If there’s one thing that we see often amongst our clients, it’s that anything within the digital space can seem foreign and intimidating. What worked in the past isn’t a sure thing anymore. Instead of Yellow Page ads, it’s now Google Ads. Should you use billboards or social posts? Direct mail or email marketing? Fully-produced commercials or sharable videos?
This is an entirely new concept for some, but that’s exactly why we’re here—to help you navigate and find confidence in modern mediums. Traditional marketing methods are still effective in certain cases, but in order to stay on top of our technologically-dominated world, you can’t ignore the wave everyone else is riding on.
So what are all of the avenues for digital marketing? Just to name a few, there’s…
Search Engine Marketing (Google Search & Display Ads)
Search Engine Marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing initiatives. This method works off a system called Pay Per Click, which is largely associated with big search engines, such as Google. Pay Per Click Ads are a digital advertising technique where you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. The goal is to be at the top of the search engine results page or seen on a Google affiliated website when a user searches specific, industry-focused keywords.
Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube)
This type of digital marketing involves lots of creativity with eye catching visuals, interactive content, popular hashtags and enticing calls to action to encourage social media users to interact with your business profile. Not only is social media management a way to market yourself digitally, but you can also use it as an advertising channel. Social media ads are essentially another form of PPC advertising where you can leverage popular social media platforms to target your desired audience.
Email Marketing (MailChimp & Constant Contact)
Email marketing is a great tool to send out weekly newsletters or monthly campaigns to stay relevant and increase brand awareness. Landing in someone’s inbox is a great marketing tool to maintain the relationships with current customers or clients but also open the door to new business opportunities.
Search Engine Optimization (Content Creation & Yoast Updates)
SEO is all about organic website traffic. When optimizing a website on a consistent basis, like creating fresh content, updating backend titles and descriptions, and building backlinks, the website is more likely to be recognized and trusted by Google. This leads to a more prominent position on a search results page, without having to use paid tactics.
Digital marketing is like catching a fish.
Let’s compare digital marketing to fishing. Let’s say you are determined to catch a purple fish in a popular fishing lake, but this lake just so happens to have fish from every color of the rainbow. You decide to cast your line right in the middle. At this point, you could pull in a yellow fish, pink fish, red fish, blue fish… But you really just need that one purple fish. By using this strategy, your chances of a purple fish biting your bait and actually being caught are significantly decreased from the get-go.
But if you were to keep an eye on the activity of the lake, you would learn that most purple fish can be found in shallow water, near the lily pads, around dusk. You move your boat to this location during this time, and you’ve automatically increased your chances of catching not just one, but multiple purple fish. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a purple fish is going to be caught, but you have definitely set yourself up for the best chance possible.
This is a similar concept for traditional and digital advertising. Traditional advertising is a great tool for generating brand awareness across a large audience that covers many demographics (like casting your line into a large area where many different colors of fish live). But if you are wanting to target a specific audience with certain interests, you need to have access to important information about those individuals and place yourself right in front of them (like knowing to be in shallow water, near the lily pads, at dusk).
The Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing techniques are so successful because technology has opened the door to an extensive amount of information that can be tracked, measured and analyzed on various platforms. It’s heavily data-driven and can give you the smallest details of your campaigns and outcomes, even down to the exact penny spent. This helps us make proper optimizations to your account in order for it to be the most successful marketing channel it can be.
It also helps us determine your return on investment, one of the most important factors when diving into digital campaigns. The availability of user data and rich targeting capabilities makes digital an important tool for businesses to connect with their audience.
Another positive of digital marketing is the cost. It’s extremely affordable (sometimes free!) for any size business to get up and running. Paying for a billboard, a commercial or a spot in a magazine can be very costly, especially if you want to be placed on a popular highway, on a top-rated network or near the front page of a publication. But the neat part about digital is that you can play that same game for a fraction the cost. Once you get a couple of months under your belt, digital marketing no longer becomes a monthly expense, but a monthly investment.
And last but not least, digital marketing, specifically digital advertising, provides immediate results. While SEO is a digital marketing tactic that we advocate for, it requires dedication, time and patience. Digital advertising allows for the immediacy that a lot of people crave. When a digital advertising campaign is launched, activity begins and you immediately find yourself in front of your targeted audience, gaining hundreds or even thousands of impressions. That’s why we strongly encourage staying active online, especially once a new website has been launched.
At Scout, we want your website to be a lead and revenue generator. If you’re not pulling in the right traffic, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities, both relationally and financially. Let us help you find the right people and bring them through your door by setting up a digital strategy today.
