Digital Marketing is often misunderstood. Some people see it as an extension of IT support (“you’re a computer guy, can you try and work out why my PC isn’t showing on this screen?”), some see it you as a member of the Matrix (“when you close your eyes, is there just a series of numbers falling on a black background?”) and some see you as a master of the dark arts (“this whole digital thing is beyond me, I just don’t get it”).
However, digital marketing doesn’t need to be as complicated as this. Digital marketing is just a channel within the marketing mix – it is just a different means of engaging with your audience rather than billboards, newspapers, TV or direct mail. So, in the spirit of simplicity, here are five super simple things that you can do to your digital marketing to make it better.
Your Website: This is the cornerstone of your digital marketing offering. You should already be well aware of what you would like people to do when they are on your website (buy a product; make an enquiry; find your contact details; etc.). Now, does your website help or hinder people in completing that task? How about creating a small ‘user journey’ which starts with your most popular landing page, allowing the person to complete the task. E.g.
- Your home page with a link to your most popular product
- Page explaining the product you are selling and its benefits with a link to a ‘buy now’ button
- Check out process – pricing, quantity, postage, fulfillment
Map this out, and you have just made your potential customer’s day easier.
Social Media: This is the part of digital marketing where you can show a bit of your personality, and interact with your audience in a way that you cannot on your website. My simple tip here is to complete your profile – add a photo, add your contact details, email address, web address, etc. You would be amazed at the number of business pages that I see without this basic info on it.
Search Engine Optimisation: Of all of the elements of digital marketing, search engine optimisation is one that can get really technical! However, doing the basics is pretty easy. If you complete the meta data for all of your web pages, this will put you in a good position. Meta data is used by search engines to understand what a web page is all about, so make this as specific as you can. You should complete the meta title (this will appear in the tab of the browser which is displaying your page) and the meta description, which appears under your URL when your page appears on a search engine.
Email Marketing: One of the great things about email marketing is that you can very quickly work out whether your email campaign has worked – you can check your number of delivered emails, number of opened emails, number of clicks and so on. So, simply try sending your email campaigns at different times of the day, and different days of the week – over time, this will tell you the best time to send an email to your audience.
Images: For some products, people use search engine images to search for the right product – for example, a friend of mine is moving house and looking for new lighting, so they are typing what they want to see and using Google Images to find the right light and store! Images are ranked by their relevancy to the search query in the same way that web pages are. So, you need to tell the search engines what the image contains, and this is done through the image’s title and alternative text or ‘alt text’ – simply describe the image and that’s all you need to do.
These are deliberately very simple tips – if you are advanced in digital marketing, then all of these will be done, and you will be delving into the technicalities of digital. But implementing all of these simple tasks will (frighteningly!) put you ahead of thousands of digital propositions.
Image via goldminemedia.co.uk