The digital world has transformed the way people do business.
Consumers now have more information at their fingertips than ever before.
Not that long ago, the words SEO, PPC, and social media were unheard of.
Now they form an essential part of a digital marketer’s toolkit, and they are even more important if you are a business owner, freelancer, creative or influencer.
Digital marketing makes all the difference to a business in the online world. It can even determine success or failure.
But nothing is ever certain in digital marketing.
Ever-changing algorithms, customer preferences and new channels make your task even more complex.
If you’re wondering how to start online marketing, or where to begin, you are in the right place.
The best part. You don’t need tech skills. You don’t have to be a marketing genius. And you certainly don’t need to have a huge budget. In fact you can rely on completely organic (free) marketing methods to get started.
Many of the strategies that we will cover in this guide are either free or low cost.
The only investment is your time. But remember, time is money. Even if you don’t have to pay money, you are still investing your time in marketing – and time is valuable.
Understanding the basics will save you a lot of wasted time.
Effective digital marketing starts with understanding what it is and how it works.
What is Digital Marketing?
Marketing online isn’t just a matter of throwing together a group of haphazard strategies and hoping for the best. It is a precise, tailored and well thought out approach to building your online brand. The best way to describe the concept of digital marketing is through this definition by HubSpot:
“Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.”
When you plan online marketing effectively, you will target the right platforms, distribute great content and attract people who will become raving fans and loyal customers. Most importantly, it will help you reach your marketing goals.
As people find your brand, become aware of who you are and what you do, this is where your marketing really starts to take shape. Your marketing can help prospects become problem aware or solution aware.
Problem aware is when a person knows they are struggling, but they are not sure what the solution is. Until that is, you bring it to their attention.
Solution aware is where a person knows to your website or profile knows what result they want but don’t know there is a solution that can help them solve it.
The way in which you reach problem aware and solution aware prospects will depend where they are in the funnel or customer journey.
The stage in the funnel will depend on what type of content they consume. Prospects in the awareness phase will be looking for educational posts and social media content. In the conversion phase they will look for free trials, a webinar or will browse case studies and testimonials.
So, all this considered, you may wonder if digital marketing is really worth it. Can it really benefit your business?
Let’s take a closer look.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Building your brand online can help you in many different ways including:
- Increased overall awareness of your brand
- Higher engagement with your content
- More traffic to your website
- True fans and followers of your business who will turn into long term, loyal customers
- Reducing the time it takes for a buyer to make a purchase.
- More qualified leads
- And so much more.
However, to be really effective, every aspect of your digital strategy must tune into WIIFM. What’s In It For Me?
What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)
If you have ever wondered what makes people buy, it often comes back to WIIFM.
It’s something that drives the majority of buying decisions.
So many businesses spend their time explaining how great their product or service is and completely overlooking something that’s more important than anything.
What does the prospect get from the purchase?
Features and benefits rarely create that emotional connection that get prospects to buy.
The more you can create an emotional connection, the better your marketing will be.
Whenever you write any marketing material, create any product information or publish anything online, always relate it back to WIIFM. It will significantly increase your chances of success.
Once your prospect understands what’s in it for them, they have connected with your product or service on an emotional level.
Your marketing should present a compelling reason as to why the prospect should want or need the product or service.
To do this well you need to be able to identify a genuine problem that your prospects have. And then understand the reason behind it.
Identifying a Problem and Solution
Many business owners make the mistake of developing products and services, finding a market and hoping for the best.
The most successful marketers will identify genuine challenges that people have and then build a product or service offering around this. Products and services should address the fears, frustrations, wants and aspirations of your prospects. Specifically, they must address pain points.
Typical pain points include getting out of debt, making more money, saving time or becoming fitter or healthier. There are many more.
Not all your prospects will recognise that they have a pain point until they read something in your marketing material that resonates with them.
Your task is to research the market, identify genuine problems that people have and then build your product or service offering around these, convincing the prospect that your offer will provide the solution.
So how do you go about finding pain points or problems?
Customer Research – The most effective way to develop an understanding of your customers is to really listen to them. Analyse your customer reviews, seek feedback, encourage customers to be open and honest about their current situation. Find out what keeps them awake at night. What do they really want?
Sales Research – Sales team conversations with prospects will reveal a goldmine of information. Sales teams spend their day talking to prospects. They know what roadblocks people face and the issues they face day to day.
Online Reviews – If you are just new to business, you may not have any online reviews. In this case, head over to TrustPilot or any other third party review site (Checkatrade if you are in a professional trade) and look for reviews for similar companies. Many online reviews will include problems that people had before they worked with the company. You can also look for testimonials and case studies on competitor websites.
Where and How to Start Digital Marketing
There are eight pillars to digital marketing. But you don’t need to use all of them to be successful. Choose one channel. Master it. Branch out to another. Repeat the process.
Content Marketing
The first pillar is content marketing.
It’s the foundation of all online activity. It’s purpose – to increase awareness and establish you as an authority in your niche.
If you are credible you are believable and if you are believable people will buy. Content marketing can take many forms.
Blog articles, guest posts, ebooks, slide decks, free mini courses, infographics and videos are all great ways to share your knowledge.
Case studies are really effective too. Even more so if they can demonstrate a result.
Most importantly, tailor content to your target audience. Use their language and talk directly to the character you create in your customer profile.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is closely linked to content marketing. Articles, guides and content published on your website affects SEO rankings. If they are properly optimised.
SEO is a marketing tactic used to drive quality, targeted traffic to your website from Google and other search engines.
It is a three step process that involves a combination of on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO.
On page SEO refers to the use of keywords in your page and the optimisation of images.
Off-page SEO is used to describe how you build links to your website.
Technical SEO includes things such as page speed.
Keywords and search intent are also important concepts to understand.
Search Engine Optimisation is a long term strategy that can take anywhere from six to twelve months to start seeing results.
Search Engine Marketing SEM
Unlike SEO, which is a free marketing technique, Search Engine Marketing is a paid strategy.
It involves the creation of search engine ads.
Some marketers will use SEM as a short term solution while SEO gets to work.
Paid ads are one of the quickest and most effective ways to build your brand and give your marketing efforts an instant boost.
Search Engine Marketing can promote your products and services and get them in front of people quickly.
When you use SEM, this will involve the creation of a paid advertisement that will appear on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
You will be bidding against your competitors on keywords that your target audience are searching for. The more competitive the industry, the higher the cost.
Understanding how ads work is a steep learning curve but well worth the time investment as a short-term marketing strategy.
Pay Per Click (PPC) is a common phrase that you will come across in paid advertising. This is a method of marketing which will charge you a set amount every time someone clicks on your ad.
Email Marketing
Building an email list should be one of your top priorities as an online business.
At the most basic level, email marketing should be used as a way to ‘nurture’ your subscribers. In time, you can introduce your offers and if they are relevant, you have a warm audience ready to buy.
That said, there is so much more to email marketing than simply selling. It requires a targeted approach and the distribution of quality, informational content that will help you to build connections with your subscribers and develop the know, like and trust factor.
Email marketing is just one piece in the wider digital marketing puzzle, and it can attract, engage, persuade, entertain and inform subscribers. If it’s approached in the right way, it can help turn subscribers into lifelong customers.
Affiliate Marketing
One of the more complex strands of digital marketing but important, nonetheless.
Affiliate marketing is where you set up partnerships with other businesses and earn a commission for promoting their product or service.
You can do this through website ads or mailing out to companies on your email list.
Find a product that complements yours, promote it to your audience and then earn a percentage of the profit for every person who buys.
Social Media Marketing SMM
The use of social media in recent years has exploded.
As a result it’s a crowded, noisy and competitive space.
Audiences are increasingly looking for new and innovative ways to consume content.
Social Media Marketing is a technique of using social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with audiences, build your brand and drive traffic to your website.
A documented social strategy is essential. It will help you with content creation, connection, engagement and community.
You can also run ads on social platforms too which will increase your reach and grow your brand. Features such as Boosted posts allow you to reach a wider audience.
Organic marketing on social platforms takes time, patience and work. With the right approach however, you can grow an engaged following.
To succeed on social your content needs to be engaging, tailored towards the platform and most importantly, meet the requirements of your target market.
Copywriting
Last but by no means least in the 8 pillars of digital marketing is Copywriting.
Copywriting is a process that involves carefully crafting written messages to drive readers to take some form of action.
It’s a persuasive form of writing that compels someone to buy, enquire, read more or subscribe.
Much of what you read online is copy, from ads on social platforms and search engines through to web pages and social media captions, it’s all copy designed to encourage you to act.
Copy will feature in sales pages, social media captions, product and service pages and in case studies.
There are so many different areas to digital marketing, but it doesn’t mean to say that you must use all of them in your strategy.
You will achieve better results by focusing on a few strategies to start with and then widening your scope as you start seeing results.
Now you know the basics of digital marketing, it’s time to piece everything together and plan out your online marketing campaign.
Your Digital Marketing Plan
As much as you want to start your digital marketing efforts, it needs a planned approach.
Developing a digital plan will increase the likelihood of your marketing being successful.
It will also allow you to understand who you are, what makes you unique and most importantly understand your why.
Why do you do what you do? What skills do you have? What problems do your prospects have that you can solve?
Identifying an ultra-specific audience (a niche) and identifying their fears, frustrations, needs, wants and aspirations will help you to deliver a more tailored and successful marketing strategy.
Step 1 The Who and The Why
Your digital plan starts with the basics. Who you are, what you do and why. Understanding why you do what you do is important. It will influence your messaging, marketing and platforms. Simon Sinek says people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
What is your story? Why did you start your business? These are questions that your audience want to know. It’s something they can relate to. And that is the key to success in marketing.
Step 2 Your Customer Profile (Or Buyer Persona)
People don’t buy your products, they buy your values, an experience or a feeling.
Everything you do online must resonate with your audience.
You must get to know them.
To do this, you can create a customer profile. Also known as a buyer persona – a detailed description of your ideal customer.
A full profile will include information such as career, income, values, goals, background, decision making and frustrations to name a few. To gather this information, you will need to interview your audience, run surveys and read reviews.
As you begin to craft your buyer persona, give them a name. Create a character. When you write any copy, content or plan a product or service, keep them in mind.
Step 3 Identify Goals
To ensure that your digital strategy is a success, set realistic goals. What do you want to achieve with each platform you target? More traffic, leads, sales, subscribers? Goals should be set under the SMART criteria and be very specific such as:
Increasing conversions by 10% in the next month
Securing 100 new subscribers to your mailing list within the next 8 weeks
Step 4 Channels
Selecting the right digital channels is important because it’s the best way of getting your product or service in front of your target audience.
There are countless digital platforms that you can use to distribute your content. That doesn’t mean you must use all of them just because they exist. Your digital strategy will only be effective if you choose the right channels. The main channels include:
- Email marketing
- Pay Per Click Advertising
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
Step 5 Map out Your Digital Sales Funnel
The digital sales funnel is a crucial step in your marketing strategy. It features steps that move the customer through to the point of sale. The stages will vary but they often include the following:
Awareness – People become aware of your brand and the products and services that you sell for the first time
Interest – When a visitor signs up to your mailing list or they engage with your content, this indicates they are interested in what you have to offer. They want to learn more. They may also research competitors and start a comparison.
Purchase – The customer has decided that your product or service is the best fit for them and they are ready to purchase.
Loyalty – If the customer has a positive experience as they all should, your goal is to increase their lifetime value. There are many ways to do this from introducing complementary products or services, getting them onto a membership or subscription or introducing them to a mastermind if you have one. Loyalty is also about delivering a world class service, so customers become brand ambassadors who recommend you to others.
Step 6 Identify Metrics
The final stage in your strategy is data. The great thing about digital marketing is everything is measurable. From engagement on social posts to traffic on your website. You can measure and adapt as you go. Some of the most common digital marketing metrics include:
Traffic
What traffic is going to your website and from where? How many people visit and engage with your site content. Overall traffic will give you a snapshot into your digital strategy and which campaigns are proving successful.
Channels
These metrics will depend on where your audience is coming from. Looking at your top channels is important to make sure that it fits in with your wider digital strategy. There are four main channels that you should be looking at in particular
Direct – Where someone types your website URL into the search bar
Referral – They arrive on your website from another, through a link or an article
Organic – People who carried out an organic search and your website was listed for their search term
Social – People arriving on your website from social platforms
Conversions
A conversion is a metric to describe a visitor who takes some form of action on your website.
This could be a sale, but it could also be filling out a form, clicking on a download button, signing up for a free trial or setting up an account.
If your conversion rate is low, it can be due to poor website design, products that don’t appeal to the audience or an audience are just not interested in what you have to offer.
Tracking conversions will allow you to identify what’s working on your site and what isn’t.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the number of visitors who bounced off your site after only visiting one page.
Every page on your website will have its own bounce rate.
You will find that the pages on your site will vary in terms of bounce rate, but if you notice that one page is particularly higher than the others, you might need to review the content.
Bounce rates are an important metric because they indicate whether the content on your page is relevant to the audience.
Time on Site
This metric will give you an insight into how interested and engaged website visitors are with you content.
It is a good all-round indicator of how well your site is performing. If website visitors spend a lot of time on your website, then this is a positive sign that they find the content useful and valuable.
There are hundreds of metrics that you can monitor on your website and in your digital strategy.
Identifying the most important will depend on your overall marketing goals and what’s important to your business.
Monetising Your Audience
It’s great to build and grow an audience online but if you have lots of social media followers, plenty of traffic to your blog, lots of web visits to your product and service pages, but no conversions, your digital strategy isn’t performing as it should.
The goal of each element in your digital strategy should be to encourage people to take some form of action. To move them to the next stage in the sales funnel.
This is where you can use what is called the value ladder.
A value ladder is a way to maximise the value of each customer.
It is a series of products that ascend in value.
Typically, they start with a low value or free, low risk product for your prospect.
The first offer that you make to the prospect must be irresistible and is usually something that the prospect would expect to pay for.
When the prospect accepts the free offer, they will see its perceived value and it will make them more likely to buy products or services in the next tiers of your value ladder.
The low cost or free offer will serve as a kind of bait.
This will increase the number of prospects who enter your funnel.
The next offer will cover the cost of the initial free offer and itself. If, for example the ‘free’ offer at stage 1 cost £5 and the next offer would cost £10, you would price the tier 2 offer at £15.
Even though you will just break even at this point, you have provided the prospect with two high value products that they could not buy anywhere else.
The next offer and any that follow will increase in value up to your highest priced offer which can be anything from a mastermind group through to a premium product or service.
If you approach the value ladder in the right way, many prospects will attempt to purchase the next few tiers simultaneously.
The value ladder works best when customers buy in increments which ascend in value over time. As this happens you maximise the customer lifetime value.
Value ladders are just one way of positioning your product and service offering, but it’s one of the most effective.
It’s important to remember the creation of a digital strategy takes time, persistence and lots of trial and error.
There isn’t one approach that works for all businesses. Each business has a unique product or service offering with a very specific demographic.
Your digital strategy should be a working document that constantly adapts and grows with your business.
If you are new to digital marketing and you would like to learn more about how to start online marketing but you need a little help, learn more about our Marketing Consulting.