user experience and performance in organic search results.
If you want to know more about SEO optimization and SERP results, we’re here to help. Contact us and one of our team members will be happy to have a chat with you and set up a free consultation.
Congratulations!
You’ve made it through this comprehensive guide on what the fundamentals of digital marketing are, and based on our hypothesis, you’re much better equipped to market your business online today. However, we’ve been in this field for a long time now, and we get it, sometimes you just need that professional help and expertise.
At Digital Hot Sauce, we’re always thinking about our clients and how we can help them reach their marketing goals. So, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Whether you have a solid plan that you want help in implementing or you have no idea how to go about the strategy and need some guidance, we’re here to help you and meet you where you’re at.
Let us do a quick audit of your business, for free.