Digital Marketing: The Essentials and The Extras

Digital marketing is an essential weapon in the arsenal of any online business. Even many brick-and-mortar businesses are using and benefiting from it today. 

However, there are lots of different ways to do it, from search engine optimization to content marketing and paid advertising. It can be difficult to know what your business needs and what it doesn’t. 

As with so many things, there are strategies and techniques that work better for some businesses than others. But there are a few digital marketing essentials which, done correctly, all businesses could benefit from. 

1. Web design – Even if your website is for information only, web design is still important. Why? In many cases, it will be the first impression your business makes on people. You don’t want it to be a negative one. Portray your business in the best light by making sure it looks professional and up-to-date, and that it runs smoothly. 
2. Search Engine Optimization – When people have a product or service in mind that they would like to find, the first thing most of them do now is search for it online. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is simply making sure that your business is one of the first results they see. It takes expertise, consistency and time for an SEO strategy to pay off, so many businesses hire a specialist SEO & PPC marketing agency to do this for them. Without it, potential customers could be lost to rivals as people generally only click on a few of the top results when they search. 
3. Remarketing – While it is important to get new people interested in your products, it is also important to make sure that those who are already interested follow through with an order. This can be as simple as sending an offer with a better price when someone abandons their online shopping cart before checkout, but there are many other options.
4. Social media – It is estimated that people spend around 28% of their time online using social media. That’s a lot of time that they could be finding out about your products. Social media is also a great way to interact with customers and to build trust and credibility.

These are the main aspects of digital marketing which all businesses could make use of. On top of this, there are additional strategies which could be useful. One is blogging, which can help establish brand identity and expertise, as well as help with SEO. Another is pay-per-click advertising, which can drive a lot of traffic to your website, but relies on your website to convert those clicks into sales.