To have successful digital marketing, you must have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports your overarching goals. Identify your goal by seeing where your company best fits: awareness and engagement, gain leads, or referrals. A lot of businesses shotgun market tactics out there without knowing what they’re trying to accomplish. You’ll have a different voice on different channels if you don’t line up everything with your goal.

If you can be seen on a physical and a digital standpoint, it is not 1+1 = 2; it is actually 1+1=3. The key is to develop a digital marketing strategy that puts you in all the places your followers are already hanging out at, then using a variety of digital channels to connect with them in a multitude of ways. Be sure to discover your target audience, so you can effectively market to your prospective clients.

Jay Baer says that “content is fire; social media is gasoline.” There is a relationship between content and social media. Content doesn’t matter if it’s not distributed and consumed, and social media can’t survive without content. If you were to start posting on your business page without having your voice, it would get lost, and your target audience won’t connect. Remember, you are talking to one person on social media, not an entire audience. People tend to create content crafted for a lot of people, but only one person is on the other side of the screen at a time. Connection converts; you have to connect with people for it to work. Digital marketing includes advertising and organic social media, and we will be covering this next week, so be sure to read our blog and listen to our podcast for more on this.

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a method of driving traffic to your website by paying every time your ad is clicked. The most commonly used and well-known PPC is Google Ads. Google Ads allow you to pay for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links you place. Figure out what your business is willing to pay per click. It comes down as an auction, and you’re mostly bidding for the keywords. If you’re in a more rural area, it would be cheaper (less competition) than in the city area.

As we previously and briefly discussed in our last blog and podcast, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages. It increases the amount of organic traffic your website receives. SEO is an essential part of Digital Marketing because it sets up a lasting visibility foundation, whereas any other effort ends the moment you cease it. Many SEO actions will have an impact that lasts more than several years. According to BrightEdge, “51% of website traffic comes from organic search results,” which means that SEO is a digital marketing tactic you cannot overlook. It is the most content-based route of digital marketing.

Build your sales funnel to achieve a specific objective: discover your target audience purchasing your product or service. You then fill your sales funnel with traffic using digital marketing tactics to drive that traffic from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. They convert into a paying customer and become an advocate for your local business. It’s essential to make sure interaction is consistent. Structure your funnel down to the details from someone hearing about your business, all the way through to where they purchase your product or service. Figure out your audience’s behavior and their challenges. From there, you figure out their journey to purchase from you. Digital content channels that should be used in your sales funnel include blogs, emails, and case studies, just to name a few. Choosing content channels depends on your target audience and your industry.