Digital marketing - what is it?
If you’re a business owner anywhere in the Northern Rivers of NSW, Gold Coast, Brisbane regions or even further afield, and you’re looking to do more with your business, you’ve come to the right place. We help businesses do better, through epic digital experiences, e-commerce and clever digital marketing. If you’re a business looking to do more, we can help.
Anyway..,enough about us.
Below is a short guide that will provide you with a basic overview of the digital marketing landscape, It’s no master-class, but it will hopefully provide you with some infomation about what is it, how it works, and how you can get started.
The digital marketing world is vast, ever-changing, and often times it is complicated. But it doesn’t have to be.
To make things easier to understand, we can split the digital marketing landscape into three buckets; paid, owned, and earned.
Let’s start off with the easy one; owned. Why is it the easiest? Well it’s the one you’re probably already active in, or at least familiar with. Owned digital marketing refers to platforms that you actually own, such as your website, email database, blog, social media platforms and the like. Within each of these platforms is the ability to grow your business, and the best part? You control it. But what can you do with your owned platforms to help grow your business?
Website: work on SEO (search engine optimisation) so your site performs well from a search perspective. Better SEO = more clicks.
Social Media: you control what you post, when you post it, and how you interact with your followers.
Blog: more content on your website such as blog posts will only help your SEO and create and engaging site for your visitors
Email Database: collecting customer data? If not, you should be. This provides a conversation between you and the customer long after the sale is done.
Let’s move onto earned. This activity isn’t paid for, or owned by you, but it is directly associated with you. Earned digital marketing refers to media that you’ve earned from your customers. If you provide a good level of service to your customers, organically, businesses see positive outcomes from those customers communicating their thoughts of your business, products, and/or services to others, both online and offline. This is often a very powerful tool, as customers tend to trust customer reviews better than other forms of media.
WOM: Word of mouth is a powerful tool in your marketing toolkit, and lives both online and offline. Think about this when it comes to your business and customer touch points.
Reviews: Google Business reviews are often read by customers before they interact with your business. They sit right next to your business phone number and address. So, make sure they’re positive, reply to each one and address any negativity quickly.
Social Media: Mentions, tags, and photos are all forms of earned media and are ways your customers help grow your business.
Finally, let’s talk paid. This is typically what people refer to as “advertising”. Out of all three, paid refers to media that you financially pay for.
Paid Search: Unlike SEO, paid search or SEM (search engine marketing) refers to paid ads you place within the Google Search network that appears to those searching your products/services.
Paid Social Media: These are paid ads within the Meta, TikTok, or YouTube platforms that can be highly targeted to specific locations, demographics and even old customers.
Display Ads: display ads are image/gif banners that appear on popular websites, displaying a message and linking back to your site.
In an ideal world, you’ll be working across all of these different facets of digital marketing, providing an omni-channel approach. Typically though, we find many businesses are better suited focussing on a certain number of these to provide value and return. If you’re unsure where to go from here, let’s chat and we can help.
BASK/DIGITAL
We’re located in the Northern Rivers, but help clients anywhere from Ballina up to Brisbane, including; Byron Bay, Kingscliff, Pottsville, Murwillumbah, Mullumbimby, Burleigh and beyond. If you need help to make your business do better, or would like to know more about what we’ve said here, reach out to Bask Digital!