How to Get Started With Digital Marketing

Sometimes I get caught up talking about all the technical aspects of search engine rankings and website design that I forget to cover the basics: how to get started with digital marketing. Early adapters are already well on their way and can digest the somewhat-technical information shared about the topic. However, business owners or marketers who have yet to take the online plunge probably have limited knowledge (not a bad thing at all, not all of us can be experts in everything).

Having recently met with a client who has high law/financial technical knowledge, he reminded me that sometimes we forget to talk in terms that anyone can understand. We immediately resort to technical jargon, industry specific abbreviations and concepts because we spend countless hours in our industries and professions. It is important to keep certain information understandable by anyone - not because they are not capable of understanding, but because they are most likely specialized in other professions and haven't been involved in what services you may offer (just like I myself would not be able to give you sound legal advice).

Hopefully this post will provide a high-level overview of the digital world and how it can be used to help your small business carve out a niche of its own.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing in short is the ability to make yourself visible to the right audience at the right time. Keep in mind that I used to word visible: because what everyone is trying to do is grab someone's attention. Every time you want to run a paid ad, come up on the first page of Google or have people interact with your social media post you are trying to captured a little bit of that attention. Hopefully it leads to an action being taken - but before that can happen you need to present. As you can see by the breakdown  below, the least amount of time is spent shopping online. The other 95% is what digital marketing is meant for: being active within the right community and interacting with users on their own terms:

Source: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-people-spend-their-time-online-infographic

The other part of digital marketing is context. Getting attention is good, getting attention at the right time is awesome. Imagine you are running a sponsored ad to sell a high-end camera to photographers but the target you are trying to reach is new & upcoming photographers. Perhaps it would be more effective to promote a blog post or ebook on how new photographers can get their business off the ground instead of trying to sell the camera immediately. Much easier said than done of course!

The different areas of digital marketing

Keep in mind that each of these areas can have an in-depth post of their own with detail specifics. This is just a brief overview - feel free to browse the blog for more information on each.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Marketing (SEM)

Usually the most confusing or hard to understand concepts for many small businesses. Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) refers to the "organic" or non-paid efforts that aim to get your web page(s) to the top of Google (or other major search engines) pages. These are the search results you see underneath the ads. Keep in mind that SEO professionals don't rank your entire website for key terms but individual pages.

Search Engine Marketing (or SEM) on the other hand refers to paid efforts that get your communications on search engines. These would be paid ads or display banners that you come across in search engines. To get this positioning you have to usually pay per click (charged every time someone clicks on the ad) or pay per impression (paid based on the amount of times the ad is seen). Positioning of your ad compared to competitors is dependent on bid amount (how much you're willing to pay for a click or impression) and the quality of the ad (if the search terms match, landing page relevancy, etc.).

Email Marketing

One of the earliest forms of digital communication, email is still regarded as the most effective tool to drive results with digital efforts. And that should not be a surprise to anyone - people can customize the amount of emails they receive and marketers can customize the messaging on a personal level. 

According to emailisnotdead.com article, 61% of consumers like to receive weekly promotional emails and 28% want them even more frequently.

By following recently introduced CASL regulations, small businesses can communicate on a personal level with the customer. As you can see by the statistic above - majority of people prefer to receive email. When you have a customer who is willingly receiving communications it increases the possibility of an action being taken.

Social Media

Probably the most recognized marketing tactic - social media has grown into a huge tool for small businesses. With the introduction of sponsored ads, analytics tools and company pages majority of today's popular social media networks are developing their networks with companies in mind. Not just users.

There are two things to keep in mind with social media as it relates to business purposes:

1. Your business does not need to have a presence on every single social media network. Do some research, evaluate your resources and target the networks that make most sense.
2. Don't just post promotions or sales. It's called a social network for a reason. Post helpful, useful or interactive content that users will find engaging. Also, don't just post all the time - put in the effort to interact and respond to comments to show that you are truly an active member of the online community.

Content Marketing

The hottest topic of late has to be content marketing. It has been used as a buzzword far too often that majority, if not all, small business owners have heard of it. Content marketing plays a big role in the other areas as well: it can be shared using email or social media, it plays a big role in search engine rankings as it is more likely to get shared than corporate web pages, etc.

Hardest part about content marketing is making it relevant. You want to create a blog post, ebook, video - whatever that piece of content may be - that is going to engage users in a way that evokes an action. That action can be for them to share it with their own network/community, to fill out a form, download a report, etc.

The best content usually evokes emotion in users, making them feel a deeper connection with your brand: bring out a happy feeling, helping resolve a task faster, solving a difficult problem, connecting them closer with others, etc.

Analytics

The main difference between traditional and digital marketing efforts is the ability to track and evaluate campaigns. Big data is big business now; there numerous companies dedicated to providing analytics solutions that can track anything from your paid advertisement clicks to website interactions.

The most common tools that small businesses use are the ones that are free: Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, etc. Majority of online networks come with some sort of reporting ability. Be sure to set goals before you start and associate those goals with tangible performance indicators (or stats). This will help you measure how well something is work (or not). That way you can be ready to tweak your efforts to make sure you are getting the most out of your marketing.

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This is just a brief list of online marketing areas that are most common - there are plenty of other ways to engage an audience online. We've put together a list of emerging concepts for 2016 & beyond that you can take a look at here.

Where to Begin

This depends on where your small business currently stands with its online presence.

On Your Own

If you've got the time and a can-do attitude; there are plenty of resources, tools and solutions to help you automate digital marketing and do it all on your own. Keep in mind that certain things might be easier than others: sharing a Facebook post on a company page is much easier than researching a good key term to rank every single page of your website. As is editing all the different elements of those pages requires technical knowledge.

Doing things yourself may be more cost effective but remember that efforts, when done incorrectly, can have a negative effect on your business. If you're unsure of how to do something always do research, find step-by-step guides or consult someone who can steer you in the right direction.

Hiring or Outsourcing

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the amount of things to learn you can always find someone (whether hiring or outsourcing) to do it on your behalf. Sometimes it might be better for business owners to focus on what their expertise are and let professionals handle the marketing side. After all, many business utilize outside accountants, graphic designers and other service providers. In the same way a digital marketing professional or company can be utilized to help build an online presence.

Not all freelancers or companies will be right for you. Digital marketing services can be pricey, and majority of small businesses don't have the budget to outsource ALL digital efforts. At the same time, be wary of any company or professional guaranteeing you instant success. Much like other functions, digital marketing takes time and on-going work in order to yield positive results.

Helpful Resources

Regardless of where you stand, below are some of the posts we've put together that can help make your efforts a little bit easier:

• Outsourcing vs. In-House digital marketing
• How to tell your small business story
• Should you hire an employee or a freelancer
• FREE online marketing tools for small businesses
• Differences between promoting & engaging

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Hope that was helpful! If I've missed something or you'd like to add more, the comment section is a good place to do so.

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Unknown Tuesday, July 05, 2016  

8 Commonly Overlooked Digital Marketing Efforts

So you have put together an awesome blog post - comes with plenty of visuals, original ideas and it even has a video as part of the write-up. It is published and "online" for everyone to see, but yet there is no one coming to the post. You may be asking yourself: why is my digital content not being seen?

Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It is easy to get caught up in finishing a really good piece of content and just expecting results to come on their own. There are a number of digital marketing efforts that accompany every piece of content created, whether that's a blog post, video, mobile app, whitepaper, ebook, etc. I recently finished up reading Youtility - a great book covering effective online marketing. One key concept that stuck with me was the fact that online marketing does not have a finish line - it is an ongoing endeavor that has to become a part of everyday tasks.

Here is a useful list of items that are usually overlooked when creating content online. The list takes into consideration efforts necessary before and after the content is put together - covering all the important factors of successful engagement and reach. For the purpose of this post we will mainly focus on blog posts - but these efforts apply to all branded content being produced.

1. Goal Setting

The first and foremost step in any marketing strategy; making sure that you have set measurable goals. What is the purpose of your blog post? Most of the time it is to educate, inform or provide some type of benefit to the readers - but how can you connect those goals to performance?

Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Put together both qualitative (quality of comments, location of readers,etc) and quantitative (links from other bloggers, number of views, etc.) measures that directly relate to your goal. Having benchmarks can help you evaluate your content marketing. This way you eliminate any guess work from your reporting and know ahead of time what type of analytical information you will be focusing on.

2. Research

After you have established measurable goals, it is important to research not only the topic you will be writing about but your potential audience. Do they prefer to engage with videos more than images? Will an e-book or infographic be better suited to present the information? Most of the time it is not a clear cut answer, and in many instances it may require a combination of different visual components.

Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Another thing to keep in mind is your topic - did you do SEO research on it and focused on keywords that will help your post be easily searchable? Take the time to optimize your content to what your audience is actually searching for as opposed to what you think the audience is searching for. You would be surprised at some of the topics or terminology that is being searched once you actually do the research!

3. Accessibility

Late last year we outlined a number of items on SMBs Holiday Marketing Wishlist, but the main one that applies to this point is responsive design. You don't have to read a blog post to know that mobile devices are furiously taking over our daily lives, including business interactions. Having a blog post that is easily view-able on an iPad and a BlackBerry is important (and all other devices).

If you do not make it accessible across various devices and operating systems you could be losing a lot of audience members. It would be a shame to have that great blog post go unnoticed because it impossible to view on a smartphone or different browser (anyone still use Internet Explorer? You betcha!).

4. Shareability

The best marketing or branding is word of mouth, is it not? So having a blog post that cannot be easily shared can cause a problem in the digital alternative "click to share" concept. Have social media share buttons readily available on your post, embed code for all your infographics, pin buttons on images, etc.

Image courtesy of Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Convenience is key, the easier you make it for someone to share your content the more likely it will be shared. The level of quality matters as well, but putting extra work on the audience to share will only discourage any action.

5. Marketing Your Marketing

Another great mention in Youtility is the concept of "marketing your marketing" - meaning that you do not stop at just putting the new blog post live, but that that you share it across all of your channels. Do you have a newsletter? Is it included there? Part of your website? Guest blogging on a relevant blog? Be sure to get the word out in as many ways as possible (without spamming) and increase your reach.

Informing your audience in offline channels can also be beneficial, while most of our focus is on digital branding - taking an integrated approach is ultimately the best option. Have your blog post as part of your in-store signage, get all employees involved and encourage them to share with customers if its appropriate.

By doing this you will actively increase the chances that the content is seen, shared and engaged. It is no longer left to chance but is strategically launched to your community.

6. Listening and Following Up

Don't talk AT your community, talk WITH them. Believe it or not even the most recognized brands do not have the answer to all of the burning questions that some people may have. If someone posts an informative comment that expands on the post - why not thank them? Invite them to do a guest-post? Perhaps your organization can do a follow-up post to the first one based on those comments.

The worst thing that can happen is for people to leave this feedback or appreciation to just "sit there" without directly responding. The purpose is to be engaging - setup notifications and monitor your content to know precisely when something new comes up. This way you can respond accordingly and connect with your audience when the time is right.

7. Measuring Performance

Remember the first point? We'll here it is again coming back to haunt you. After all is said and done, if you do not have anything to measure against all of the above mentioned effort can seem worthless. Seeing the progression and exceeding your goals can be a rewarding experience. Alternatively, falling short of your goals is a great way to learn what worked and what didn't, where there is room for improvement and what can be implemented in real-time to make sure that goals are attained.

Image courtesy of jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.ca

Keep track of content performance, connect analytics data to goals and measure the success of your digital branding.

8. Repurposing (or Reimagining) and Improving Accordingly

Content Rules, another great book written on online marketing, introduces a great concept of repurposing or reimagining your content. If your blog post was a huge hit with the audience, why not create an e-book out of it? Perhaps it could be upgraded to an infographic if it was written some time ago. Could you turn it into a mobile app? After you have had a chance to listen to your audience and measure against your goals, you can improve the content and let your audience guide it in the right direction.

The possibilities are usually endless if the content is of good quality, useful and engaging. Repurposing lets you cycle through your content without discarding it - making it easier on your content creation and time management.

After all you never know what can happen, maybe this post ends up in a whitepaper one day?

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Unknown Tuesday, April 08, 2014  

Creating a Digital Brand Personality

By now you may have created social media profiles on behalf of your organization, developed a solid website and gotten a number of likes in various social spheres. Now what? The next step after this is something that SMB organizations seem to struggle with the most - transitioning from "we are on social media" to "we are having fun, converting and rocking out on social media". Effective digital branding demands continuous engagement and interactions with audience members.

If you have already been fortunate enough to gain someone's trust and interest online (not an easy feat by any means nowadays) why not keep it? It is not enough to have someone visit your website, and afterwards hope that they make an action simply based on that one interaction. A customer experience spans beyond a shopping cart, a contact form or call-to-action click. It goes to further lengths of conversation, reviews, interaction with peers...a memorable online experience. You have to create an impression as a publisher of information and/or service, a personality that will attract and keep attention of potential customers.

In order to take your brand to the next level and have it rock out (and convert) in the world wide web you need to consider the following aspects of all of your online touch points:

1) Where is the Conversation Taking Place?

If you are sending out tweets five times a day, yet no one pays attention - you are not utilizing Twitter effectively. Do not be on a social media network just for the sake of having a presence there, or because "everyone else is on there".

Your social media plan needs to be carefully laid out: do the research - see where your customers are most active, what they are talking about and how you can join the conversation. Perhaps most of your audiences uses Pinterest due to the overwhelmingly visual nature of your content and find it easier to Pin and comment as opposed to tweet.

Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Being in the right place is as important as being part of the right conversation.

2) Am I Part of the Right Conversation?

Your website may rank well for the keyword "fast food restaurant" but majority of people are searching for "best burgers in town" - you will not be connecting or engaging the right audience. Fast food is a general term that applies to a vast category of food: is it a pizza restaurant? fried chicken? hot dogs? It needs to be specific, and focus on locality in which your customers and potential audience members are active in.

Once you establish the right presence and become part of the right conversations, you start to mold the perception around your brand. This will give you the ability to not only influence that perception in a direct way, but to determine what type of perception is currently circulating within your targeted community. Utilizing effective social media marketing services or having a dedicated person for digital interactions is crucial in joining the right conversation, and making your brand participants feel as if they are on a cloud - which brings us to our next point.

3) Make Audience Feel as if They're on a Cloud

No - this does not necessarily mean to bring them into a Salesforce database (although it could be beneficial as part of an overall approach). It means that their online interaction with your brand need to cater to their needs and ways of communicating digitally. Did you share something useful? Help them solve a problem? Entertained them in some way? Contributed to finding something important?

Image courtesy of Kittisak / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

All interactions digitally (and all other marketing efforts) need to be customer oriented, not product or service oriented. Branding efforts need to focus on the customers and their concerns - making sure that messages and interactions are delivered at the right time, in the right context and in a meaningful way. Bring each customer into the cloud and have them float there every time your brand is in question.

4) Encourage Digital Participation Internally

This seems to be a major road-block for building an effective digital brand personality for most SMB companies: blocking social media access, internet browsing, IM tools and other digital means of collaborating. While sales personnel are encouraged to, and most of the time provided with a mobile device - marketing or branding positions have access to certain websites, and the rest of the organization ranging from admin roles to higher management are not permitted to participate in the online conversation.

What is wrong with having your employees contribute to your brand? Yes there need to be guidelines outlined to using these digital communications so that people do not get sidetracked. And yes, there also needs to be a shift towards opening up channels to employees because they can be brand ambassadors and contribute to building your brand. There is nothing more encouraging to potential customers than hearing employees, executives, management and everyone that is part of the brand resonate the same message. It strengthens perception, gives confidence and engages everyone involved (employees and customers).

It is your brand after all - limiting people whether internal or external will only strain relationships and straining relationships can be the breaking point between having loyal customers or losing customers.

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Unknown Sunday, November 03, 2013