WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING?
What is digital marketing?
Conceptually, digital marketing is the same as the promotional part of traditional marketing – it’s about getting your brand in front of the right people at the right time – only now, everyone’s attention is online.
Digital marketing is then important because if your potential customers are online, then you need to be as well.
I would say that the single most important marketing concept to get right in 2021 is the seamless experience of your brand, both on and offline. This means that no matter where your customer interacts with your brand, the experience of that interaction should be the same. The same scrolling through Instagram as it is strolling through your store. The same in an email exchange as opening a parcel that has been delivered.
Because of this, digital marketing has to be both thoughtful and creative. It needs to perfectly balance art and science and bounce effortlessly between vision & detail, numbers & originality and, opinion & results.
To develop a digital marketing strategy, think about all the places where your brand appears online. These ‘places’ are the touch points that you need to activate within your digital marketing strategy. The channels you need to consider and set out a deliberate plan for.
The six touch points of digital marketing include;
/ SOCIAL MEDIA
A digital marketing strategy needs to include a plan for how you will use social media for your brand. Choose 2 or max 3 platforms and do those well, don’t try and be everywhere all at once if you’re just starting out. Instagram + Facebook and/or LinkedIn is our recommendation for sharing brand-owned content right now. You need to think about what you’re hoping to achieve by having your business on social media (brand awareness is usually the topline reason here), the kind of content you will share, what that content will look like and who will be responsible for sharing it.
/ A BLOG OR ONLINE PUBLICATION
A great way to develop content for social media is to write a blog that lives on your website. You can then share the topics, ideas and even copy from this blog in small snippets across social media. Your blog or online publication should provide free information about what it is that you do. Take a look at this digital mini magazine we published for Enhance Travel as an example.
/ EMAIL & NEWSLETTERS
Done well, this is still an excellent way to communicate with your customers. These are your true potential customers who have opted in to receive content from you. So, make receiving another email into their inbox worth their while. One email once a week or once a fortnight is about right.
/ INLFUENCERS, BRAND AMBASSADORS & KOLs
Smart partnerships that involve inviting a member of the new media to take your product or service for an incentivised test drive is essential for a robust digital marketing strategy. This test drive results in earned media mentions which can be cleverly repurposed across the above three digital marketing touch points (with the Influencer’s approval). It is still for the most part manual and time consuming, but completely worth it. If you have the budget, you could explore a platform like Vamp. You can read more about Influencer Marketing here.
/ ADVERTISING
Paid social media amplifies owned and earned content so it can reach a larger ideal audience. You can put $ behind both earned (influencer created) and owned (brand created) media that has performed well organically, targeted to your ideal customer. A comprehensive analytical discipline is essential here to measure and act on results.
/ WEBSITE SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is about positioning your website as the clear choice for visitation on Google search. There are six key components to get right; headings, images, back links, site titles, content and social sharing. More traffic to your website is more people who can discover your products and services.
Create a plan that details how you will address each of these six touch points and you will have a digital marketing strategy that is relevant to real consumer behaviour in 2021.
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