Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing and Advertising Campaigns from Free Assortment, Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland

If you’re in business, you can’t ignore the benefits of digital marketing. Digital Marketing or Internet Marketing, is the side of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. It’s advertising on the internet.

Online Advertising

Marketing & advertising have always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. Today, that means you need to meet them where they are already spending time: on the internet.

Simply, digital marketing is a form of marketing for promoting and selling products or services on the Internet. It’s the process of using different online marketing channels like search engines, social media networks, and email to reach your target audience.

Of course, there are still many ‘conventional’ advertising mediums available, newspapers & magazines, even TV. However, your marketing and advertising really can’t afford to ignore the internet. Stand out online!

Your Website & Search Engine Optimization

Your domain and website form the bedrock of your online marketing adventure. It’s certainly possible to work without a website, many smaller business rely solely on their Facebook Page, but as companies grow, they usually find a need for a proper web presence.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is, rather like it sounds, optimising your website and its pages so the search engines like Google, Bing and others can best understand what the page is about and, if done properly, making your website appear above your competition in search lists.

Google Ads – PPC (Pay per Click) & Brand Awareness Advertising

Google Ads – The ‘De Facto’ Advertiser for Business. Every second of every day, billions of searches are performed on Google. The numbers are mind-boggling. The vast majority of the results from those searches include Google ads. An integral part of any online promotion, Google Ads is a very effective way of driving relevant, quality traffic to your website exactly when people are searching for the types of products or services you offer.

PPC (Pay per Click) is the process of bidding for advert slots on search engines like Google Ads. It’s absolutely recommended for any commercial website. There are a number of options available from Google & Bing, many of which are not based on a bidding system. Bidding ads tend to be more costly than brand awareness advertising. Read more about Google Ads.

Social Media

Surprisingly, according to this article, over 80% of consumers asked, reported that social media and particularly “influencer” content, significantly impacts buying decisions. 80%! In my experience, Facebook tends to be, be far, the most popular of the social media platforms, although that may be just down to my age and the ages of my clients’ guests/clients/customers.

There’s little doubt, Facebook advertising does work, especially in terms of growing Facebook Page ‘like’ and ‘follow’ numbers. The value we put on a ‘like’ is, however, a different question. It all depends on your company, but generally speaking, I’d recommend at least a trial of Facebook ‘Boosted Posts.

Email Marketing

Email marketing & MailChimp. There are a number of bulk email services, but MailChimp seems to be the best. In my experience, MailChimp have the most reputable bulk email service, meaning you get through to more of your subscribers.

While your email may only be opened by around 35% of the people on your email list, this is still enough to see very good responses and certainly justifies the expense. There are ways to maximise the open rate up, mostly, “keep it small”! Many clients, understandably, want to shout about every offer, every special and every service you offer. However, a better way to increase open rates is to keep emails very small, just focus on one topic. Read more about email marketing and MailChimp.

Marketing Analytics

‘Analytics’ describes tracking visitors to your website, or usage of any web app. I’d argue this is marketing, more analysing the information from marketing. However, I always make sure websites are fully integrated with Google’s various analysis tools, Analytics, Google My Business and Google Search Console. It’s all valuable data that can help you fine tune your web presence.