What is Digital Marketing?
With billions of consumers using social media sites, smartphones, email marketing campaigns, websites, online classifieds, and more, businesses are scrambling to adapt to how people use technology today. As a result, the need for digital marketers has never been greater.
What Makes Digital Marketing Unique?
One thing that makes digital marketing so unique is how specific it can be to its target audience. Digital marketers have the ability to identify specific traits about their ideal customer down to specifics like age, income level, or even religious beliefs. This allows companies to tailor marketing messages they deliver over various channels, ensuring customers receive the right information at precisely the right time in a way that adheres to their preferences.
Collecting Data
Another great feature of digital marketing is that it allows marketers to collect data on a large scale. The more people use technology, the better marketers can understand how they interact with businesses. For example, when consumers log in through Facebook when filling out forms online, digital marketers are able to track where those customers go and how they move from site to site. In this way, companies can work together to make sure customers will find what they need with fewer roadblocks along the way by presenting them with targeted ads based on their interests and preferences.
Digital Marketing as a Career
So why should you get into digital marketing? If you enjoy using technology and love figuring out new ways for businesses to optimize their reach in a crowded marketplace, then it might be perfect for you! It’s a field that has never been more relevant or growing faster than ever before, so if you have the drive to succeed in digital marketing, now is the time to pursue it.
What are the Types of Digital Marketing?
There are a number of different types of digital marketing. Each one works uniquely to deliver information about a business’s products and services directly to consumers, allowing companies to increase their reach while controlling the experience a customer has with a brand. Your digital marketing messaging can be tailored specifically depending on how customers use technology, where they live (which affects which social media sites they use), and even what a consumer’s past behaviors have been. This allows businesses to create a unique experience for each customer in hopes of achieving their campaign goals across various ad products and platforms.
What is it Used For?
Digital marketing is used for a range of purposes, from email marketing to online classifieds and beyond, but it’s also scalable. That means it can grow or shrink based on the needs of a company. Here are some of the common types that you’ll see companies use on a regular basis:
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
When people look for a product or service online, search engines rank the results according to what’s most relevant to each individual user. Businesses can use SEM as a powerful branding tool because it presents their content on search engine results pages. SEM campaigns generate traffic from both users browsing the web as well as other websites viewing paid advertisements. As a result, businesses see higher click-through rates from their ads which ultimately leads to more revenue generation.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
With billions of users worldwide, social media is an effective way to engage and build relationships with consumers. It’s also a tool for businesses to obtain valuable consumer and market insights. Through social networks like Facebook or Twitter, companies can use different marketing strategies such as posting text updates or pictures on their profiles, creating unique hashtags based on their products/brands, and monitoring what people are saying about them.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing channels available today as it boosts engagement rates more than 40 times compared with traditional online advertising channels. With almost half of adults reporting that they have abandoned a purchase after receiving an email from a company promoting the product or service, marketers see this as a considerable loss in revenue.
Content Marketing
This is a very effective form of digital marketing as it involves creating and distributing valuable content intended to inform, entertain, or engage customers. For example, businesses can send newsletters containing information on their products/services via email, use search engine optimization posts on their websites, and publish white papers filled with helpful advice about industry news.
Mobile Marketing
With mobile devices accounting for 64% of all global internet traffic today, if you’re not thinking mobile, then you should. Businesses can create unique mobile offers, track customer behavior, and use traditional digital marketing channels to target an audience on the go.
Location-Based Marketing
With more than half of smartphone users regularly checking their devices while shopping in a store, businesses find it easy to offer promotions based on exactly where their customers are located. This helps companies gain new customers through word-of-mouth or social sharing and creates satisfaction among existing ones.
How can Digital Marketing help Businesses?
In today’s competitive environment, companies have to approach every aspect of their business with a data-driven mindset. Informed marketing decision-making is made possible through digital marketing. It helps marketers understand how customers feel about certain products, what features they’re looking for, and where/how they engage with brands online. With this information, businesses can choose suitable campaigns to run and spend their advertising dollars more effectively.
Create Influence in your Market
Digital marketing also gives businesses a better understanding of how they can influence potential customers. For example, if a company sees that its social media pages receive a high number of comments about its products/services, it may decide to offer a contest or sweepstakes with the hope of increasing engagement on those pages and boosting its sales.
Advancing Technology
Digital marketing reflects the advancement of technology and changes in consumer behavior. It helps businesses improve productivity, gain a competitive advantage, and drive revenue across every web, mobile, and social channel.
Companies Use Digital Marketing to:
Improve branding
Deliver personalized content to build brand loyalty
Differentiate from competitors
Acquire customers through channels such as social media
Engage customers with mobile and social media marketing
Create a seamless experience across all digital touchpoints.
By following a successful digital marketing plan, small businesses can compete with larger companies and brands.
How can Digital Marketing Help Increase Sales?
There’s no denying that specific online platforms make it much easier for consumers to be well-informed about products and services before they buy. As a result, generating revenue starts with building customer trust. And the only way to achieve this is by offering valuable content in an engaging manner so that people will want to share it with their family and friends. Here are some tips which you can use in your digital marketing promotion strategy:
Create Quality Content—When developing online content, remember that consumers always act according to their buying intent; meaning that if you’re promoting travel insurance services to someone who’s researching holiday destinations, odds are they won’t be interested in what you have to offer or even bother giving your website a second glance. Instead of wasting time creating irrelevant content for every single audience, focus on generating quality traffic through the promotion of valuable information which will help them solve some of their problems.
Enhance User Experience—A carefully designed webpage filled with short, easy-to-read articles broken down into subheadings and bullet points will make users more than happy to spend more time exploring your website so they can find out more about your products/services. Just remember to design each page with its intended audience in mind, or you’ll lose most of them before they even reach the end.
Social Promotions—According to research published by Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from their family and friends much more than promotional messages crafted by brands themselves. Therefore, digital marketing promotion efforts should focus on leveraging word-of-mouth so people will be eager to recommend your products/services to their family and friends. To do this, you should always aim to provide consumers with an unforgettable experience by giving them free products, publishing positive reviews by past customers, etc.
Track Progress—It’s not enough to generate traffic or promote your products/services without tracking your progress. With sales being influenced by various factors, including consumer buying preferences, it’s essential to closely monitor the impact of your digital marketing efforts so you can make improvements in real time. For example, if most customers are abandoning their shopping carts before completing checkout, this means they weren’t ready to buy at that particular time which is why you should try offering them discount coupons through email or social media channels.
And there are many more ways digital marketing can help businesses increase revenue and expand into new markets by using promotions that will bring customers back time after time. All that matters is to keep things simple while focusing on the right target market so you’ll have a higher chance of increasing conversions and boosting revenue in no time!
Why Should all Businesses have a Digital Marketing Strategy?
Before the internet era, gaining new customers was easy. All you need to do is place an ad in your local newspaper, place some flyers around town, purchase radio spots, and within days you’ll have dozens of leads looking for your products/services. But this isn’t the case anymore because consumers are now connected all over the world via different types of media and can get information about your products/services in an instant without needing to rely on traditional marketing. Therefore, if you’re not part of the online space, you’re missing out on a massive chunk of potential clients who are looking for what you have to offer from the comfort of their homes, so you need to take advantage of digital marketing right away.
If you already have a website and would like to start increasing revenue and making more money, here are some key tips on how best to approach the situation:
Be Specific & Catchy—One of the main reasons why businesses fail when using digital marketing promotions is that they simply create catchy titles which don’t convey any valuable information (e.g., “Snow Boots,” “Backpacks,” etc.). This is a big mistake because if you fail to inform potential customers about what your business does, they won’t feel the urge to look for more info. On the other hand, being specific and providing answers to questions that people tend to type in Google is a great way of attracting more traffic to your website.
Use Numbers & Percentages—In this day and age when there’s so much competition around, you have to think of creative ways on how best to attract new leads. For instance, instead of using phrases such as “high-quality products” or “best prices in town,” consider adding numbers and percentages in front (e.g., top 10%, lowest price guaranteed). Apart from making your banners and offers more intriguing, this simple strategy can help you boost your CTR (click-through rate) and increase the number of conversions.
Keep it Short & Simple—One thing we tend to forget on a daily basis is how we’re seeing and reading words on a screen that has less than 50 characters per line. You definitely don’t want to lose out on potential customers by bombarding them with long messages they won’t read anyway, so pay close attention to how you format your ads and choose those which convey information in short but precise sentences.
Pay Attention to Details—A great way of finding out if someone is interested in knowing more about your brand or service is by asking them questions such as “do you like saving money?” or “do you like good food?” Apart from having the answer ready beforehand (e.g., “Of course!”), try to make it as descriptive and specific as possible (e.g., “Would you like saving $100 or more each month?”).
Test, Track, & Optimize—There’s no point in creating a promotional campaign unless you set up goals for yourself and track everything using Google Analytics. That way, you’ll be able to see which strategies you should keep doing to stay on top of your competitors while also implementing new ideas that can lead to increased sales.
Don’t Forget About Mobile Marketing—In case your business is heavily reliant on mobile users when it comes to making purchases online, our advice is to have a mobile-optimized version of your website so that you can gain more leads and increase your bottom line.
Digital Marketing
What is digital marketing? Digital Marketing is how you get your business in front of consumers that are online. It can make or break a company in today’s world. Interested in seeing what you can do to increase your revenue using digital marketing?
Simply put, if you are not an option where consumers are looking, it becomes increasingly hard to stay profitable. Even today, the number of people going online to search is still increasing. Needless to say, if your business strategy is not including online marketing, you’re missing out on potential customers.
Digital Marketing Agency
CI Web Group has been a digital marketing agency since the early 2000’s, making a name for ourselves in the home service industry in the 2010’s. Since then, we have taken on quite a few nationwide franchise project, large distributors, and many eCommerce projects. We are passionate about every job that our team takes on, giving the utmost care and treating our customers like they are family. All of our customers know us by name! In fact, the majority of our business comes from referrals.
Digital Marketing the CI Web Group Way!
The key to successful digital marketing is setting real expectations. It does not do any good to oversell and underdeliver. That’s how we build up lifelong customers. Feel free to set up a free digital evaluation so you can see the benefits of working with the right digital marketing company!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With digital assistants (like Siri and Alexa) everywhere, typed keywords are being replaced by spoken phrases. It’s not just important to be showing high up on Google search, it should also be for the most widely searched for keywords. Otherwise, you could be missing out on a key part of your market.
How Does SEO Work?
When we optimize for a keyword, we are creating a page that targets the phrase using On Page SEO. We leverage the most tried and true SEO services practices to rank your website higher than your competition, no questions asked. The exact number of keywords depends on your results, time frame, and your budget. Based on our local SEO experience, most customers tend to break even month 4-6 with their investment, and from there it exponentially rises making both you and us more profitable.
Digital Marketing Stems From Content
Well-written website content with properly researched keywords is vital for presenting your company as an option in organic search. Constantly crawling for fresh content, when search bots find new and good quality content, they rate your site as relevant and valuable enough to be included in the search engine results. As a result, better search engine visibility means higher organic search page rankings, driving more traffic to your website using digital marketing.
Technology for Marketing in the Digital Space
Technology progresses at a rapid pace. Besides upgrading your conversion systems, you should also get your website refreshed every 2 years, if not sooner. In general, websites should be updated at least once a month and redesigned every 1-2 years or so. Refreshing your website keeps it up to date with the latest developments. Keeping pace with newly-issued search engine algorithms is vital to getting on top and staying there.
What is Domain Authority in Digital Marketing?
A ranking system that predicts how high a domain is likely to rank in a search, domain authority (DA) is an easy way of seeing how Google ranks websites. Although its algorithms are shrouded in mystery, with little information on how or why specific websites rank for certain keywords, Google nevertheless shares its best practices and their ranking factors. We closely follow Google’s Developers blog to stay up to date on all things tech.
A Deeper Look into Domain Authority
The most accurate portrait of your search results, domain authority is scored from worst to best on a scale of 1 to 100. Using an innovative algorithm, this scale makes it easier to improve your score if your domain authority is hovering around 25. A score of around 50 is average, with up to 60 viewed as good; anything higher than this is excellent. There’s a direct correlation between high DA scores and higher rankings.
Strong Link Building for Marketing Online
However, acquiring backlinks from high domain authorities is no easy task. Steered by stringent editorial standards, high DA websites will link your business only if you are publishing top-quality copy with inherent value for their audiences. With over 200 ranking factors, strong links are a major step towards boosting your website search ranking, with higher traffic.
We also provide HVAC Marketing services!
Local Listings & AI Directories
Local listings keep your business information correct on the Internet. Sometimes, we see customers that have never managed their listings. As a results, they have competitors that own their listings or even spam companies that change the data to collect consumer information.
What is Needed for Local Listings?
Although often specializing in a particular business category or geographical location, business directories – like Yelp, Yahoo and Foursquare – are widely used by consumers all over the world. Today, Google is investing heavily in the local business sector, through its Local Listings, which include local business directories. Not a complicated task, polishing up your directory citation is time well-spent.
- After choosing the correct categories for your business,
- Check that your street address and phone numbers are accurate.
- Add a long and well-written description that includes keywords and links, making sure that it is properly formatted.
- Upload as many photographs as possible, adding a keyword to each filename, for extra searchbot attraction.
Keep Clean Data Online
A word of warning here: it’s vital to make sure that all your corporate data is updated, accurate and identical in every directory, to avoid disappointing search results. As this detailed information is probably spread across hundreds of citations, smart business owners usually outsource this time-consuming task to online marketing experts. Run a free report any time!
Get More Online Reviews
Priceless as virtual word-of-mouth recommendations, reviews are useful in several other ways. Prompt feedback on complaints reassures customers that your business stands behind the quality of its goods and services. This being said, negative reviews are also a way of highlighting points for improvement.
What’s the Strategy?
This is where a review acquisition strategy can maximize the number of reviews you earn each year. While stepping up your own reviews, monitoring competitor evaluations opens up a treasure chest of data. Reveal valuable information on the strengths, weaknesses, fears, and frustrations of your competition.
Use it to Your Advantage
More than just showing you what your competitors’ customers likes and dislikes, you can also sniff out details of their leads and sales. Together, with the risks and benefits that attract and discourage buyers, gain the upper hand on your competition. By exploring their target markets, you can appeal more specifically consumers using digital marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Knowing your target customers is vital. In addition, feeding them a steady stream of irresistible social media content is the best way to keep them interested in your goods and services. Furthermore, the more they comment on and share your posts, the more profitable the platform becomes.
What Should you Publish?
By publishing inviting content on your profiles, you encourage your followers to engage with your brand. Also, listening to their views (both positive and negative!), and replying promptly is key. Finally, build up your database and keeping a close eye of your target demographics.
What’s Popular on Social Media
The most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Snapchat. With the help of a tuned-in digital marketing agency, you should have no problem gaining more followers and driving engagement.
Grow Your Brand Online
Social media platforms are effective tools for reaching out to potential and current customers. By posting regularly, you are enhancing your brand awareness, burnishing your reputation, and showcasing your goods and services. Of course, the most popular channels today are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube. However, many niche forums may focus more tightly on your target consumers, with higher link, visit, and conversion rates.
Social Media Engagement
Engagement is the name of the game in social media. Generate informative content, interesting blogs, graphics, photographs, and videos. These are all hooks that attract followers and fans. Even so, it’s important to set metric-based goals that are realistic and can be adjusted regularly.
Why Should You Use Social Media for Digital Marketing
One of the main advantages of social media marketing is its flexibility. By regularly measuring responses through indicators such as clicks, leads and sales, savvy business managers can get the biggest possible bang for their marketing bucks.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
In contrast to traditional advertising, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is quick to design, with fast placement in multiple locations. Better still, it’s got metrics that indicate how various components can be improved.
Paid Ads on Mobile
An interesting sidelight is that people are more than twice as likely to click on an ad on a mobile device, instead of a desktop. So simply making sure that your ads look good on smartphones as well as laptops instantly doubles your chances of earning clicks.
Target Your Ads
Making the best use of every cent in your marketing budget, PPC campaigns mean you pay only for ads that really interest your target markets. And with a CALL NOW! button, people casually browsing the Internet can quickly turn into prospective customers.
Google Local Services Ads (LSA or Google Guaranteed)
Google Local Services Ads are a great way to get more visibility if you are a local service business. These ads put your business at the top of Google’s Search Engine Results Page, gaining you more visibility and the opportunity to gain leads.
Pay Per Lead
Paying per lead is another great option for contractors who are looking to increase their sales volumes in the short term. These campaign allow businesses to only pay when there is a real lead versus having to pay per click or wait for your page to show up on page one using SEO.
Convert More Customers
A well-designed signup form includes field seeking data ranging from age to education, marital status and even financial aspects. Stored in a database, all this information underpins more effective responses to leads. In fact, studies have shown that lead nurturing can increase sales by 50%, and with far larger individual purchases as well.
This is why cost-effective lead generation campaigns are vital for any business during their digital marketing journey. To learn more about our services, give us a call (877) 839 – 1122
Retain & Re-Engage Existing Customers
Everyone appreciates a little recognition. Without a doubt, rewarding customer loyalty is one of the easiest ways of keeping consumers faithful to your brand. How do you show your customer appreciation? What do you do that keeps them coming back for more?
Reach Customers on a Personal Level
Personalized messages are great ways of showing that your business really cares for its potential and current customers. Through birthday cards, special day congratulations, and seasonal greetings, you’ll create a strong familiarity. Additionally, using contact data drawn from your landing pages, shopping carts, and mailing lists, allows for automatic campaigns. Subsequently, regular marketing campaigns fire on automatic schedules, showcasing your business through a wide variety of channels.
Keep your Brand Relevant with Digital Marketing
For local businesses, customized gifts keep your company name front and center in customers’ lives. Along with pens, diaries, and calendars, you can send out brownies and even golf balls!
Email & SMS Marketing
You’ve worked hard to gain a loyal customer base, but if you’re not maintaining those relationships, you’re missing a major opportunity. Email marketing allows you to keep the lines of communication open while reminding customers you’re still around and providing value.
Types of Email Marketing
Emails tend to include promotions, information on your loyalty or rewards program, updates on the company, and educational content such as guides and blog posts. Email marketing is especially efficient because you can quickly and easily send content to your customers at the right time without the wait times and heavy costs of a mailer.
Automated Email Marketing
Plus, once you make your email marketing campaigns automated, you can do so much more! Automated campaigns are a series of emails that can be sent out to new and loyal customers based on their interactions with your website. For example, if a new customer fills out a form contacting you for the first time, you can send a welcome email introducing your company and explaining why they should trust you with their business. You can also create an automated email campaign targeted customers who have just received a service asking for their feedback or a review.
If you’re thinking about starting email marketing, give us a call today for a free digital marketing consultation.
Digital Marketing Reporting
All this hard work is of little value without effective ways of measuring progress, weighing value, and spotlighting areas where your marketing actions need extra attention in order to reach your goals. Without a doubt, using sophisticated marketing tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush make getting results and tracking them much easier. This data can be broken down by target audience, specific campaigns, lead conversion, web analytics, along with many other factors.
Make Data-Driven Decisions
This is where marketing reports are worth their weight in gold. Depending on your budget and needs, they can range from raw data in a simple spreadsheet through to attention-grabbing presentations packed with trend-spotting graphs and far-sighted forecasts drawn up by experts.
Some of these Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) include :
- acquisition costs
- customer lifetime values
- landing page conversion rates
- mobile traffic conversion rates
- social media performance overviews
Setting up your Digital Marketing reports
Let’s briefly talk about set up. Firstly, we don’t hold you hostage, so you are more than welcome to just delegate access to our team. Secondly, if you do not have access to existing data before your web project, it’s no problem. We’ll set up the Analytics account and delegate you full-admin access. Thirdly, we do offer Google Tag Manager set ups, so please don’t hesitate to let us know what you’re looking to track. Finally, we use Google Data Studio reports to showcase your leads and website data in a clean, easy-to-read format.
Schedule a Free Digital Evaluation
Yes, it’s a lot to absorb. Of course, this is only the briefest of glimpses into some of the online marketing tools, techniques and technologies available today. As a result, proper implementation brings your company within a click of a lot of new customers. So, if you’d like to grow your business by fast-tracking real-life sales through virtual branding and traffic-driving actions, let’s talk.
If you are looking for SEO for plumbers then you can contact CI Web Group Inc. We offer our services with proper skills and experience.
Frequently Asked Question For Digital Marketing
Digital marketing services, in simple words, are the usage of digital mediums like social media, websites, and email to advertise a particular brand or to communicate with potential or existing customers.
It is an umbrella term that includes methods like video marketing, social media marketing et cetera.
Digital marketing is an innovation of the recent era and is an effective and proven method in boosting sales and profits.
A digital marketing company basically tries to contact and build relations with customers to promote their brand and expand outreach.
A digital marketing company provides various services, ranging from SEO to social media marketing. The services offered are:
- Video Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Facebook Marketing
- Instagram Marketing
- PR Services
- PPC Advertising
- SEO Services
- Website Development
Choosing a Oline Marketing Company can involve a lot of steps. But these steps are of utmost importance when it comes to choosing the right company for digital advertising:
- Check their client testimonials and certifications for credibility.
- Ask them about their best digital marketing campaigns and results.
- Consider your budget and the timeframe you wish to adopt
- Ask the company to keep you updated about all the ongoings
Absolutely! Digital marketing is considered one of the good ways to boost your brand's outreach and to consolidate your position in the market as a service provider.
You can use it to connect with potential customers and increase your profits.
According to statistics, email marketing has over 4400% ROI(source). This is just a reminder of how vast the digital marketing industry is and the opportunities it offers for small businesses and large corporations to develop.
An updated website is good for SEO, consumer traffic, and conversion rate.
Getting your website updated and posting fresh content on it 3 days a week should be enough. But to make your website a success, you can post content on it daily as well.
Posting content daily might require more time and money, but it will also guarantee more returns.
Digital marketing utilizes the internet's resources and tools to promote your brand and expand sales. This, in turn, brings in revenue.
On the other hand, Digital Advertising is an aspect of digital advertising, and it includes creating ads with the information the advertiser is given.
It can include creating advertisements for different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or websites.
Digital Marketing in the 21st century can shape your business into what you want it to be. The statistics favor the businesses that have adopted digital marketing techniques and offer extremely high ROIs. Digital Marketing can:
- Boost your sales
- Expand your global outreach
- Help you communicate with potential customers
- Convince people to buy your services
- Increase your profits
There are a lot of differences between B2C and B2B digital marketing. Some of them are mentioned below:
- B2B clients are convinced through relationship building and take longer to decide. Whereas B2C clients are convinced through short messages and efforts.
- B2B Clients require more than one person's input compared to B2C clients, who favor 1-on-1 connections.
- B2B clients tend to respond better to logic, facts, and evidence of the product and service, whereas B2C clients respond better to emotions.
If you need consultation or have any queries regarding digital marketing, you can always contact CI Web Group! We have an professional team of technicians who are always ready to sort your problems and explain your problems. Visit our website for more information today!