Without good marketing, no business can survive. Whether it’s the small mom & pop store on the street corner in your neighborhood. Or the big Wal-Mart retailer that you hate going to – but still have to. The same applies to any business that operated in antiquity or the medieval period. Or even before that, when people first learned how to transact. How would customers buy from you, if they don’t know what you’re selling? Recently, I came across a very informative Digital Marketing blog through my monthly Optimum offer. And this post is mostly a distillation of some of the important points it contained.
If you’re interested in using digital marketing in your business, however, you first need to understand what it’s all about. Just like with any other practical discipline in the world.
Digital Marketing 101
Digital Marketing, in a nutshell, is all about using various online channels to promote your brand. Done through:
- Organic Marketing (which ideally does not involve any money)
- Paid Promotions
Organic marketing features using such tactics as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Social Media Marketing.
Breaking SEO Down
SEO is the name given to a collection of website content optimization tactics that help a site to rank high. Good rankings in SERPs (search engine results pages) are key to increasing a site’s visitor count. This point becomes obvious if you visualize the situation in your head.
Everyone’s familiar with Google search. When you enter a search term, the results page that shows up has two parts.
One is the ‘paid listings’ section, where sponsored ads from different companies show up. These ads relate to your search intent (the product, service or information that you were seeking).
The other is the ‘organic listings’ section. This is Google’s (and every other search engine’s) main focus. The entries in this space are decided by the engine’s algorithm based on what SEO techs call ‘ranking factors’. Till date, search marketers have compiled a list of over 200. These are the benchmarks which every crawled website is weighed against. And the ones that confirm the most to these standards are given the highest SERP placements.
The Importance of Ranking High
For SEO, it is very important to get their clients’ businesses pages ranked in the first 3 positions. Because these are the placements that receive the highest traffic turnover. In your own experience, you probably never look below the first three search result entries. Since on most occasions, you find what you’re looking for.
It is now a well-known marketing fact that search engine optimized sites rank high. And that they end up making significantly more profit than the sites that are below in rankings. Because they obviously get more customers.
The main focus of SEO is getting a website’s content formatted in a certain way. One which search engine bots like. And which is understandable to the algorithm, so that it categorizes it properly. You wouldn’t want your bathroom accessories site to rank for automobile-specific keywords.
This further includes watching out for such concerns as proper:
- Keywords Insertion (in the H1 – H6 Headings/Tags)
- Word Count (1000+ is ideal)
- Credible Resource Linking (3rd party Sources, and Internal)
- Content Readability (Crucial for decreasing site ‘bounce rates’)
SEOs also need to take care of many front end & backend website development factors. These also have a strong bearing on a site’s rankings.
Paid Promotions
As their name implies, these require you to pay some (or a lot of) currency. Their form can include PPC (pay-per-click) and CPI (cost-per-impression) campaigns. Run on search engines and social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Paid campaigns are extremely useful for any company looking for instant online promotions. And especially startups, that instantly need to get the word out on their products & services.
Sometimes, the cost of running these campaigns isn’t that huge either. Particularly not when you weigh it against the return – which is a lot of consumer attention. As well as profits.
Short & Long-term Strategy
For a long-term online marketing strategy, you really can’t rule out SEO. Because through it, you can save a lot on your advertising costs. But at the same time, you do need to maintain a funds reserve. For whenever a rainy day should strike, and you need to connect with your customers instantly.
So what you really need in place is a wise, long-term strategy – that counts on a hybrid approach.
In this sense, the option is going completely organic is only possible when your brand is fully established. In a manner in which the Optimum Internet Price page is today. Having worked fulltime on this project, I would know. The platform hosts more than eighteen thousand visitors daily. One-quarter of which figure regularly convert.