What are the basics of Digital Marketing?
If you are a business of any kind, you need to be able to market yourself in the right way, so that you can find audiences, raise awareness of your brand, convince consumers to choose your product or service, and also build consumer loyalty. Nowadays, with digital technology finding its way into nearly every aspect of our lives, it makes sense that Digital Marketing would be the most effective marketing approach for businesses – especially small businesses or startups. TechQuarters, an IT support company in London, spoke to us about digital marketing – they credit digital marketing with the success they have at delivering their IT Support Solutions.
We asked TechQuarters about how they’ve utilized digital marketing to grow their business, and they stated that in fact, it has helped to shape their offering for small business IT support London-based customers have found so valuable over the years, giving them a more tailored and uniquely designed service that they truly can profit from.
What is Digital Marketing?
To start with, let’s define marketing. It is the process of providing value that meets the demands of markets and consumers – a process that includes exploring what values consumers have, what value your business can create to appeal to consumers, and also the means with which your business can deliver that value. At its core, it is about communicating with customers to raise awareness and loyalty towards your brand. Digital marketing is where you do all of this exclusively through digital channels, such as social media, search engines, email, and digital advertising. For instance, if a business provided IT support for Financial Services companies, their digital marketing efforts would include raising the awareness financial companies have of their business and finding ways to connect with potential customers in that sector.
So, what are the basic requirements for digital marketing?
Search Engine Optimization
We are all familiar with search engines, even if you don’t know the term – think of Google, Bing, or Yahoo. They make it a lot easier to find information within the vast libraries of information that is the internet. Without search engines, it would be very difficult to look for information, websites, or other content online, and they are usually the first port of call for people browsing the web.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the effort businesses make to place their brand at the top of the rankings of search engines. Search engines work by identifying relevant results according to the search query a user enters (such as a question, phrase, or combination of keywords). Most users these days favour the top results, because they associate more credibility with content that appears high on rankings – and this is precisely why SEO is important for digital marketing, it provides your brand with credibility.
Email Marketing
Still one of the most common forms of digital marketing, email can be a major source of potential business for a company. Email marketing is much the same as traditional postal marketing and advertising. A business simply sends commercial emails to users, intended to advertise their brand to the consumer. Email marketing can be used to increase traffic on a business’ website, offer promotional deals, or simply get users to engage with your brand.
Pay-Per-Click
This is a form of paid advertising that also centres around search engines. A business can pay to have an ad for their company appear under certain search terms. For instance, if a user searches for legal advice in a certain area of their country, they might see ads for businesses that offer legal advice in that same region – this is an example of pay-per-click advertising. Every time a user clicks on a PPC ad, a charge is made to the business that set up the ad. PPC is similar to SEO, in that both aim to increase traffic to a website. SEO provides what we call organic traffic, whereas PPC is paid traffic. Both have their advantages, and can easily be used in tandem.