Don’t find customers for your products; find products for your customers
Seth Godin
The marketplace has moved online. People decide to make purchases after having done extensive research into what they want to buy before they put any money down. Oftentimes, should the customer decide to make a purchase in a bricks-and-mortar store, they are more informed than the shop assistants.
The reason for this is the Internet and the vast amounts of information that people are able to find on the product and/or service that they want to purchase on this platform. And the reason why they are able to find this information is thanks to digital marketing and the techniques that they employ to disseminate this information to their target audience. Here are some of them.
Content marketing
The saying ‘content is king’ has been around for as long as anyone can remember. Although some may debunk this notion, it is still true. This is not to say that content is superior to all other aspects on the Internet, but – without content – the Internet couldn’t run.
The way that Google – and all other search engines – know how to deliver the appropriate content to users who make particular searches is through popularity. First of all, the search engine bots crawl websites and pick up certain key phrases and words. The more times that it sees certain keywords and phrases being used, the more it will register that this particular website knows a lot about a certain topic.
So, when a user enters a search query that corresponds with the keywords and phrases that are on a particular website, Google will deliver this particular website to the searcher because it sees that this site will most likely deliver the answers that the person is looking for.
This means that in order for the website to have the keywords and phrases that it needs to rank for, it must have great content on it. The more content that it has on it the better because this affords the digital marketer the opportunity to weave in the keywords and phrases that they want the website to rank for as naturally as possible. This makes it easier for the Internet user to read. Content marketing is a sub-section of digital marketing which uses pieces of strategically designed content to help websites rank for the search terms that are relevant to the business.
Social Media Marketing
So, once you have the content on your website you’ll need to market this and get it under the noses of the people who you feel will benefit from this. One of the best (and most cost-effective) ways to get this done is through social media.
The common misconception is that social media is totally free. Yes, it costs nothing for you to set up accounts on social media platforms. However, what does cost you is the time that you have to put in to create the content that will convert people from these platforms and onto your website.
Something that we’d like to caution you against is being on as many social media platforms as you can. There are a lot of social media platforms out there and there are more and more springing up every day. If you do decide to have a presence on a social media platform, make sure that you can realistically maintain your presence on this. An inactive social media account will show people that your business has closed down. As a result, they will go to your competitors. This will make it very difficult to get them back once they’ve made the switch.
So, when you choose what social media platforms to have presence on, make sure that you have the capacity to keep your chosen posting schedule up to date.
If you run a business, you need a digital marketing presence. There’s no two ways about it. However, you need to make sure that you do it properly so that the time and effort you put in will bring the rewards that you require.