Digital Marketing Bootcamp
Consider this your digital marketing bootcamp online. The industry, due to its low barrier to entry, has enabled many people to enter the field which increased the amount of great content as well as confusion. This series of content dives into the discipline of digital marketing from a beginners standpoint as well as a strategic perspective. Initially, the series will focus on the breakdown of each element, then finally it will tie all of the elements together.
Ultimately, the goal of this series is to demystify digital marketing and provide a bootcamp of sorts that empowers business owners to contribute to the conversation. Especially when collaborating with a digital agency or marketing department. Research, lead generation, reputation management, mobile marketing, and analytics are critical components to a viable digital marketing strategy. Establishing a viable digital marketing strategy helps your business operate more efficiently and avoid wasteful tactic based approaches.
Why Do I Need Research?
Understanding how to differentiate your company online is just as important as knowing which tactics are being widely used by your competitors. Research covers more than knowing which digital tactics to use, it provides an understanding of how to employ each approach in a strategic way. Each company has a unique brand and research allows your company to best understand how to target the people most likely to engage with your product. From website design, search engine optimization, to advertisements and social media engagement research plays a role in properly selecting then implementing each tactic.
How Do I Generate A Lead?
One of the most popular, yet least understood segments of digital marketing is the lead generation segment. This section applies to any relevant tactics involved with creating and driving leads to convert to customers. Often these actions play a role in enticing the prospect to take the journey to learn about your company, provide their contact information for future campaigns. This information can also be used to encourage purchasing a given product or service. Targeted display advertisements, video ads, paid ads, white papers, or email/text campaigns are all part of this segment.
How Do I Manage My Brand Online?
Once a forgotten segment online, brand management is now trending as one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. Reputation management provides guidance on how companies engage with their community of potential customers and existing clients. There are over 62 online directories from which a potential customer can look at reviews for your business.
This includes social media reviews like Facebook and Google reviews (two of the biggest) as well as Yelp, Bing, etc. This segment has become more important as consumers are looking to external opinions not influenced by the company. Genuine reviews have a potential to hurt or help your business and reputation management is the art of creating a dialogue for those good and bad experiences.
Why Shouldn’t I Ignore Mobile Marketing?
As more users prefer using their phones instead of desktop devices, mobile marketing has become its own segment. Understanding how to mobile optimize your company’s marketing strategy is equally as important as driving leads to conversion. User functionality demands that companies pay attention to this important consumer preference.
If users are downloading more apps than ever before, how does that impact your business? Does it make sense for your business to develop an app? All of these questions along with how to manage engagement without over exerting resources and creating burnout for the leads and customers.
Why Should Analytics Matter?
Companies can test their digital tactic results and constantly hone their efforts through analytics. Utilizing analytics through the various tools such as Google Analytics, or SEMRush used to be an optional approach. As more businesses grow and adapt to the digital world, analytics is no longer an option, it is a necessity.
While some business owners utilize Adobe Analytics, and Microsoft’s power BI to enhance these analytics and drill down to email marketing campaigns etc, they are not entry level tools. The basics are a good place to start and allow the average user to get familiar with a platform that does not require as much of an upfront investment.
End BootCamp Session…….
As we begin this journey of understanding digital marketing from the ground up, just remember that it is not typical or expected to get all of this overnight. The purpose of this series is to take small chunks of information and apply it in a manageable way.
