You’ve probably heard that having a digital marketing strategy for your business is important. But you probably still have a lot of questions, like; What does my website need? What’s a landing page? How do I create a marketing strategy, how do I use social media and most importantly, what does digital marketing entail? We really care about your business, and we’re here to help you grow it in the most effective way possible. We created this handy digital marketing checklist, that breaks down all you need to know about digital marketing. Make sure you incorporate these tips and share with other business owners you know as well. If you need us to help you with your digital marketing efforts, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing basically means using digital technology such as websites, social media, emails, to publicise your business, grow it and make sales. If you own a small business, digital marketing is something you should definitely take advantage of. Digital marketing is quite a broad field, and it can easily get very confusing. However, the good news is that there are 5 core areas that digital marketing plans and strategies should cover, in order to be successful. In this article, we explain these 5 areas and give you the necessary tips to navigate them.

Website

Before you embark on any digital marketing plans, you must first have a solid website. An excellent website is essential to digital marketing success. In fact, it’s the foundation of your digital marketing strategy. Your website is where you will drive traffic to, provide useful information about your business and display your products and services. Creating a website is really easy, and if you need any assistance, we’re here to help!  Here are some tips to help you improve your website

• Ensure your website communicates your brand consistently. Your logo, colors, and website copy should all be in harmony.
• Make sure your ‘about page’ clearly communicates what your business is about. A solid ‘About page’ helps to attract customers and keep them.
• Create a blog that provides useful information to your target audience. This will help you boost traffic and build credibility for your business.
• Your website should be mobile friendly and responsive. This means that it adjusts to the screen size of different devices such as desktop, tablet, and smartphones, and gives a consistent experience.
• Encourage people to share your website by providing social sharing buttons.
• Track your metrics by constantly collecting and reviewing them. This helps you understand how visitors use your site and know how to improve it. You can use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to do this.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a marketing approach focused on creating and distributing essential content to attract and retain your target audience and influence profitable customer action. This can be in form of articles, blog posts, social media posts and email marketing. Having a content marketing strategy is key for your digital marketing efforts. Here are some elements you should incorporate in your digital marketing process.

• Create a content market calendar. It should outline what content you intend to create, how to distribute and when you intend to share it.
• Share your content with the people who need it. Your content marketing efforts will be wasted if you don’t get your target audience to engage with it. Consistently share on social media platforms.
• Guest post! Post on more popular blogs and encourage people to submit guest posts. This helps to expand your audience and get you more website traffic.

Social Media

Social media is at the core of your digital marketing efforts. It’s an excellent tool for getting the attention of your target audience. Posting on social media helps to increase website and blog traffic, and it also helps you build a community and communicate directly with your customers and potential customers. Here are some suggestions to help you get started with social media.

• Look at the available platforms, go over your business goals and then choose the platform that’s most likely to help you achieve those goals. Trying to be active on every available platform can get overwhelming, unproductive and time-consuming.
• Create an account on all available platforms. You may not be presently active, but you might decide to be in the future. Register an account, so someone else doesn’t take the business name that you’re interested in. You should also register your business on Google.
• Be consistent with your branding. Use the same username, logo, and colors across all your social media platforms. This will help strengthen your brand presence.
• Make sure you engage with people because social media is basically about engaging with others. Creating a thriving community on the platforms you’re active on.
• Having a social media calendar is very important. This helps you outline what you’d be sharing, and when. It’s also helpful to use scheduling tools.
• Constantly analyze and track the data that you receive. This helps you to see what types of posts perform best and engage your audience better.

Email Marketing

Your mailing list is one of the most valuable things you have. Email marketing affords you the ability to communicate with your customers regularly. The key is to send interesting and relevant messages based on a consistent schedule. Building a quality email list takes time and effort, but is quite worth it. Here are some tips to help you begin.

• Pick an email marketing platform that’s easy for you to use and understand. Ensure that it has the features you need, and your business can afford it.
• Create a template and incorporate your company logo and information. Taking time out to do this will help you have a steady template that you can always use.
• Promote your email newsletter actively, and encourage people to sign up.
• Use the analytics tool available on your email marketing platform to track your open rate and see the links that people clicked and engaged with the most.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimization helps you get the content you’ve created in front of the people who need it when they need it. Here are some basic SEO tips to help you get started:

• Look at your competitor’s websites and see how they’re performing. Use Google and other search engines to see where you rank and how you can improve.
• Based on your research,  choose the right keywords that will help your content rank properly.
• An analysis is important! Track your metrics, take note of where you’re excelling and where you need to improve.
• Take advantage of the free SEO tools and use them to the advantage of your business. Make sure you use the ones that are relevant.

At this point, you’ve probably learned that you can’t do every single thing that needs to be done to grow your business. A smart entrepreneur knows what to do and what to outsource. Digital marketing may be one of the areas that you need outside help with. The great news is, Atlas Creative Consultancy can provide the help that you need. Please contact us.