Digital Marketing Made Simple | Simplemachine

Posted July 31, 2019

Businesses thrive when customers find them, see their unique value, purchase their products/services, and tell their friends about their fantastic experience. Businesses fail when no one finds them.

Do you want your business to thrive? You need to make it:

Easier for customers to find you
Possible for customers to see your unique value
Simple to buy your products or acquire your services
An effortless joy for your customers to share their wonderful experience with your company to their friends and family

Digital marketing helps you find your customers. With the help of a digital marketing agency, you can get customers’ attention and keep it coming.

The Power of Digital Marketing

Marketing through digital channels makes it possible to connect with millions of potential customers around the globe. It also makes it possible to target finite groups in a specific age range, interested in a particular hobby, living in a certain location. The ability to cast a wide net or to narrow your focus is one of the strengths of digital marketing.

Many digital marketing efforts can be tracked in real-time. For example, you can run an ad campaign on Facebook targeting 40-50-year-old women in the NYC metropolitan area, interested in high-end beauty products. With certain tools, you can track every view, click, comment, or like the ad receives as it happens. It tells you how well your ad did versus your expectations.

Digital marketing helps drive your customers into the sales funnel and nurtures them every step of the way. As any digital marketing agency will tell you, it’s important to leverage multiple techniques and tools to achieve the best results.

Digital Marketing: Tools and Techniques

#1 Your Website

Your website is the place where your customers meet your business. It’s where they get to know you, learn some things about you, and, hopefully, buy your products or learn more about your services.

If you are a direct retailer, you need an eCommerce website designed to funnel customers into the online store, with easy navigation and checkout. Customers should never wonder about where to find a product or how to get checked out quickly and securely.
If you are a service provider, you need a website that encourages visitors to call a number or make an appointment. You educate consumers about what your business offers and what makes you unique. A customer should have no problems finding a phone number or browsing your blog.
If your primary goal is to generate leads for your sales force, your website needs to educate consumers on your products while encouraging them to fill out a form to receive more information.

A website can make or break your business. That’s why it’s important to have an experienced design and marketing team available to ensure its success.

#2 SEO

Search engine searches are what get people to where they want to go. You need to position yourself to become a destination of choice for those potential customers. That’s where search engine optimization comes into play.

SEO is a term that covers a range of techniques designed to position a particular website as high as possible in search engine results. A primary way this is done is by leveraging the use of phrases, known as keywords; a potential customer might use to find a particular type of business. For example, someone could search for “jewelry store near me,” “plumber Little Rock,” or “hockey equipment.”

But, SEO is more than just using keywords. It’s designing a website that is attractive to search engines. For example, search engines, like Google, place a higher value on websites that are frequently updated as opposed to static websites that never change.

#3 Content

Content is what provides value to potential customers and a good deal of what search engines use to determine a site’s rank. Content comes in many forms. Blog posts, articles, videos, white papers, podcasts, eBooks, and infographics are just a few examples of content used by your digital marketing agency to promote your business.

Potential customers often first visit your website due to a piece of your content showing up in search engine results. Alternatively, they might have a social media friend recommend some of your content in a link. It brings natural traffic to your website.

#4 Online Advertising

Besides drawing people in through search engines and content, you can also attract potential customers through online advertising. You can advertise through a social media channel like Facebook, or use the services offered by search engines like Google’s AdWords.

Online advertising can be quite granular, using keyword or location placement. For example, if you are advertising jewelry in Los Angeles, your digital marketing agency can create AdWord campaigns around “jewelry in Los Angeles” or “wedding rings in LA.”

#5 Social Media

Social media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, offer a multitude of ways to reach potential customers. Your business can create a presence that encourages customers to follow you and your content. This helps build your brand and position you as a leader in your industry.

Many of the social media channels also offer direct marketing options, such as Facebook ads. Your digital marketing agency can help you identify the best channels for your company’s products/services.

#6 Lead Generation

Generating leads is the most important objective of digital marketing. It is the process of identifying and nurturing potential customers for your company’s services and/or products.

Traffic comes to your website in the form of anonymous visitors. Your goal is to transform that anonymous visitor into a lead. That’s done by asking for some form of identifying information, such as a first name and an email address.

It can be in exchange for a premium item such as an eBook or whitepaper.
It could be to sign up for a recurring newsletter.
It might be to request an appointment with a service provider.

The process of lead generation differs by industry. It’s important to work with a digital marketing agency that understands how to set up a lead generation process that fits your company’s needs.

#7 Review Generation

Today’s consumers have many ways of judging whether they want to do business with you or not. One way is by checking out online reviews. If the only thing out there is negative reviews, potential customers are going to be driven away.

Review generation helps get a larger number of reviews out in the public eye. It requires asking current customers to give positive reviews. These reviews help promote your business and build your brand. It also gives you the power to address negative reviews in a proactive manner that shows you care about your customers.

These tools and techniques are what drive digital marketing efforts. However, successful digital marketing is more than techniques and tools. It requires thoughtful planning and concentrated effort to achieve positive results.

Using the services of a successful digital marketing agency is the simplest way to achieve optimal results. Contact Simplemachine today. We are a web design, SEO, and content marketing company focused on giving our customers the results they need for their businesses to thrive.