Marketing has changed at a rapid pace over the past decade alone, particularly with the growth of the internet.
Today, there are more than 3.5 billion searches conducted on Google every single day. That’s the equivalent of half the world’s population making one search on a daily basis.
With it, more and more businesses are going online and putting more of their budget towards advertising and marketing on the internet.
It’s never been more important for your business to be online and to better understand digital marketing trends. Here’s a quick guide to help make sure your business is effectively marketing online:
Search Engine Optimisation
With the enormous popularity of Google it’s important that your business compete highly for searches your prospects are conducting. Whether this be for national searches or local, there is plenty of traffic out there to sell your products or services too. Ranking your website in Google is known as Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO.
Unless you have a background in marketing then this may seem overwhelming to you. There are thousands of professionals out there who know how to get the job done so it is well worth investing in a digital marketing agency to assist you.
An agency can take care of every aspect for you – from optimising your website itself to encourage users to convert, to getting you the relevant and intent traffic from Google and other search engines themself.
Content Marketing
On aspect of SEO is Content Marketing. This is the approach of creating and distributing valuable content to attract customers.
It’s another task your digital marketing agency can carry out for you and something we recommend working with them. After all, you’re the one that will know what’s unique about your company, what news you have and other assets that can be of use to them.
The agency can then put this to use by way of content that can be distributed across the web in front of your potential customers. Content marketing can also be used to support your SEO.
Social Media Marketing
Social networks have grown in popularity this millennium. Whilst MySpace may not be a thing anymore, Facebook has more than 2.8 billion active monthly users, which is quite a significant audience to say the least.
How many of those users could be interested in your product or service if they only came across it? Social media marketing can be done by way or publishing content on a business page created specifically for this purpose.
You can attract an audience to your page, engage with them and run advertisements to sell your product to.
Public Relations
Similar to what McDonalds, supermarkets and John Lewis have been doing for decades, Public Relations is the art of persuading your target audience into purchasing your product.
Historically, this has been done in newspapers, on television and radio. Today, the engaged media is largely online – such as social channels and websites.
PR is not for everyone. It’s often for storytellers and those good at networking. After all, the aim is to get featured in large publications. Their aim is to create a pitch or a narrative about your business in order for the newspapers and influencers to share your story.
It’s different to advertising in that it is unpaid media. Ie you don’t pay to be featured on the news but rather create a story to get featured. It is earned media.
If you hire a good agency to carry this out for you then it can be hugely profitable by putting your product in front of a large audience and building your brand in the process.