If you’re new to the whole concept of digital marketing then it can be a pretty daunting place so I thought I’d write up a quick guide that you can sit and read over a cup of coffee.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is anything that encourages people to buy from you. That’s the marketing bit.
The digital bit simply means that it can be delivered using a computer, phone, tablet or any other electronic means. It really is that simple.
The problem is that the internet is big, really big so you just get lost.
Imagine you have got a van
And your van is full of stuff that you want to sell.
Your van is your website but if you never drive anywhere then it’s unlikely that people will buy anything from you.
So you need to put fuel in the van, that’s content marketing.
But if you just drive your plain old van around the streets you still aren’t going to sell much.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, TikTok and all the other social media sites are your signwriting on the van that tell people what you sell
And Google is a massive bell that you ring to get people to look.
As you can see, none of these things on their own is going to sell your stuff.
Having a website without any content is going to be pointless and having great content is lovely but if you don’t bother to promote it then it is pretty much useless.
You can’t. You have to have the whole package.
What is content marketing?
Content is the stuff that tells people about you.
Typical types of content marketing include;
- Blog posts
- Podcasts
- eBooks
- Guides
- Checklists
- Videos
- Webinars
- and loads more.
What’s different about content marketing?
Looking at that list you might think it’s pretty simple and largely the same as ordinary marketing but actually you’d be surprised.
You see Digital Marketing works best when you give stuff away for free.
I know, crazy right?
What you are aiming to do with this type of marketing is to get people (and Google) to believe in your brand as an authoritative source of information.
This is particularly important if you are a professional services company because your reputation is everything.
Want to know more about how fresh content gets you business? Click the image above
So what’s all this SEO stuff then?
SEO (or search engine optimisation) is like telling Google that you want it to ring that big old bell on top of your van and get people to look at what you’ve got.
SEO is largely the practice of producing content that is valuable and structuring it in such a way as it tells Google to put it at the top of the search rankings.
Part of it is about the writing and part about the quality of your site.
That’s like keywords and stuff right?
Kinda.
You see when people search for stuff they type things into their search bar and they are the keywords.
Then the search engines go out to the web and have a look for the words that most closely match what the user types into their search bar.
But it doesn’t bother looking every time.
Instead, Google (and all the others) map the web and look for sites that are authoritative sources of information.
Then when someone looks for expenses software or will writers then it knows exactly where to go.
So you need to prove to Google that you are the authoritative site by producing content that has those keywords in it.
Incidentally Google also looks at your site and rates it based on how easy it is to use.
Do your pages load quickly?
Does it work on mobiles?
Do people read one thing or do they stick around?
Then it gets all of the information it’s found and compares your site to the opposition. Then it ranks you.
The higher up the ranking you are then the more customers you will get. These are often called SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in the trade.
The key to digital marketing is engagement
And the key to engagement is having fresh, useful content that regularly pops up in front of your clients
Oddly most people make exactly the same mistake when they are producing content – they give up!
It’s called the cycle of despair and it’s a real thing
Want to know more about the biggest mistake people make? Click the image above
The trick is not to go off like a train for two weeks then get upset.
Just publish a small amount of stuff regularly and make sure it is all related to your keywords
Don’t forget to tell people about your content
There’s no point in hiding your light under a bushel.
Tell people what you have produced.
Post it to your insta, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn sites, do Google ads, tell your friends.
There’s a type of virtuous circle where Google ranks sites higher if more people read them and return later.
More people read the site if it is ranked higher on Google and on it goes.
Digital marketing is easy if you are organised
And if you have the time
there’s nothing hard about digital marketing, in fact I’d say most people can do it.
But you do need to be organised and you have to be in a position to want to do it.
Let’s be honest, there are 101 things you could be doing rather than stressing over your keyword map or your off page SEO right?
In fact it’s probably much more cost effective to pay someone else to do it than learn it yourself, make the mistakes and then actually do the work.
That’s where I come in.
If you want someone to help, who won’t fill you email inbox with jargon and BS, then I’m your man.
Contact me here and let’s see if I can help