Basic Digital Marketing

 Digital marketing tips, tricks, and the strategy you use are crucial to your business’ success.

Whether you are setting up your first digital marketing campaign or are very experienced with marketing online, we thought we’d share some advice on how you can think differently about success, what that means, and how to achieve long-term.

It’s up to you. You can make 2021 your biggest sales year yet, pandemic or not. Here is how.

Always Measure Your Digital Marketing Results

Analytics aren’t there to be an afterthought. You have endless amounts of data automatically compiled every day based off social media, website use, email, search engine clicks, and marketing. Use those.

When a brand needs it, PR is their best friend. When they aren’t in a crisis and public relations aren’t at the top of your list of things to think about, PR is non-existent for a lot of websites, businesses, and brands.

Public relations isn’t meant to be tapped into once every 6-12 months. PR is used continuously to freshen up a brand’s image, create positive conversations in the marketplace, present new products or services in a certain light, and position your brand for success.

At the heart of solid PR is digital marketing. There is no better way to reach an audience than through online channels, a la social media, email, video, and directly on your website. If these channels are underdeveloped or non-existent, there’s a problem.

 To stay competitive, a business must tap into the promotional tactics that are working. No marketing is as powerful as video. It communicates more than text does and is the ultimate storytelling tool.

Everyday users are bombarded with written content and social media posts. These come and go. Some get to read and liked. Then others move right on by. A video demands a user to stop, watch, and engage. It’s effective and it works.

Are you using video marketing to market your business – anyone can. All you need is the commitment to producing the videos.

You don’t need to hire a video marketing professional. Here is a little bit more about video marketing and what you need to make your own content. For those with time and initiative, it’s limitless what you can accomplish.

 Search rank is super important to the success of any website, brand, and content. If fans can’t locate your content, you can’t expect to improve your SEO rank on sites like Google, Bing, and social media.

The organic traffic you get from search engine-based sources is precious. SEO is an efficient want to spend on digital marketing while creating momentum you can sustain for the long term.

In a sense, it’s the holy grail of digital marketing, and getting on that first page of results is so important. Whether you’ve experienced a drop-off in placement or are struggling to outrank the competition, ask yourself these questions.

Here is how to get your content featured on the first search engine results page with SEO in 2021.

What is digital marketing? It's a complex inquiry with a straightforward response.

Digital marketing encompasses any internet marketing that promotes your brand on various digital platforms. A fundamental digital marketing campaign should aim to attract, engage, and convert potential customers. These are the three essential elements: attraction, engagement, and conversion.

There is a vast audience waiting on online platforms. On average, individuals spend more than 1.5 hours daily on their smartphones. During this time, they engage in activities such as texting, browsing social media, connecting with others, searching on Google or other platforms, reading the latest headlines, and much more. The opportunities to capture leads are abundant!

Now, how can small businesses effectively utilize digital marketing? That is an even more compelling question.

Different Elements of A Basic Digital Marketing Campaign

Everyone’s got a strategy for digital marketing. There are many ways to play a campaign but ultimately, they all work from the same basics. These are the categories we’re going to discuss today.

• Web site design
• Search engine optimization or SEO
• Content marketing
• Social media Marketing
• Video marketing

What Are the Goals of Digital Marketing?

The goals of digital marketing are to promote a brand, increase brand awareness, drive traffic to a website or landing page, generate leads, increase sales and revenue, and build customer loyalty. Digital marketing encompasses various tactics and strategies that are aimed at achieving these goals. 

One of the primary goals of digital marketing is to promote a brand and create brand awareness. This involves using various online channels such as social media, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and email marketing to reach a wider audience and increase brand visibility.

Driving traffic to a website or landing page is another crucial goal of digital marketing. This is achieved through tactics such as search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing and content marketing. By attracting more visitors to a website, businesses increase their chances of converting them into leads or customers.

Generating leads is another key objective of digital marketing. This can be done through tactics like email marketing, lead generation campaigns, and content marketing. By capturing the contact information of potential customers, businesses can nurture these leads and eventually convert them into paying customers.

Increasing sales and revenue is a fundamental goal of digital marketing. This is achieved by optimizing the conversion rate of a website or landing page, implementing effective sales funnels, and utilizing persuasive copywriting and design techniques.

Lastly, digital marketing aims to build customer loyalty and retain existing customers. This is done through strategies such as email marketing, personalized content, loyalty programs, and customer support. By providing a positive and engaging experience for customers, businesses can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, leading to repeat purchases and referrals.

Overall, the goals of digital marketing are centered around brand promotion, increase traffic, generating leads, increasing sales, and building customer loyalty. By aligning their strategies with these objectives, businesses can effectively leverage the power of digital marketing to achieve success in the online marketplace.

How is Website Design Connected to Digital Marketing?

A website is an owned asset. You create it, you manage it. Algorithms change. What’s popular on social media changes. Emails are temporary. As you go out to grab leads and customers, everything leads back to your website. This is the hub around which your digital marketing is built.

To this point, a website is where a lot of brands lose leads. Their websites aren’t fast, mobile responsible, or attractive. They don’t contain the information they should. Their eCommerce shopping experience is lackluster. Ensure your website’s on-point. Have a digital marketing and web site design expert evaluate your website.

What Does SEO Do to Your Digital Marketing?

Search Engine Optimization ( SEO)  has a big influence on digital marketing. It is what drives users to your website from search engines like Google. It’s dozens of strategies to get your website ranked high, getting you increased visibility more or less for free. SEO can be divided into two categories – on-page and off-page.

• On-page SEO is the technical work you do on your website. This includes creating algorithm-friendly content, optimizing content with keywords, improving site speed, creating internal links, using keywords in the URL and metadata, using headings, and more.
• Off-page SEO is the work you put in outside of your website. This includes building a collection of backlinks. That is, other websites that link back to yours. This indicates to search engines that your site is valuable and relevant. This will aid you in ranking high on any search platform.

Anyone willing to invest the time to earn the knowledge and create content on their site is capable of earning a high search engine ranking through SEO. The more exposure, the more leads. Simple as that.

What Are Different Types of Content Marketing?

Content is free. That’s why users love it. Content can be several things – funny, serious, long, short, entertaining, informative, etc. It’s up to you to decide what’s the most appropriate tone for content to take considering your audience.

Every piece of content is an opportunity to capture leads, interest new and existing customers, and provide value. The best content marketing is well-written, quality, relevant to your target audience, and truthful. Here are a few of the different types of content you may include in your digital campaign

• Landing pages
• Blogs
• Videos, i.e. YouTube
• Infographics
• E-books
• Podcasts
• How-to guides

Is influencer marketing part of digital marketing for small businesses?

Influencer marketing has become integral to digital marketing strategies, particularly for small businesses and restaurants  seeking to enhance their online presence and reach a wider audience. By leveraging the influential power of individuals with substantial online followings, small businesses can effectively promote their products or services, build brand awareness, and foster customer engagement.

In the contemporary digital landscape, where social media platforms dominate consumer interactions, influencer marketing presents a valuable opportunity for small businesses to amplify their brand messaging and authentically connect with their target audience. Collaborating with relevant influencers enables small businesses to tap into established online communities, expand their reach, and drive meaningful conversations around their offerings.

Moreover, influencer marketing allows small businesses to benefit from the credibility and trust influencers have cultivated with their followers. Small companies can establish authenticity and credibility by aligning their brand with influencers whose values and interests resonate with their target demographic, fostering trust and loyalty among potential customers.

Furthermore, the trackable nature of influencer marketing campaigns enables small businesses to measure the impact of their initiatives, assess their return on investment (ROI), and refine their marketing strategies accordingly. Through specialized tracking tools and performance metrics, small businesses can evaluate the effectiveness of their influencer collaborations, identify successful engagement strategies, and optimize future marketing campaigns for maximum impact.

How Do I Use Social Media For Business?

As important as any other digital marketing component is social media. Billions of accounts are spread across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and elsewhere. You can choose platforms where your audience is and you can start building a presence here.

How you use social media for business involves employing several different strategies. Find prospects cultivating these leads. Engage your existing audience with regular posts and outreach. Share content – such as blogs, images, and videos – with some regularity. Participate in conversations like those occupying trendy hashtags or local discussions when appropriate. Respond to customer complaints and queries. Share customer reviews. Promote marketing and general news about your brand. And so much more.

Social media is challenging only because it takes time. One has to stay involved in the conversation, be sure posts are going up, and ensure new and current followers are having questions, queries, and complaints responded to promptly.

Is Email Marketing An Effective Tool to Reach Customers With?

Though email isn’t as trendy today as it was twenty years ago, it’s still very, very important. We have email addresses like we have physical addresses. Email is the ‘home’ from which we coordinate various things relating to our digital experience.

Email marketing is the use of email to send out marketing information, such as discounts and promo codes, to advertise new products, to share contests, and to share a new digital marketing campaign.

An email has one of the highest ROI of any digital marketing strategy in 2021, bringing in an average return of $41 for every dollar spent. Here are the steps to take to build an email marketing campaign.

1. Start An Email List.
2. Amass Subscribers.
3. Create Content For Your Email Marketing Campaign, Featuring Updates, Videos, and Links to Your Latest Blog.
4. Segment Your Subscribers Based on Demographics, Purchase History, or Other Factors.
5. Set Up A Schedule to Send Out Emails At Recommended Times.
6. Follow Up By Monitoring How Many Conversions Are Attained.

How Do These Make Up A Digital Marketing Strategy?

After you’ve built for yourself a beautiful website, start filling it with regular blogs and content a minimum of once every two weeks. Ensure this content is optimized with SEO keywords  and formatted headings.

As you tap into your content marketing strategy, I want you to please be prepared to share this content on social media. Doing so might stimulate some likes, shares, and conversation, which can be responded to.

Then, at the end of the month, once you have a website with at least a few content posts, select the most popular and a product recommendation and send out an email blast with a coupon code.

At its essence, this is the skeleton of a digital marketing campaign any small business, brand, entrepreneur, or organization can use. It doesn’t require much more than that. However, this doesn’t mean success is guaranteed. Digital marketing is all about observing the data and tweaking it as we go along. Measure clicks—track success. Identify weak points or where you’re losing customers.

Your website could be difficult to navigate or slow. Your writing could be low-quality or not optimized correctly for search engines. Maybe there’s a way to write better social media posts to ensure the algorithms get them out organically. Maybe a paid social media advertising blitz is needed to jumpstart things. There are so many tweaks one can take to potentially increase engagement and performance metrics. This part is all about observation.

Generate awareness in the market. Inform the buyer and have them consider your product or service. Finally, the buyer decides whether to opt in (i.e. buy, like, become a follower, etc.). That’s sales 101, and it’s all possible with the right digital marketing strategy executed correctly.

Unlimited Exposure has the tools and expertise to meet any digital marketing small business challenge. We are all about return on investment. From affordable web site design to implementing and integrating CRM and Chatbots on your eco-digital system.   Your marketing should ideally generate the returns to justify it. We’ll work hard for those results. For a personalized, custom digital marketing strategy that fits your needs and audience, please speak to one of our data-driven performance experts today.

Amazon is the #1 online retail site, the top eCommerce site in the world, and the largest source for online shopping.

For any brand selling products or services online, there’s a lot to learn from Amazon in digital marketing and eCommerce web design.

Everything from the way you build your online shopping store to how products are presented, marketed, and shared on social media has a direct impact on what matters most – sales and revenues.

How Do I Create An eCommerce Page Like Amazon?

Amazon, like Walmart, sells a variety of goods. There is no niche marketing on Amazon. It’s all general merchandise marketing that benefits them. Amazon, Walmart, and other brands recognize their users are coming to them for a wide array of products. You’re different.

You have to know your audience when creating eCommerce web design and marketing. Crafting the look and feel of your online shopping experience should use images, tone, and language of the audience.

Marketing on the Internet can’t function without content. It’s the reason why people click and share.

Take away content and all that’s left is shameless promotion. Surely, no brand wants that. Consumers want value in the content they consume. This is the currency around which social media’s built as well as other systems of marketing, such as web design, email, SMS, video, and others.

With the right content, a brand can almost do anything. Consider it the ‘secret sauce’ in digital marketing. Content can engage and retain existing customers, entice new consumers from around the world, successfully launch products or services, and spur growth in a way no other strategy can.

Here are the 7 types of content marketing you can find on social media. Here is everything you need to know on how to use them to drive growth in a time-tested social media campaign tailored to your audience.

There’s been no event like the last twelve months of pandemic that has had such a profound impact on businesses at both a local and global level.

 There have been billions in lost revenues, companies that have shut down permanently, and unpredictability that has made it difficult to project, invest, sell, profit, and move forward.

 Though 2021 continues to see regions all over the world fight COVID-19 infection rates, the distribution of highly-effective vaccines has meant a light at the end of the tunnel. Now’s the perfect time to strategize.

 The months ahead are going to be a complete re-launch for a lot of brands. This means a crowded market, a lot of established players vying for the same target audience, and an opportunity to make gains for new businesses.

 Let this be your guide. Here are 21 ways you can succeed in digital marketing in 2021. Trends. Strategies. A way forward. For any brand or small business, start here to make the most of the opportunities ahead.

 Have you embraced video as a key part of your digital marketing strategy – if not, here’s why that’s the wrong move?

 More than any other content type, it’s a video that’s reaching 1,000,000s of consumers every day.

 Globally, video outperforms all other content on key social media sites, from Facebook to Instagram.

 Video is a way to engage your target audience, grow your business, and start a healthy conversation around your brand that generates clicks, shares, likes, followers, and most importantly sales.

 You don’t need to hire a professional or a digital marketing agency to create videos for digital marketing.

Using the technology on your smartphone and a few handy tools on a laptop, you can accomplish a lot.

Crafting a video. Editing a video. Publishing a video. Promoting a video. You can do it all.

A smart video marketing campaign keeps you competitive and taps into a growing audience of users who prefer video content in contrast to reading a blog you’ve written or social media infographic.

A video is a call-to-attention. A user has to click on it. It’s a stop-and-watch. There’s a lot on the line with a video. They’re more time-consuming to produce than a blog. While you are asking more from your audience, when done right, video marketing rewards are everything you want them to be and more.

 How to start a blog is simple. Come up with a title, fill in a few paragraphs, and post it on your website.

 You certainly don’t need us to tell you how to create a blog. How to write a blog for content marketing though is a slightly different story.

Content marketing is about taking what you have to say and optimizing it to drive visits, likes, shares, revenues, and more. Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean people will read it. However, learning how to market it and writing in a more marketing-focused tone can get you those eyes.

 Some want to write a blog but never get started. They don’t know what to write about.

 Don’t sabotage yourself. Commit. Here is how to start a blog for a content marketing campaign.

 COVID-19 has changed social media habits and patterns in substantial ways. As a digital marketing firm, this has opened up major opportunities to feature brands in new and exciting ways.

If you still see social media as simply a communication channel for users to keep in touch with friends, you’re missing out on the multi-billion dollar value platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and others have.

Shift your priorities. Take control. Re-engage your business. Reinvent, innovate, and earn customers. Here are some of the biggest insights we’ve seen from the past year dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic on social media.

SEO, aka search engine optimization, is used by brands to attract sales, bring traffic to their website, and drive growth. It’s a key digital marketing strategy.

SEO has changed so much since the early days of keyword-loading and backlink-filling. More sophisticated and technical than it’s ever been, today’s SEO relies on a mix of on-page and off-page optimization strategies to place high-quality websites.

In this guide, we provide all the answers to grow your small business website with SEO best practices.

 COVID-19 has cut small businesses down. Some have had to shut their doors permanently. A marketing plan centered on social media is your opportunity to re-establish your brand and cultivate a following.

 There’s still time. If you haven’t yet optimized your social media marketing for this new environment, the benefits are still there and the effort will be worth it.

 Let’s look at how other businesses and brands have been using social media in the COVID-19 pandemic. When done successfully, you do two things – re-establish your brand and cultivate growth.

What Makes Social Media A Successful Strategy?

 Being active and having a goal-driven social media marketing plan. This is how you build presence.

 Brands who are using social media the right way have tapped into it as a customer service channel, are generating leads, expanding their audience, driving sales, increasing web traffic, and recording feedback.

 Set goals. Have multiple goals in mind that you can measure. If you don’t know what you’re looking to accomplish, there’s no way to know if a plan is working. Being active isn’t enough. Discover the objectives that would benefit you in the largest way possible.

 Do you run a business? If the answer’s yes, you should be selling online.

Are you looking to make the highest profits possible this year? If the answer’s yes, you definitely want to be selling online right now.

Do you sell products and services to customers locally or internationally? Once again, if the answer’s yes, you should be selling online.

Selling online is the art of eCommerce. Regardless of what kind of business you operate, eCommerce has room for every room. The consumer demand is there. Web design and digital marketing services are tailor-made for eCommerce websites. If you don’t already have a storefront online, get one. Here’s why.

Crucial to any marketing is its ability to connect. A brand can make anything it wants from the connection. From sales and revenues and profits to social media numbers and engagement metrics, it all comes down to how well a campaign connects.

A lot of marketers do it wrong. They don’t focus on the customer. They focus on making unsubstantiated claims. “We do it better.” “We are the best.” “We are different.” Though all important assuming what’s being said is true, claims don’t prioritize the consumer.

The ‘modern consumer’ is intelligent and experienced with ad campaigns and marketing messaging. As a brand, it is your task to target your audience, capture their business, and then nurture that relationship in the long-term to facilitate further benefit.

This article is about target-and-capture marketing with the modern consumer. Make it your business to successfully connect with your target audience. Do this and wonderful things can happen for your brand.

 Don’t look at 2020 as a write-off year. Too many have. It’s lazy and short-sighted.

 From the worldwide pandemic, no one expected the economic shutdown, it’s no secret that most businesses have struggled. With every new market, however, there breeds opportunity.

 Some brands have gone on the offensive in the last six months and are in fact thriving – not just surviving! The game hasn’t changed. The objective is the same. Profitability, revenues, more customers, more sales. What has changed, however, is consumer behaviour.

 There is a wealth of opportunity out there left for your brand to grab onto and maximize. Avoid the pitfalls of operating a profit-seeking business in COVID-19 by strengthening your brand representation, re-focusing on reaching and keeping customers, and investing in digital marketing.

Are You A Survivor or a Thriver?

 Before we move forward, ask yourself this exact question. If you just want to survive, good luck.

 Unfortunately, that’s not the type of results digital marketing is in the business of making. Presumably, find help elsewhere.

 If you want to thrive, now’s the time to overhaul your marketing, double down, and commit. Forward-looking projections should prioritize how you’re going to overcome and transform, adapting to new consumer behaviours and a new disruption.

 Don’t just keep up. Step up. Stop sitting back and set the foundation for your brand’s future. Disruptions happen all the time in the marketplace. Successful brands remain successful by evolving. Like Darwinism, only the strong and smart will survive. Even major corporate industry-leaders are faltering because they haven’t made the right moves. Here’s where to start.

SEO has changed significantly this year. It’s grown even more competitive in the COVID era.

Businesses are seeing more value in moving operations online, opening eCommerce stores, marketing via search engines and social media, and continuing to see revenues even in a pandemic.

To outpace your competition and rank high on search engines like Google, a small business website SEO strategy is needed. Let this be your intro to search engine optimization.

What you will read in this article are tested techniques that will maximize the likelihood of not only a first-page ranking but a first-place ranking. Here is what all businesses need to know when building their COVID-19 recovery digital marketing strategy.

 2020 isn’t the year any of us were expecting. Every business on the planet has seen disruptions somewhere. Customers have disappeared. Profits that once were skyrocketing have now bottomed out for many corporations and small businesses. Some have even faced the worst – permanent closures.

Though the coronavirus pandemic is still in full swing and with no end yet in sight, the initial shutdown has faded to reveal a partial reopening with new rules and safety policies. So companies have reopened. Great news! However, this doesn’t mean the customers, profit opportunities, and revenues have returned.

Make no mistake. It’s a tough time. Making money on top of breaking even will be a goal and beyond that, projections on profitability aren’t even worth making with the volatility of the environment right now. Despite all the bad, opportunity is still there. A business that works proactively today sets them up for success in the future.

Content is marketing’s secret sauce. It’s why people click. It’s how new brands establish themselves. It’s how existing brands sell more products than the competition. All industries are reliant on quality of content.

Content marketing is increasing in value. Even as consumer behaviour changes, content is something every business needs to learn to specialize in. Here are the best content marketing strategies and guides on how to do content marketing.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is your best form of advertising. It’s an ‘ad in disguise’, in a way. The vast majority of Internet users are using some sort of ad blocking software. Your traditional Internet marketing PPC ads no longer work.

Can social media marketing make you money – if you deliver your campaign correctly, it absolutely should.

Social media is a favourite subject of new businesses. After all, it’s free advertising. You make a post. It goes out. Potentially, thousands of users will see it and maybe way, way more. Unfortunately, to get the best results, it’s not this simple.

You have to get noticed. Dozens of brands like yours are already on social media. They have audiences feeding likes, shares, and attention. How you get your target audience locked into your brand on social media requires nothing short of strong, effective, and focused social marketing.

Your customer’s your best promoter. A great customer’s worth their weight in gold. A customer willing to promote you to their friends and family, or leave a positive review, can pay off in dividends.

Word-of-mouth advertising in digital marketing trumps all. It always has in marketing. It’s the ultimate ‘new business’ generator. When we hear an opinion we trust give their approval on a product or brand, it knowingly and unknowingly influences our decision-making around said brand in a number of ways.

So how do you turn your customer into an influencer marketing opportunity – there are several ways.

When you sell, you survive. Sales are how business gets by. Next year, eCommerce sales will increase to $4.88 trillion globally. A large reason why is SEO.

Search engine optimization is about getting visibility in the cutthroat world of the internet. Competition is always learning. New digital marketing trends are on the upswing. SEO has not gone away.

SEO gets you noticed. It helps you convert prospects into customers. It gives a business momentum. SEO = sales.

SEO best practices have changed a lot over time. If you don’t know what works for SEO in 2020, don’t worry. We’ve got it covered. Here are the best SEO strategies to maximize sales and increase revenues.

Even expert social media marketers sometimes don’t want to admit to themselves when something’s not working.

Why a strategy on social media isn’t working often can be tied to one or more truths. Despite changes in algorithms, platforms, and social media trends, some things just stay the same. Every brand needs to hear these. Here are some social media selling truths you can use to sell more, create more followers, and get more from your social strategy.

Your presence isn’t guaranteed sales

Creating a profile and making some posts doesn’t equate to success. Social media selling is science, art, and adaptability. You’ve got to move quick, be smart, and be willing to change what you’re doing according to what’s working.

Happiness and joy. Sadness and tears. Anger and frustration. Emotions invoke a response. They motivate action. When we build marketing on emotion, it connects!

Think about it. The most meaningful purchases a person makes are based on emotion. The products, brands, and companies we connect with most deeply on are an emotional level.

Emotion is in the art of storytelling. A brand tells a story and it humanizes them. Even a customer who might not see value or who may not understand how a product relates to them can connect with an emotional story.