Digital Marketing is a lovely concept. When I decided to make a living from doing Digital Marketing, I thought “Great – having run all aspects of a business for 15 years, I can finally focus in on one thing”. Still so naïve after all these years!!
Like most things in life, once you start digging, you discover more and more layers.
The 7 elements of Digital Marketing are these:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Analytics
There are more, but these 7 represent the main online marketing that most companies will get involved with.
Obviously, each of these elements then breaks down into more elements, ad infinitum!
Which is a pain when I wanted to become laser focused on one offering. And it’s also a massive pain when you’re a business owner and you want to get your marketing done!
There’s a trick!
I used to go to a very good Marketing Club – All-Star Marketing. My main recollection is coming away every month with a heavy feeling, knowing that I was about to not do any of the amazing things that I’d just learned, and which would bring me in piles of new customers.
And now here I am, about to tell you about all of the piles of things that you can do to market your company online, overwhelming you to the point of paralysis🤣😒
The trick, however, was to just take one or two things every month – even one thing every couple of months. Do something that I wasn’t doing previously, and slowly build up a set of activities that hung together in what looked something like a proper marketing operation.
And that’s basically the key to marketing.
It’s about layers…
Marketing is about layers. You pick one thing to do, and you start to do it. You do it consistently over a long period of time. You analyse, review, automate, improve. Once it’s embedded and getting results, you move onto the next layer; you pick something else to do, do it consistently, analyse, review, automate, improve. And on you go.
If you try to do everything all at once, you’ll fail.
Yes, you’ll miss out on all sorts of opportunities because you’re not pushing all channels.
But the channels that you are pushing will work and be efficient.
The other main thing (!) is this: you can’t sell everything to everybody all at once.
You have to layer your products as well.
Pick your best product and your best client – market your best thing to your favourite person.
Once you’ve been successful at this, find your second best product, or your second best client, and put a campaign together for them. If you need to.
Many companies have been surprised – they focus on selling their favourite product to their favourite customer, and they’re so successful that they realise there’s no need for them to actually do anything else.
Do one thing well
I’ve decided to write a blog, and publicise it on LinkedIn. That’s my number 1 focus. It makes sense as I’ve got a reasonable LinkedIn network already, with many business owners/managers. I enjoy writing, and think I’ve got an interesting story to tell.
I’ll be doing other things as well. I’ve started to build a website, design branding, do some SEO. I’ve got a CRM and will probably produce whitepapers and newsletters at some point. I’m thinking of getting a webinar up and running.
However, the blog will be the main thing.
And the same with the business. I need to do one thing and do it well.
Back to the subject…
Anyway – you’re here to find out about the 7 elements of Digital Marketing.
The first thing to notice is that “Website” isn’t mentioned in the 7 elements!
Having a high quality website is assumed.
All of your marketing will lead people to your website, and this needs to be tightly bound to your marketing channels.
If you’re running an ad for Residential Architecture, there’s no point people clicking on this and then having to hunt around your site full of Industrial, Commercial and Educational Architecture information.
Your website needs to be fully in line with your wider marketing efforts, and all of your marketing activities need to be totally aligned – selling a particular product to a particular person working in a particular industry.
With that in mind, let’s talk about the different elements…
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
You have a website – how do people find it? Fundamentally, that’s what all Digital Marketing is about – before anybody calls you, they’re gong to check out your website, and so you’re trying to drive as much traffic to this as possible.
Actually, let me qualify that.
Yes, it’s definitely good to have lots of people visiting your site, particularly if they hang around, read an article and click a few links. Google is getting clever in it’s old age, and it gives higher ranking to sites that people engage with.
And the more people visit your site, the more traffic Google will put your way.
In amongst this, though, what you really are looking for is to get people with intent visiting your site. That is, people who need your service, and need it now.
Many sites have great traffic, but the wrong traffic.
You need to make sure that your key pages are ranking highly for the phrases that indicate buying intent, that these pages speak clearly about how you can fix your visitors’ problems, and that they have clear calls to action.
Click here to find out more about SEO.
Pay-per-click (PPC)
SEO is the long game. It takes time to climb the rankings and get noticed, but once you’re there, you can get huge rewards.
Pay-per-click is your short-cut. By paying money (normally to Google) you get your site at the top of the search results for any phrase that you want.
And better than that – you can specify what type of people you want your ad to be shown to, where they are located, what time of day, and what type of device.
You can literally show your Domestic Architect ad to married people in Hampshire who have recently moved house!
People are generally internet savvy these days. The rule of thumb is that people will give more credibility to sites that are listed high in the natural search results, but will use the Ads for more instant purchases. However, Google Ads, run properly, will turbo-charge your lead generation in a very short period of time.
Content Marketing
This is closely tied to SEO – as is Social Media Marketing.
You need to get people visiting your site, and you need to build trust – with them, and with Google.
Having exceptional content on your site is the primary way to do this.
You write content that is genuinely useful to people. You write it in such a way that the search engines pick it up.
Because it’s genuinely useful, other sites pick it up and start linking to it, and you generate interest on Social Media.
Google sees people liking your content and starts taking your site seriously – it improves your rankings, makes your ads cheaper, and drives more people to your site.
When people get to your site, they like what they read. You sound like you know what you’re talking about, and you build trust, so they pick the phone up.
Content marketing is the engine-room of your digital marketing – it gives everything else something to hang off. But it’s the thing that will use your most valuable asset – time!
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is a funny one. A few years ago, everybody was saying that social was where you had to be, and that it would overtake SEO and Google Ads as the main driver of revenue.
For some sectors, this is undoubtably true. For Professional Services, it can seem like a thankless task.
If you’re going to invest time in Social Media Marketing (and you absolutely should be doing this!), you need to be very clear about why.
There are 2 reasons for doing this:
- Building trust.
It takes a minimum of 7 contacts before somebody will buy from you (there’s something I learned from All Star Marketing Club!)
It’s very unlikely that the first time somebody comes across your company is the time that they need your service. It’s similarly unlikely that, when they do need your service, that they will pick up the phone to you if they’ve never heard of you before.
Social Media is one way that you can build this trust with people before they need to engage with you.
It’s only a small way. Not everybody – by a long way – engages in social media for business purposes, and so you’ll only be hitting a small portion of your target market.
But that’s OK, because the second reason makes it worthwhile… - SEO
Google likes to see people click on links to your site from Social Media. It tells Google that you have something worth reading about, and it will move you up the rankings.
This to me is the thing that ties everything together and makes a winning Digital Marketing operation.
You create a good website, and add genuinely useful content. You shout about this on Social Media. People visit your site, and Google gives you a decent ranking. When your target searches for you on the day they need your service – there you are. Not only are you there, but they recognise your name, remember an article they’ve read, and spend some time browsing other really useful information that you’ve provided. They become comfortable that you know what you’re doing, and are the type of people who add value.
When they pick the phone up, they’re a highly qualified lead actively hoping that you’re the person who will solve their problem.
Email Marketing
So far, I’ve talked about the core of a Digital Marketing campaign – 4 elements that hang together and form the basis of many successful businesses.
Email Marketing is still linked to these, but does stand apart somewhat.
A bit like tradition mail, email marketing can be seen as a bit outdated. The fact is, though, lots of people are still doing it, and doing it because it brings results.
Just like Content Marketing, email marketing works if your content brings value. You’re fighting against the “Block Sender” button, and more recently against the “Other” tab.
If you want people to read your emails, they need to be appropriate, relevant and of value.
This then means that your database needs to be good – you need to know who your prospects are and what information they need. Rambling emails about the state of the world today and pictures of your office party will probably not survive long.
So, first of all, build your database. Capture every client and enquiry. Ask your contacts if they would like your industry updates. Put a valuable e-book or App on your website and capture people’s email addresses.
Then write good content, regularly. You’ll need to gauge how regularly – which partly depends on how much genuinely useful content you can generate.
Getting feedback is also valuable. You’ll get natural feedback from looking at how many people open emails, click links, and unsubscribe (yes – you do need to use a tool to distribute your emails – never do it from Outlook!)
Giving people a call, though, and asking them directly is the best feedback that you’ll have.
Whether the time needed to develop this is worthwhile for your market is a judgement you’ll need to make. If you’re going to do it, you need to commit and do it well.
Affiliate Marketing
This is definitely only right for certain types of business.
In a nutshell, somebody promotes your product on their website. A visitor to their website clicks on the product, taking them to your website, where they make a purchase. You pay that website owner a fee for the referral.
This is used heavily in the retail sector, as well as travel, healthcare, financial services and lifestyle businesses.
It’s big business, with the affiliate market getting towards $20 billion globally, and growing all the time.
The major benefit of Affiliate Marketing is that you’re only generally paying for sales made, and so it’s a very controllable way to increase your coverage.
It’s a fairly specialist area, though, and not a major player in the B2B or professional services arena.
Have a read of this excellent article from OSI Affiliate (sort of ironic – if I was an affiliate marketer, you’d earn me a commission by clicking on the link and subscribing to their software. I’m not, so I won’t, but that illustrates perfectly how affiliate marketing works!!)
Analytics
Totally the most important part of Digital Marketing. You simply must be looking at the stats – seeing what works, trying experiments, doing more of the good stuff, dropping the bad stuff, watching out for Google changing its algorithms and messing up your hits.
Back in the old days, marketers had very few ways to know which bits of their marketing worked. This now isn’t a problem. You can track exactly where your website visitors come from, what journeys they take through your site, and which pages get you the most sales.
It takes some work to set up. Ideally, if you’re a professional services company, you’ll gather information when people make enquiries about how they found you (search term, ideally). You’ll link enquiries to specific campaigns that you’re running. You’ll set up trial ads linked to specific landing pages and try out different key words.
But the stats you get from Google Analytics and software such as Semrush will give you enormous insights into how you’re performing, and allow you to constantly improve.
Get to know Google Analytics, and invest in a good SEO Tracking tool – they will pay you back many times over!
Where to start
As I say, you can’t do all of this all at once. Pick what’s going to work for you, and get started. If you’re already doing some of these, check your stats, figure out what’s working and do more of it. Once you’re satisfied, choose something else to do.
There are plenty of people out there who can give you a hand with this stuff if you decide it’s worth the investment. There’s a host of copywriters, SEO experts, social media specialists, email marketers who you can offload parts of your marketing to without having to invest in more staff.
In fact, why not give me a call – always happy to explore whether I can help:)