Where did Digital Marketing come from, and where is it going?
At the beginning of the Internet, the systems were outdated, and the pages were elementary. There were no interaction channels between company and customer. The communication was given unilaterally, as in traditional marketing methods.
The Internet evolved and, around the 2000s, Digital Marketing began to be built. The number of users has made companies invest more and more in this sector, bringing remarkable technical and technological evolution.
We follow all this movement and, as Digital Marketing, we are also in constant evolution, adapting more and more to the needs of the brands and the profiles of the public. Although it is constantly being reinvented, one thing that does not change: high quality and highly personalized content is the basis of all digital marketing success. I know it may sound more of the same, but it’s critical to say the right thing at the right time and to the right audience — so much so that this strategy came to be known as Content Marketing.
What is Digital Marketing?
There is no mystery: Digital Marketing is marketing carried out in a digital environment. This allows companies to get closer to their audiences using social media, email marketing, and websites. This is where they need to know how to communicate correctly. In addition to facilitating direct and personalized communication between company and consumer, Digital Marketing is an excellent tool to strengthen the brand and make better sales.
How does Digital Marketing work
The Internet is much more dynamic: just take social networks as an example. The company creates a specific action or takes a stand in front of an event and has feedback from consumers in real-time, which can be used as a thermometer to measure the acceptance of certain content. Measuring the results of the strategies adopted in the digital sphere is also much easier and more accurate. It is even possible to adjust specific actions during their execution: if the results are not meeting expectations, just adopt new directions.
What is Digital Marketing for?
Digital Marketing can help micro, small, medium, and significant win more business opportunities. It is working with online strategies that used to be a privilege of more in-tuned companies that could make big investments, mainly in creating a good website. Today, fortunately, access to this type of service and strategy is increasingly accessible, and even small entrepreneurs can work with Digital Marketing strategies. Nobody wants to be left out of the online world, mainly because it opens many doors and allows companies to:
- Better understand your audience;
- Gain more customers;
- Receive feedback;
- To retain consumers;
- Educate the market;
- Increase the company’s brand awareness;
- Generate leads;
- Generate sales opportunities;
- Grow the company’s profitability.
What are the necessary precautions to have a good Digital Marketing strategy?
Although more and more people are looking for Digital Marketing solutions, it is necessary to work with attention to some details that can be decisive for the success of your business.
To avoid making the same mistakes that many entrepreneurs end up making daily, I decided to list some of the necessary precautions for structuring a successful digital campaign. Follow:
Study of people
The first step is to do a personas study. It’s not uncommon to find companies working in marketing, but they still don’t know much about their potential customers. To do this, you need to analyze your company’s ideal customer profiles. There may be more than one group of people, and that’s okay! At this point, it is vital to gather information such as:
- Who are these people?
- What are your routines like?
- What are your goals?
- What are your needs?
- What problems they face?
- What are your most common buying objections?
- How your company can help these people?
- Which products or services are recommended?
- What is the appropriate language to communicate with these people?
- In which communication channels they look for information?
- What kind of content they tend to consume?
- What is these people’s buying journey?
- What they value in a company in this segment?
Competitive Analysis
A competitive analysis is also an essential detail before creating your digital marketing strategy. Fortunately, we can learn a lot from the mistakes and successes of other companies in the segment.
Keyword Research
Do a good keyword research if you want to be found on the Internet. At this point, it’s important that you already know your persona and knows precisely what kind of content and what subjects need to be worked on. With that in mind, you can do keyword research using tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner to find the most exciting terms for your content production.
Then make a list of terms that will help you answer your consumers’ questions and create optimized content for each one of them, thinking about the search volume and the intention of those searches.
Channel analysis
The channel analysis is important for you to understand where you are today and the bottlenecks of their strategies. If you already have a website, make sure it has all the most critical information about your business, descriptions of the marketed products and services, company information, contact information, and other details. A complete, functional, and optimized website for a good experience for your consumers is the best way to work these channels.
Definition of goals and objectives
Before starting to structure your marketing strategy, a fundamental detail is to define your company’s objective and goals. Without a pre-defined objective, it will be challenging to know which are the best marketing actions and how to measure if you are having results or not with the efforts that are being made.
Therefore, it is important that you, before choosing actions, define what your objective is. Once the goal is set, it’s time to explain the goals and how often they are spaced out. Will you make monthly goals? Bimonthly goals? Or weekly goals?
With the defined goals, it is also possible to identify the key success indicators for each of them, allowing you to closely monitor whether the actions carried out within your business are bringing the expected results or if it is necessary to make adjustments to some of them. Of these points to conquer the planned numbers.
How do you choose the best Digital Marketing Strategies?
The communication market offers different solutions for companies. Then, we will explain what the most common strategies used by companies are. However, before that, we need to rethink a few things: if there are so many strategic options available, how do you choose the most interesting ones for your business? You must establish your objective and goals and, based on that, define adequate strategies to find the best paths for your business.
How to do Digital Marketing?
The first step to increasing your sales is seeing Digital Marketing as a generator of opportunities. Then, it is essential to analyze, define goals that can be achieved, and, above all, know your target audience well. This is the process we use to help our customers generate more results! Therefore, the Internet is the safest way to obtain information about your consumer’s profile, as social networks such as Instagram are powerful tools to create a closer relationship with the customer and be an efficient alternative to ensure the best sales. For this reason, I separated the Digital Marketing strategies that have worked the most. Check it out below:
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is our specialty! It aims to attract customers through relevant content. In this way, companies seek to understand the needs of consumers and then establish a communication channel with these people, to offer a solution to their problems.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing’s primary function is to position your brand in the right place, time, and for the right person. Even better, he’s able to put his mark on people’s hearts, something we’re very proud to do! In other words, in addition to Content Marketing providing education and relevant information to the public, it solves people’s concerns to ensure that they become your company’s future customers.
It is a practical, economical and fast option. The blog is the most common way to get traffic to your website, as it is easy to manage, its development is simple, and the maintenance cost is low. However, for this strategy to generate a positive result, you must consider four steps:
- be strategic in creating your content. That is, develop agendas with relevant information;
- have a schedule for posts;
- optimize text for Google using SEO practices;
- go beyond text: diversify the type of communication by creating infographics, podcasts, videos, and more.
Email Marketing
Many believe the time for emails has passed, but this is a big mistake. They remain one of the most incredible powers of Digital Marketing. Believe me: the potential of an email list is huge (not to say growing), and the right actions can pay incredible returns. If you are looking for a place with influence, communication, and dialogue to spread your brand, social media is a good option for you. That’s because most of the time spent by Brazilian Internet users is on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Instagram.
Social Media Marketing
The potential of these channels is immense. After all, it opens doors for closer dialogues with your customers. But knowing how to create strategies to attract an audience to these spaces is not enough. It is also necessary to have plans to retain and engage them!
Advance Advertising
Even offering an excellent product or service with reasonable prices and a competitive website, it is essential that you can bring people to know you. Many people can come by search engines, but it will be possible to leverage the income if you can find your target audience where it is. Therefore, set aside a budget to invest in digital media.
Conversion Rate Optimization – CRO
Convert Rate Optimization or Conversion Optimization is a safe way to improve a website’s performance, increasing more traffic than the address already has. It is possible to increase conversions regardless of the number of visitors.
Search Engine Marketing – SEM
Search Engine Marketing or Search Marketing is the Digital Marketing segment that focuses on developing strategies and dissemination format through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or search engine optimization and refers to the process of search engine optimization with Google. Through SEO practices, a company will be more easily found on the internet. Keywords are often the main optimization gimmick, but some expressions can tie search to branding. For example, if a user searches for “HR management,” he can also search for “HR tools,” and, of course, he will find related content.
In SEO practices, there are two types of strategies:
On-page SEO
It works when the company’s optimizations are carried out within the site. That is, the keywords or expressions entered by the user can lead directly to your company’s environment, considering the interests, doubts, or needs suggested. It is essential to provide exciting content and renew the post library. The contents must be following the defined persona and the target audience you want to reach.
Off-page SEO
Strengthened the site’s internal strategies? It will be the time to broaden horizons and act virtually outside the company. Features like social media, link building, social bookmarking are good options for Off-page SEO. The content must prioritize quality and relevance so that Google understands that it is worth directing a search to your company’s website. Keep a continuous routine of actions for optimization, and opportunities will arrive even before the company imagines.
What are the main metrics of Digital Marketing?
When applying marketing strategies, you need to identify if the results are effective because campaigns perform differently for each business. To know which are the most suitable actions and if they put you on the path to success, there is only one way: to follow the metrics and measure them correctly.
These tools are fundamental parts of the Digital Marketing application because they show where the errors are, what needs to be adjusted, how to save on actions, what has changed in the indicators, and the new business opportunities, among other advantages. In other words, they are a perfect guide for strategic decision-making. Below is a list of the leading marketing metrics we consider essential to track. Better understand the importance of each of them for Digital Marketing actions!
Return on Investment (ROI)
The ROI is a comparative analysis of how much you spent and how much has grown in sales. A fundamental feature of how Digital Marketing works is to improve profits, so this is one of the most important metrics to evaluate. With this metric, you can know if the money invested in campaigns was well spent and receive insights to identify when it is interesting to increase the investment, further improving the result.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The CAC establishes a relationship between spending on Digital Marketing and customers. In other words, it measures the cost that each new customer represents to the company, showing whether the campaigns are worth the effort.This includes all expenses applied in promotion strategies, from the amounts invested in marketing to the salaries of the sales force. To calculate the CAC, you must separate the desired period and evaluate the difference between these values and the number of accounts that appeared in the given time.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
MRR allows you to visualize your company’s growth in terms of revenue from monthly invoicing. This means that advance payments can be adjusted to assess a growth trend. To do this, just divide them by 12. However, cash payments, accountant expenses, and discounts must be excluded. Include credit transaction and billing fees.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
The CPA is responsible for lead generation. It is the sum of expenses and contacts acquired within a time. For Google Ads campaigns, the amount charged on the CPA is equivalent to the conversions of leads within the site.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
The CPL assesses the expense to generate a new lead. This metric helps in how Digital Marketing works because it shows if the campaigns are well adjusted. Ideally, the CPL should be as low as possible, but high values are also justified if conversions from leads to customers are efficient. The result is relative, which justifies hiring a specialized company to measure the metrics.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan?
When investing in Digital Marketing strategies, it is essential to have a marketing plan, as executing the various actions that make up this methodology without strategic planning can be a big problem for your business — and for your pocket. However, there are three steps you should consider when creating your Digital Marketing plan. Check it out below.
- Define your goals, establish short-, medium- and long-term goals;
- Make use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs );
- Know your target audience.
What are the advantages of Digital Marketing?
It is clear that digital media influence everything around us, and marketing is no different. Therefore, expanding companies must have Digital Marketing as a priority. Among the advantages are:
More Communication and Interactivity
The first advantage is the improvement in communication and interactivity with your audience. Digital channels, especially social networks, are commonly used as contact tools between customers and companies. On these platforms, consumers and prospects take advantage of proximity to answer questions about products and services, provide feedback and talk about expectations and tips to stand out in the market.
More Competitiveness
Increased competitiveness is also a reality. When your company is available online, it manages to strengthen ties with consumers, keep up with the competition, reinforce its competitive advantages and, with care and attention, even retain consumers!
Best Value for Money
Unlike traditional and offline strategies, Digital Marketing has more democratic values. This is one of the benefits, especially for small and medium businesses. The cost-effectiveness of the investment is excellent: in addition to allowing you to work with more affordable prices, campaigns tend to be much more segmented, enabling you to reach only those audiences that matter to your business.
Greater global reach
The Internet also allows you to achieve greater reach. For example, if your company works with a software solution, it might be interesting to work with a national space. With Digital Marketing, you’ll be able to reach people across the country more straightforwardly and practically compared to traditional strategies.
Analysis and measurement in concrete data
This is one of the most outstanding benefits of Digital Marketing. When we think about traditional marketing, it’s much more complicated to think about measurement: how to measure which customers arrived through magazine ads? How to estimate how many customers arrived via a back bus? With Digital Marketing, it is possible to know exactly where each client and prospect came from, what path they took to get here, and, from there, identify which strategies are being more promising and which investments need to be readjusted.
More Opportunities
With focused and well-targeted strategies, it may be possible to increase the number of sales opportunities. With lead generation, it is possible to educate the market and guide them to the moment of purchase through a well-designed funnel. When you work with Digital Marketing, you can help the consumer go through the purchase process more intuitively and straightforwardly.
Attracts the Right Audience
The segmentation of Digital Marketing strategies is also one of the unique attractions for companies. When, in traditional marketing, we needed to take a giant leap to win a few customers, with Digital Marketing, it is possible to segment more and more and focus on distributing the message only to those people who can represent a potential customer base for your business. The more focused your strategy and the closer you get to the right audience, the greater the chances of conversion.
Allows access to Customer Feedback
Social media allows the company and customers to communicate in a much more transparent way. Users tend to use these tools to share more practically and directly with companies that have purchased or are interested in purchasing. Suppose you are in these channels and know how to use them strategically. In that case, you will be able to identify some suggestions coming directly from your customers to improve your image in the market and increase your competitiveness.
What are the worst Digital Marketing Mistakes?
Marketing strategies can bring many benefits. However, you must pay the utmost attention to every detail to reap these rewards. Are you doing everything right, or do you need to review some things? See what the most common mistakes companies make are:
- Not knowing your persona
- Not setting goals
- Choose inappropriate strategies
- Not understanding your business needs
- Not understanding your company’s seasonality
- Ignore the need to retain your consumer
- Not using the proper language to communicate
- Take specific actions and not invest in recurrence
- Have a very heavy site that takes time to load
- Do not have blogs
- Do not worry about your content variation and format
- Not knowing the awareness of your market
- Not tracking metrics
- Not optimize marketing values
What are the results of not investing in Digital MarketingM
Digital Marketing is no longer an alternative and has become a must for those companies that want to ensure market competitiveness. That said, we can imagine that not investing in Digital Marketing is a risk for companies, regardless of market or size.
Business does not follow the Market
The market is evolving and is becoming more and more digital. To grow your company, you need to keep up with the trends and always be able to stay ahead of the competition. However, if you ignore Digital Marketing, the chances of falling behind are very high. Being in the digital environment will help you improve your relationship with the public and increase the number of sales and optimize routines and review internal processes.
Difficulty Finding new Customers
Consumer habits have changed and adapted to the digital world. Today, most consumers are aware of searching online before closing a deal with any company. So, if you want to find customers and be considered by those prospects looking for solutions similar to yours, you need to be in the digital world.
Difficulty in Retaining Customers
Digital Marketing, together with marketing automation tools, can allow companies to retain more and more consumers. After all, we know that a loyal customer can be much more profitable than a new customer. With the right platforms and online communication to reach these people, it is possible to create a network of loyal, satisfied consumers and promoters of your brand. The result? The increase in organic referrals and its customer base.
Competitive Difficulty
How will you compete for your customers ‘ attention if every business is in the digital world and yours isn’t? The Internet and Digital Marketing allow companies to work to reinforce their competitive advantages and attract more and more customers according to these people’s needs. If you are not on these channels, which many consumers even consult before making a purchase decision, how do you expect to be considered at the time of sale?
It is necessary to think that embracing Digital Marketing strategies is not just a detail: they are a measure to ensure that your company does not die on the beach.
Reduction in Company Profitability
Of course, with the reduction of competitiveness in the market, the difficulty of standing out from the competition, and attracting more customers, the company’s profitability also drops. A sustainable business needs to maintain recurrent growth and always be adept at market news to transform its reality into something more profitable and profitable.
Why hire a specialized agency?
Relying on the help of a specialized consultancy makes all the difference since a Digital Marketing agency has the right mechanisms for your company to generate results. And we, at SEO Lahore, know how to do this! With many years of experience, SEO Lahore is an agency focused on boosting your company’s success through innovation, adding value to everything it does in pursuit of the best results. We have created a unique way of working based on four principles: marketing, sales, technology, and customer succes