Digital Marketing
What a terrific looking website you have there! Visually stunning! Really easy for customers to quickly find what they’re looking for! It’s architecturally well designed. And it loads like lightning. A lot faster than the 3 second time limit where most people bail off a slow loading website. You’ve done a great job so far.
Now the time is right to get digital marketing in place. You’ve taken a look at it, and may even have even been already burned by a high priced jargon genius on one end of the spectrum or a bargain basement guy with a deal just too good to pass up at the other. The big box providers are taking runs at you. Folks like DEX and Google relentlessly rattle your cage.
The mist is clearing, and you realize there are a lot of services being offered, but it’s a minefield guessing which ones are best for you? And the pricing! It is all over the place! You get insanely high quotes and alternately ones so low you wouldn’t dare touch them.
Let’s make some sense out of the chaos called digital marketing.
Digital marketing is today’s most preferred form of advertising. While traditional medias like radio, television, direct mail, and outdoor still exist, their impact and dominance are greatly reduced. They still have their place. The curse of advertising and marketing for business owners is that unfortunately, when used correctly and when the right media is matched to the goals we wish to accomplish, all media works.
Here’s a small example
Mike’s Neighborhood Carwash places flyers under windshield wipers at the same shopping centers within a mile or two of it’s business for 5 weekends in a row. By the 5th week it will begin to work, and here’s why. The first time a driver found the flyer, they were pissed and jerked it out from under the wiper and threw it out. Hopefully in a trash can later and not on the parking lot. The second time they found the flyer under their wiper, they were pissed off again, and looked at it to see who put it there. Maybe they began to skim read it. The third time, they read it and maybe caught the message that if they bring along the coupon here, they’ll get a hefty discount on a carwash at Mike’s. The fourth time one of two things happened: they knew what it said, didn’t want it, and trashed it immediately; or they had a dirty car, seriously considered the offer, and kept the coupon. The fifth time was a repeat of the last cycle, but the carwash is now seeing customers coming in with coupons. This is a simplistic example because, of course, there are variables, and couponing is not always a good option for a business. But you get my drift. Each media has a certain strength and audience appeal. When a business brands consistently with messages carefully crafted for the type of media being used and has a measurable call to action which is properly funded to get enough penetration and repetition, the campaign works. But digital marketing is dominating. And it is dominating because of the cosmic shift from brick and mortar shopping to online shopping, from relying on advertising for information to relying on devices with search engines, from relying on the advice of neighbors to relying upon reviews, friends, and family. The Information Age and the rise of the Internet has clearly and forever changed the way we interact in and with the world. When the Internet emerged in the 1980’s, it was the bright new shiny object that attracted high interest for both communication and for advertising & marketing. The trend continued its rocketing ascent and has in fact displaced traditional media as the biggest share getter for advertising revenue. Google now holds the #1 advertising revenue position. In 2019 Google’s website ad revenue was $113,000,000,000. You’re reading correctly. Facebook is in the #2 position. For the first time in U.S. history as of February 2019, digital companies made more in advertising revenue than either of the two historical leaders, television and print. Without question digital devices dominate our lives, meaning the shortest distance between you and your customer is digitally. The cell is constantly with me when radio, television, print, and so on are not. In it’s crudest definition, digital marketing is an advertising message or display that appears on an electronic device. Digital marketing is no longer a choice, it is a need. A must.Types of digital marketing
- Pay per click (PPC)is a huge money maker for Google, but most importantly, it is a valuable tool for commerce. A person types or dictates what they’re looking forinto their browser and Google pops up a webpage with what its robotsdeem are the best answers. In the top section of that webpage Google places and gets paid for the 3listings or advertisements you typically see. To the right side of the page you might see a map with businesses shown on it. This map section is important for Local SEO which we’ll cover in a bit. Farther down the page is a list of information sources or businesses that meet the query. This is commonly called “organic.” Now going back to the paid advertising area at the top, the advertisers only pay for an ad when someone clicks on it…thus the name “pay per click.” Businesses set a budget with Google and bid to get space. Some types of businesses pay much more than others because in that particular geographical area or market segment a lot of businesses are competing to have exposure. In Las Vegas, for example, when people search for “personal injury lawyer” the cost per click is expensive and well over $100, while the cost for “shoe store” clicks are only $2 per each. The nice thing is that your business gets FREE advertising presence and visibility when appearing in the cost per click section as long as people do not happen to click on you. Of course, people who do click on you are usually quite interested. Closing or success rate tends to be higher than what are normally experienced. PPC is good for reaching people who are actively shopping, but not necessarily good for building brand awareness and image or for correcting misperceptions about your business. Be careful. Pay per click is a drug and like all drugs should be taken carefully because, indeed, there are bad side effects.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) makes it possible for your ad to appear on the results page when Google, Bing, or one of the other search engines pull up answers. It’s effective advertising because you know your product and service are being exposed to people who have interest in what you do. These paid ads look like organic results, but they are at the top of the results list and have an “Ad” label in front of them. You’re in front of people who are actively looking.You control the demographics and psychographics of who sees you and when. Keywords can be targeted. You can even steal customers away from competitors by using their company name.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)is a process to move businesses higher up the organic listing of search results. For businesses, it’s an area of free clicks farther down the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
It’s important to have a website that:
- Loads quickly and is mobile friendly
- Has well thought out titles forits pages
- Includes good keywords in copy
- Tags photos
- Cultivates good proximity, relevance, and prominence
- Updates often
- Has a sitemap
- Local SEO or what is coming to be called Map Pack is all about having the public find you first, fast, and in the know about how to get in contact. To the uninitiated the Internet is the wild frontier, full of chaos and hard to keep control of. For Local SEO to work well contact information has to be CORRECT AND CONSISTENT across the worldwide web. You want to get a place on the map area of search engine results pages (SERPs), have a correct Google My Business profile, develop good citations, and monitor to constantly improve.
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)The 3 biggest social medias are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Worldwide Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla with 2.7 BILLION users per month, while Instagram has 854 million users and Twitter clocks in with330 million. They rank in the same order for the U.S. The best practice in social media is to post really creative videos, photos, graphics, jokes, and stories that people will glom onto and share. You want your posts to go as viral as possible. Some businesses stoop to false claims and sensationalism that we, of course, do not recommend. Businesses can also buy and place commercial advertising on social media platforms. To a very fine degree filters sort for the best customerto will see your ad.
- Email MarketingThough some might say email marketing is not digital marketing, it is certainly kin. Sending a commercial message via email to generate sales, boost image, increase loyalty, or maintain contact has value in the Digital Age. Today’s post office is online. Look at the massive numbers of messages in your inbox and sent email files. Early on marketers discovered the immediacy and targetability of reaching out to prospective customers via email. It began innocently enough with businesses soliciting email addresses from people via loyalty clubs, register to win prizes, or simply asking. Email gathering rapidly became the electronic way to bypass direct mail high cost and relatively low return on investment. When the postman rang, a good return expectation was 1% - 2%. Today businesses not only reach their proprietary database of customers, but they can mirror those people and solicit like-minded and life-styled people. Costs are much lower than snail mail, results are more trackable, meaning we can tell when they opened the email, how long they spent with it, and what pages were viewed the most and longest. However email campaigns are conducted, privacy and an opt out feature are paramount.
- Banner Ads,Display Ads, and Native Ads Banner Ads are rectangular displays across the top or bottom of webpages. Display Ads are rectangular or square ads off to the sides of webpages. They were the first form of advertising to appear on webpages, and the two have been around for about 25 years now. They typically get a .05 click thru rate. Not a lot, but they do have a positive effect on brand awareness. Researchers profess the public has developed “banner blindness” having trained their eyes to avoid them. Accordingly, Native Ads evolved. These are designed to blend in or appear to be part of the content people read. Rather than being an in your face, hard sell, Native Ads appear editorial or advertorial, if you will. They have a softer, in context visual, approach. Native Ads appear in search engines, social media, news/entertainment feeds, and much more.
- Content Marketing might be thought of as “indirect marketing.” It’s when a business promotes its products and services by placing useful information out on the Internet and in various entities on the Internet. By posting articles, information, blogs, videos, brochures, photos, and such your business gets seen and known by more people. For content marketing to be successful it has to be relevant and valuable, not spammy, repetitive, and mindlessly packed with keywords in a vain attempt to appeal to Google spiders. The buzz phrase in today’s digital world is “content is king” meaning, when your content is great it gets picked up and spread around the Internet by others. An entertaining or unusual video that people share is terrific. An enlightening article that conveys timely and useful information works wonders. When you build and publish exceptional content other sites will recommend yours, and sometimes copy, cite, and steal from you.