If you’re just commencing some digital marketing activity for your business be aware that nobody starts by knowing all the answers and its simpler and cheaper than you’re probably expecting. Many people are confused by the terminology so here is a some of the key terms to familiarise yourself with before you embark on digital marketing.
Digital marketing
Digital marketing is the overall term for all online marketing activities and channels. Including your business website, social media, text marketing, search engine optimisation and email marketing. These digital platforms provide opportunities to connect with your current and potential audience. Within each channel there are many tactics to consider and to maximise the effectiveness of your digital marketing. Your business needs to understand which channel best supports your business objectives.
Content marketing
Content marketing focus is on the creation, publishing and sharing online content such as videos, blogs, podcasts and social media posts that do not specifically promote your business. It aims to generate interest in your products or services seeking to attract new enquiries and leads.
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing are techniques to bring customers to you and encourage them to initiate engagement with your business rather than you directly contacting them. Examples of tactics used for inbound marketing are blog creation, Pay Per Click advertising and Search Engine Optimisation techniques. For all effective inbound marketing your content needs to relevant and of value to your customers.
Buyer’s journey
The buyer’s journey is the process a buyer goes through to purchase your service or product. Understanding this is vital for your marketing activity and helps to identify the touch points of your buyers. The journey can be defined in 3 stages
- Awareness stage: The buyer becomes aware they have an issue
- Consideration stage: The buyer clarifies their problem and research solutions
- Decision stage: The buyer chooses what they perceive as the best option to solve their issue.
Understanding these stages of your buyer’s journey allows you to plan and digitally present to buyers your product and service as a solution to their problem. For this understanding your customer’s problems is key. Then being able to identify where they will search for their solution means you can use the right digital marketing techniques to provide them with the solution. It could be social media such as Facebook or a Pay Per click campaign such as Google ads. By obtaining this knowledge provides you with the best opportunity to engage with your customers.
Summary
Digital marketing is a broad subject and these definitions are just the start of understanding it. However, it can be a very effective tool for all business whatever size of business you have. If you need support or have any questions around digital or any other marketing please get in touch. You can call me on 07753941231 email or complete my online form
