Whatever the size of your business, digital marketing gives your brand exposure on the world stage.

The best thing about using digital marketing is that if done properly, it can level the playing field, allowing you to compete with competitors of all sizes.

Online marketing channels are very cost effective because they give you the ability to reach so many potential clients. This is the digital age and if your business is not geared towards digital marketing, it is definitely time to do it.

How many people can I reach with digital marketing?

The amount of people you can reach varies, depending on whether you are using social media, a website, blogs, or a combination of all three. Let’s put this into context. At the last official count, in 2015, there were 14 million Facebook users, 5 million Instagram users, 3.7 million Linkedin users and 2.8 million Twitter users. As for the internet, that’s anyone’s guess and your website has limitless potential!

Content is King

You may have heard of Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Advertising, Social media advertising and other jargon relating to digital marketing.

We will delve further into them later, but the single most important factor that leads to the success of a digital marketing campaign is the quality of your content.

Facebook is currently implementing a change in its algorithms to restrict pure marketing posts from flooding people’s feeds. However, if you create a short social media post showing how to fix a water leak, for example, you can link back to your website and blog.

In order to get people interested, you must give them engaging content that will entice them to your blog and also to your website.

It takes a bit of a leap of faith, but this is how it works. If you are a plumber, you should log into Google Trends and look up things that people have been searching for.

After that, you can extract a keyword – which is actually a phrase – which people are searching for. In this case “Things to try before calling a plumber” might be a great option.

How often should I blog or post?

There is absolutely no limit to how much you should post on your own site or blog. Remember, people are coming to your site, you are not shoving it down their throats. As long as your content is relevant, interesting and engaging, then you can update 5 or 10 times a day!

Dos and Don’ts

Google is very strict on what it filters through as reliable content and spam. Also, if your content is riddled with spelling mistakes, bad grammar, and punctuation, you are not exactly going to inspire confidence.

Don’t over capitalise words
Never write “click here”
Never use profanity
Don’t use shorthand (4 instead of for)
Use your keywords in the copy and in headings
Have a call to action
Try and include a benefit – discount coupons, for example

Search Engine Optimisation

In the past, SEO was a very spammy affair. Marketers created content and literally stuffed it with keywords in order to get a better ranking. It really was quantity over quality.

Then something came out of the blue. Google began marking it all as spam, pushing it further and further down the list as unreliable content.

So how does SEO actually work? Search engines will match people’s internet searches to the ‘answer’ your business provides. If your keywords and the rest of the on page content really do match that search term, then you will be featured higher up the list. It is essentially a marketing technique that is focused solely on expanding the visibility of websites. Having an SEO ready page means that you are giving your business the best possible chance of being understood by Google and approved as a ‘good’ page.

Pay-per-click advertising

This type of marketing uses search engine advertising to generate visits to your website. Ever seen one of the ads at the top of the search engine results? That’s a pay per click ad. If someone clicks on it to be taken to your site, Google will take a small cut. It’s an effective way to get clicks, but it is also dependent on having good and relevant content. If, for example, you only offer your services in a specific suburb and put in the ad that you work nationwide, you will pay for clicks for nothing, lose customer trust and Google will not like your site as much.

To get into this form of advertising, you will need to bid on keywords relevant to your audience through Google AdWords. How much you have to pay depends on the popularity of the AdWords. You can also think smart and use long-tail keywords.

Setting up a social media strategy

Posting pictures and captions about your business activity is simply not going to cut it. You need a clear strategy if you want any type of real success. No matter what platform you are targeting, you need to:

Set out your objectives
Assess those objectives against your current social media position
Decide which platforms to use and what weighting to give them
Content is King! Develop a good strategy and calendar
Use the insights tools to track your progress
Be agile and responsive, react to trends

Resist the urge to flood social media and then lie dormant for a while, They key to social media is posting regular, relevant and engaging posts without flooding people’s feeds. If you post too much, they will simply hide you. Remember what we said about the Facebook algorithm earlier? They will stop your feeds from reaching people.