I have been actively working online since 2011 up to now and worked with various clients to name. In this article, I will like to share the ideas and skills I have acquired throughout the years.
Online marketing is a strategy that helps any individual, business or non-profit institutions achieve their short-term or long-term goals through the aid of the internet and all the including technologies support its mechanism.The advent of the internet nowadays especially at this time of COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly increased the usage of online marketing across the world. A lot of people continue achieving successful results after an effective online marketing strategies have been setup. People who became experts in Online marketing are called Digital Strategists. They can build almost anything from scratch to a driving force online. They use all the tools available as means for a solid marketing strategy like from Social Media, Web creation, SEO, conversion experts to finding good traffic yet quality ones and more. At the end of this course, I am viewing myself to acquire new skills needed to become a Digital Marketing Strategist.
DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
Now as we move forward, one example of an online marketing is called the Digital Marketing Strategy. This strategy relies the usage of the internet fully adopting its utility wherein a certain individual or a business can gain a lot of potential leads that can result into conversions to profits and quality traffic that give favorable opportunities. Take note that part of using Digital Marketing Strategy is by using the power of the Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and more. The possibilities are endless once this strategy is established.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DEFINING THREE STRATEGIES
In any Digital Marketing strategy, it is very important to set and define the 3 sub-strategies which are:
• Building a business strategy.
• Building a brand strategy.
• Building a marketing strategy.
These are 3 different strategies but all share 1 common goal that is to achieve a successful digital marketing venture. They are very important and co-related with each other and are crucial to obtain results.
BUILDING A BUSINESS STRATEGY
To apply a Digital Marketing Strategy, I must select the desired nature of my business. In my case, I want to setup a small-time everyday commodities and goods store. In order for my business to grow and profitable, I must apply good and solid digital marketing strategies designed in the model of business I ventured to.
BUILDING A BRAND STRATEGY
Now to add more spice to my business strategy, I will also create a brand name for it. A good brand strategy always resonate a sound business. Have you ever noticed that a leading brand in a certain industry especially in a fierce competition gets most the value? Take Apple iphones as an example, just by hearing the word “iPhone”, most of people always get the idea that it is the most dominant brand of mobile phones in the world. So Apple is the name of the brand that most people refer as the high-end value of smart phones. Apple in short has built a good brand strategy for the business model it has chosen.
BUILDING A MARKETING STRATEGY
o wrap things up for the digital marketing strategy, not only a good business that has a sound brand name, but a good marketing strategy is also vital to achieve better results. Marketing is the same as advertising, my business’ brand name must be visible to all possible and potential leads. They must know my business and the products/services that I offer.
EXPLORING DIGITAL MARKETING
The world of Digital Marketing has always been an exciting experience whether for business or just for personal use. The Digital Marketing itself is a broad genre that heavily relies on the advent of the internet especially right now at Covid-19 dire times. We have seen a lot of business done through online lately. I can say that Digital Marketing helps a lot of people and institutions all over the world.
DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY
The Digital Marketing world has a lot of definitions and terminologies to count. I will only mention those I find have the bigger impacts as a whole like SEO (Search Engine Optimization, Artificial Intelligence or simple called “AI”, CPA (Cost Per Action), Advertisements, Website Creation and Monetization and much, much more!
COMPONENTS OF DIGITAL MARKETING
The Digital Marketing typically has the following components like Search engine optimization (SEO), Pay-per-click advertising (PPC), Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action (CPA), Web design/creation, Content marketing/creation, Social media marketing, email marketing, marketing analytics and more.
THE DIGITAL MARKETING LANDSCAPE
The Digital Marketing landscape is the ecosystem where all the necessary tools, strategies, techniques and platforms go into one place where all the aforementioned are being utilized that further diversify the online digital world. There are a lot of strategies to choose from and can be applied depending on the user or institution’s digital marketing needs.
STARTING WITH THE WEBSITE
In any Digital marketing strategy, starting with a website is vital. Website is the backbone of any person or institution upon entering the online world. It speaks who we are and what we do. To start making a certain website, one must identify what kind of services they offer or the goods to sell including their target market either global or local. There are a lot of elements in making a website that we are going to discuss more later.
WHAT MAKES A WEBSITE EFFECTIVE?
In order for a certain website to be effective and productive, there are a lot of things to consider that must be observed. Some of the many criteria for an effective website are the following:
• A website must have enough traffic for potential conversions into profits from goods or services. Traffic means everything. It is the deciding factor for website’s success. Driving traffic to a website is more important than the looks.
• A website must be accurate in what they are selling or services they are offering. A website's content must be unique and not a copy paste from others. A website should follow all the necessary guidelines that do not violate any digital marketing rules online and to the digital community.
CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME
There are a lot parts in creating a website. One part of starting/creating a website is choosing a good domain name of your choice. It could be your brand name itself or anything that represents you, your products and services. It should be an exact representation of who you are. A good domain name that is reputable for the digital community. In short, a domain is your brand name. It will speak for you. There are a lot of domain name providers online that we can choose from. Of course, select those quality over price value.
SELECTING A DESIGNER OR DEVELOPER
The other part of website creation is the designing or developing section. A lot of starters who find website designing/developing to be tricky and techy. For that, they reside on selecting or hiring professionals to do their works for them. Always connect to those really stand out and can express your visions and ideas into reality for the website that you want to establish.
BUILDING A SITE YOURSELF
Now if you want to save money, of course, we can create our desired website ourselves. There are a lot of free web applications online like Wordpress, Blogger and Wix. The good thing about these apps is they provide user-friendly interface and help the starters in designing their websites. They also assist them for whatever help and challenges they meet in creating website. Take note, if you have the budget and wants to save time for other micro things, you can always hire web professionals. Although building a site yourself can acquire you new skills, can be fun and worth-while. DIY yourself can be fun too!
MAKING YOUR WEBSITE CONVERT
No matter how good looking a certain website is, if it cannot make conversions even it has enough traffic, it is a useless and dead website. Yes it is true that a good looking and having quality contents that people can engage from, a website owner/creator’s top priority is to convert out of these engagements mentioned. If a website is about products and services, it must create conversions that can result profits. The same is true if a website is about to give information like educational oriented sites, more people reached equal to conversions because their messages are relayed. To make a website convert, a lot of solid digital marketing strategies should be applied
CREATING ENGAGING WEB COPY
Website contents must be good and unique at all times meaning at all cost it must not copy from someone else. Not only that web copy should be written or made uniquely as possible but it must be engaging also. People that usually like the articles they just have read or videos they just watched tend to make interactions like sharing them to their social media feeds, commenting, etc. Creating engaging web copies can be tiresome but very rewarding if done correctly. This practice is one of the important aspects in Digital Marketing strategy.
CHOOSING RESPONSIVE DESIGN
One must choose the right responsive design for his/her website according to the niche he/she joined in. For example, I want to setup a digital marketing strategy for my small grocery/commodities store, creating a website is part of this and I must choose the appropriate designs that represent my business as a brand. So I will lay out the designs I want that I think will be helpful for my potential leads. I will try to keep things simple and straight forward especially now that most people use mobile phones rather than PCs and laptops, my contents and applications inside my website should be fast and responsive as possible. People in nature, hate to wait and frustrate a lot on laggy websites.
INSTALLING GOOGLE TAG MANAGER
First we need to have a Google account to access the Google Analytics tool. One of the many utilities that the Google Analytics offer is the Google Tag Manager where we can access and edit the necessary tags that can help us measure and optimize our marketing strategies. Tags are similar with keywords and they play an important role in determining the right metrics in optimizing our websites.
FOUNDATIONS OF ANALYTICS
Data analytics play an important role in getting the strengths and weaknesses of a website in a digital marketing strategy. It will give specific information like we can find the things in our website that need improvements and further enhance the areas where strong performances are shown. In every website or any platforms, founding key analytics are important and must be established because they give a lot of data or information that we can analyze from. To make actions in every aspects that play a major role in a successful marketing strategy.
INTRODUCTION TO MEASURING DATA
The good thing about analytics is that we can get or generate all the data that we need in analyzing a certain website’s performance. Measuring data is just as good as monitoring key statistics for the bad to worst areas that need attention for improvement. Also, by measuring data, we can get the best statistics and further enhance them to the next level.
HOW ONLINE ANALYTICS WORK
Online Analytics work in a very sophisticated way, it is aid by artificial intelligence technology which is accurate in gathering the needed data in real time. A lot of platforms are interconnected via the internet and helping each other in providing real time data whenever one demands it from another. The internet plays a major role in online analytics structure. Take Google as an example. It is the most famous web search platform where a lot of data are searched all over the world, businesses that want to advertise their services and products go to Google analytics helping them for their needs.
USING GOAL TRACKING
Setting up goals for your analytics can be very rewarding. A goal is simply representing a completed activity and is called a conversion. It always reward your business or platform, it means your visitors/audiences are doing engagements. Goal tracking is literally analyzing how the conversions were made. They could be registering under your call-to-actions inside your website, staying in the website for a longer than normal, buying/purchasing of goods and services. Statistics like these are very helpful because one can further enhance his/her website or platform that can lead to more goals.
LOOKING AT A CONVERSION FUNNEL
When we try to look upon an infographic depicting how a conversion funnel works, we can see a literal funnel where liquid flows inside the different levels.For any website or applications, a conversion funnel can always be seen. First level is Awareness, where audience sees what a website or application offers. Then Interest arise, it’s up to them to leave or stay. Once they got a feeling that they are interested, then they enter into the Desire level. A successful conversion funnel always ends up in an action. It could be a purchase, a registration and can be anything else worth rewarding.
DEFINING YOUR KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIS)
Defining your Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are essential because they are critical signals of progress toward a desired result. By defining those necessary KPIs, any website, application or platform can focus for helpful strategic improvements. It is like saying, if they are able to define the weaknesses, they can improve them or leave them if they cannot be helped. To the strengths, they can further enhance them like I keep mentioning earlier from previous topics. By doing these KPIs, one can focus their attention to what they are really good at. There are a lot KPIs around. To mention some, there are Revenue per client or RPC, Average Class Attendance or ACA, Client Retention Rate (CRR) and much, much more.
LOOKING AT ATTRIBUTION MODELS
Based on what I have researched over the internet, it says:
“An attribution model is the rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touch points in conversion paths. For example, the Last Interaction model in Analytics assigns 100% credit to the final touch points(i.e., clicks) that immediately precede sales or conversions.”
Actually, there are no necessary right attribution models that anyone can follow according to their needs. It depends on a large of factors to consider and can scale very differently like according to how large is the website or platform audience is and more. An example of platform that uses attribution model is the infamous social medium in the world, the Facebook where it is true that we can use the said app for free but Facebook in return can get revenue or ROI via advertisement sales.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Another interesting and a bit techy part of Digital Marketing Strategy is called the Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. Actually, there a lot more techy ones compared to SEO. The biggest search engine platform in the world is Google and as far as I know, one of the earliest platform was Yahoo. The major ones are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Think SEO as a very big market that can also be both global and local ones. Getting a good SEO strategy is very important part in having a solid Digital Marketing Strategy. The good thing about SEO is it can be very rewarding in the long run. Of course if done correctly. SEO is a very broad topic. There are 2 major types of SEO namely On-Page and Off-Page. Individuals and Business create their brand websites all over the world and there are thousands of niche or genre to choose from and the competition can be fierce. As long as your website is listed in the top 100 search especially in Google, you are getting a lot of traffic back to your website thus resulting goal conversions. Usually people click the top most results in the page 1 searches, have you ever wonder why? Simple answer, because people prefer to visit the first ones!
HOW SEO WORKS
SEO works in very complicated ways but it only has 1 single purpose, to make a certain website in top spot across search engines especially Google. It is like the website is getting voted as the most relevant search result when certain keywords are searched over the internet which is very important for businesses. SEO works in aiming to please the search engines by like creating unique contents inside the website, keyword diversification, ON-page enhancements like meta tags, titles, descriptions, and a lot more to mention.
ESSENTIAL OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES
To apply a good and get solid SEO results, one must apply the SEO essential optimization techniques. Now, there are a lot of SEO techniques to apply.
Some of them are:
• On-Page Optimization•Off-Page Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Keyword Diversification
• Google Analytics
• Creating Original Web Content
• Building high authority backlink networks
• Social Signals•Google Ad Marketing
• Pinging and Indexing
CRAFTING A CONTENT STRATEGY
We all know that in Digital Marketing especially in Selling Ads department, traffic is everything. Take note that I am talking about quality and not trash traffic. Traffic can get goal conversions. But how to get there? The content we make is the answer. It is crucial to a point that it will be the deciding factor whether the traffic a certain gets turn into conversions. Now, crafting a content is a good strategy for SEO. Just make sure that the content made is original and not copied from everywhere else. Google loves content and it will reward us SERPs or rankings.
LEVERAGING LOCAL SEO
Doing local SEO is a lot simpler than a global level but it has a lot of micro tasks to consider. To dominate the SEO locally for a certain website’s niche, there are some methods for leveraging local SEO like setting up a local citation, on-site optimization, getting social reviews like a Facebook reviews from recent visitors. Of course they must be positive, a negative review can result to less visits and conversions.
CHOOSING TO HIRE A PROFESSIONAL
Earlier, I mentioned seeking professional help on website creation can have advantages. The same is true with hiring a professional to do SEO for you, whether you want a local or global presence. Although, it can be quite expensive, at least you can be assured that the most tricky and techy parts of SEO. If someone can afford to hire an SEO professional, then it would be great plus for them. They can focus more on other vital things like content creation and doing engagements or interactions with the audiences.
SEARCH AND DISPLAY MARKETING
Another helpful digital marketing strategy to consider is the Search and Display marketing. Also note that these 2 shares the same idea of relying to ads or advertisements strategy to generate conversions but are done quite differently. People in nature like to do research first before deciding to what they want after they have done it. Search and display marketing can be in a form of pay-as-you-go method.
INTRODUCTION TO SEARCH AND DISPLAY
Search ads work only in search engines like Google when someone is trying to search for a certain keyword for a product, services or anything they want to search. The ads is included with the organic SEO results and they are highlighted as an Ad on top of the search. They have high chance of being clicked. Meanwhile, Display ads can be anywhere across the sites that are significant with your searched terms. I strongly believe not all search and display ads are the best searched results, they are just happened to pay for their placements and does not guarantee conversions. They get to be visited first and high in traffic.
LAUNCH TEXT SEARCH ADS
In order for your Search and Display Marketing to be successful and effective for conversions, one must do an intensive Keyword research first for the most searched and relevant terms in a monthly basis. Take note that those terms consider a high traffic volume per conversion rate. It is important to know the niche for the website you are in and the competition can be tough. If done correctly, when people launch their search terms over the search engines in the internet, there is a high chance that you can get impressions and will lead to conversions.
LAUNCHING DISPLAY SEARCH ADS
Launching display ads is just the same with launching search ads. They share the same mechanics but the display ads is a bit more micro intensive like you can setup what type of display that people can see like they can be in form of texts, short and quick video, GIF images or just static images. Most of the time, these type of search ads setup call-to-actions. Also, a person who launch search ads can set the customizations need like banner sizes, banner placements inside the websites, etc.
DECIDING TO USE REMARKETING
Remarketing is a method to interact with people who already made engagements previously to a website or platform within the scope of your search and display ads search campaigns you have m. It is a good practice and can be another helpful strategy for more conversions. It is like to say another level of strategy so deciding to use remarketing can be advantageous. The good thing about search and display ads is we can get the idea of the most engaged displays that people have made interactions with. From that, we can retarget them for more engagements.
SUCCEEDING AT SEARCH AND DISPLAY MARKETING
I already mentioned from the beginning of this topic that a successful search and display marketing can be a lot beneficial for a website or platform. If done correctly, the costs by this certain setup strategy can be exceeded by the profit returns because conversions have been made through the thorough search and display marketing. Whether the objectives of the website is to make profits or deliver services/messages as their conversions upon relying on the search and display marketing, it always benefit them regardless of the expenses because the marketing has been successful.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Another digital marketing strategy that is easy, free, and famous all over the world is the Social Media Marketing. It is a strategy that relies the use within the social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to create contents and interact to other users within the platform ecosystem. It is an effective and cheap digital marketing strategy for beginners and experts alike. The traffic from Social media marketing are legitimate and Google analytics categorized them as social signals that can boost conversions.
BUILDING A SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PLAN
In building a social media marketing plan, careful considerations should be considered such as the target audience age bracket, local or global listing, type of contents you are going to use as promotional tools for your website or business. It is equally important to carefully consider grow your audience for traffic and connections for retargeting. The possibilities are endless as there are a lot of different social platforms all over the internet that offer various ways of doing social marketing like Facebook pages, TikTok viral videos, LinkedIn professional connections, and Twitter hash-tagging impressions.
WHO’S USING SOCIAL MEDIA?
his questions is very self explanatory! Almost everybody is using the social media right now especially at this dire times of COVID-19 pandemic as Internet Service Providers’ demand for data has been exponentially increased. From a small kid age as early as 3 has already know how to use the internet and social media like Facebook to as old as 80 years old. Social Media has become one of the mainstream lately for digital marketing. Examples of this is online selling, Facebook community for specific topic like Yoga lovers. There are endless utilities for the use of Social media specially for online marketing. There is a huge and wide audience in social media. Take note that is diverse and broad.
MARKETING WITH FACEBOOK
Marketing with Facebook is easy, if you want to do organic free way of exposing your brand, you can setup a Facebook page providing all the necessary details of your business and information like contact number, address, email and more. You can also share this to your friends/followers. By joining same interest Facebook groups or communities, you can further interact to more audience. You can also buy Facebook Ad credits to boost your posts. Remember to create engaging post that people like. Facebook also allows hash-tagging and we can use it to our advantage.
MARKETING WITH TWITTER
Marketing with Twitter is a lot easier compared with Facebook. Its interface is much simpler in style yet more people in the world prefer to use Twitter platform in interacting with their followers. Twitter has limited number of character limits and utilize mostly the power of hash-tagging like # and $ symbols. One thing I love about Twitter is that you don’t have to have a large number of followers to get presence in the Twitter ecosystem. All thanks to the power of hash-tagging. Recent and hottest topics/trends are shown in Twitter profiles. Posts shown in Twitter feeds are specifically called “Tweets”.
MARKETING WITH LINKEDIN
Marketing with LinkedIn is quite different with Facebook and Twitter combined. It is a highly business oriented platform that aims to connect professionals and business. LinkedIn is same with Facebook which has a large number of character limit per post and also uses hash-tagging # symbol. For me, if I were to focus on making business connections with professionals all over the world, I will prefer to use LinkedIn in creating engaging posts.
MARKETING WITH PINTEREST
Marketing with Pinterest is a lot of fun. The Pinterest platform is more savvy. If I were to compare it with Instagram, the latter is stricter in terms of rules and guidelines. The Pinterest though has a declined number of users in the past years, it is still a good source of traffic for marketing strategies. The posts here are called Pins and they can be customized as well as the profiles. There are also a wide genre of niches to interact with as well as the user communities.
VIDEO MARKETING
One of the most popular and in demand mode of digital marketing is called the Video Marketing strategy. The widely used platform all over the world is YouTube for general public use whether for online tutorials/educations to live streaming like gaming, selling purposes and more. Video marketing has more audiences/subscribers and is more convenient than writing articles.
THE IMPACT OF VIDEO MARKETING
Video Marketing has a huge impact all over the world! All over the world, there are a lot of people succeeded in their digital marketing ventures throughout the aid of Video Marketing. Many a marketer has become rich just by mere making engaging videos that audience interacted. Now at this dire times of COVID-19 pandemic, more people are engaged in doing online activities than ever before. Lots of new business have solely relied the utility of Video marketing from across different markets whether trading, game live streaming, advertising and many others to mention.
GETTING STARTED WITH VIDEO MARKETING
There are a lot of ways to start with Video Marketing. Identify first the type of website/business and the competition you are in. Consider the type of audience you target for conversion. Now, choose what type of videos you are going to create like whether it will be you doing interactions like first-person talking or simple create a catchy yet engaging video animations for your website/business. Once your content is ready, you will make them live to various video platform sites like Youtube, Vimeo, Daily Motion, and Twitch. There is always a way to start something.
CREATING COMPELLING CONTENT
People hate boring videos and they even skip ads just less than 5 seconds they appeared. It is a must to create compelling content! People can skip or close the videos that they find boring just even before those videos started. One of the ways in creating compelling video contents are make your voice lively, don’t speak too low and slow. Create annotations or pop-ups inside the videos, appealing sounds that awake the senses of the listeners and from time to time put some mini cool animations on the screen. People in this way like to watch the videos.
PROMOTING VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE
As I said earlier, YouTube is one of the most popular, mainstream, and in demand Video platforms that people use all over the world. The number of users in this video platform is enormous! Think of it this way, some of the well-know YouTube celebrities/superstars have over a million subscribers and their total garnered views have reached as high as a billion view! Have you ever wondered why most of our favorite songs have reached at least a million view in YouTube alone? So creating videos for any business/website or anything we want to promote in YouTube can be rewarding.
MEANINGFUL VIDEO MARKETING METRICS
Earlier as well, I have mentioned website analytics. Now, the same is true with Videos. We can also get and track down some meaningful video marketing metrics like number of total views since video has been live, total subscribers, number of likes/dislikes, comments including negative ones, total average time of viewer stayed watching the videos and more. The video marketing metrics are very vital so that we can improve the areas in which the video performed poorly and enhance more with engaging ones. Retargeting can also be achieved once we get loyal subscribers/followers.
EMAIL MARKETING
One of the oldest and reliable way of online marketing foundations is the utilization of Email Marketing. It may sound a bit old-school but before Social Media and Video Platforms came to exist, the Email has been already there almost at the same time the Internet has been invented. One concrete example of Email Marketing that can be applied is search and compile strategy. We can search all over the internet for the 1% most wealthy people and organization and extract their emails to become our leads for our website/business. Like I said earlier, LinkedIn is a good social platform to get professional emails.
UNDERSTANDING EMAIL MARKETING
Email Marketing is not that hard to do. In fact, we just need to make a good template like composing a letter citing a greeting, who and what we are and our business/products/services offered. We make the list of emails to send from and that’s it. Easy right? But we must understand that sending emails to people make them feel hostile towards it. Most of the emails they received are sent to spam folders so we must be very careful to use the right platforms in sending out emails. We must be clear in our messages and avoiding promises, fancy schemes. We must be truthful.
CREATING AN EMAIL MARKETING PLAN
A careful plan is need for a successful email marketing. I have already laid out a simple strategy:
Create the list for all the people or institutions that you think can be potential leads for your website or business.
Get all their emails ready.
Use reliable email platform services that your list can trust like Gmail which I find more business oriented and acceptable to most people.
Compose a professional message template citing who and what you are, the business you are in, the products/services you offer.
Send them and wait for replies.
If no replies are expected, don’t send again. They may think it as a spam. Of course you can send another follow-up email but give it sometime like 1 week by telling them a thank you for receiving your email and understanding them for not responding.
Repeat the steps for another lists to send.
TOOLS TO LAUNCH SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGNS
There are a lot of tools in Email Marketing Campaigns available for use over the internet. Some of these tools can be mass Emailer which sends email to lots of users at one time, Email Template/Format creator which help you make specific type of email like for business or in educational format, Email Optimizer which aid user in creating engaging contents inside your emails and much more. Take note that there are some paid versions that offer more features that lack on free ones. If purchasing them is required for the Email Marketing campaigns’ success, then by all means it will be necessary. As long as anybody can afford to do so for his/her website/business and it is a legitimate way.
MEASURING THE SUCCESS OF EMAIL
The measuring of success in Email Marketing is simple, the conversions made by doing it. Usually those are interested will respond and act your Call-To-Actions (CTAs) inside your Email message. That would be the deciding factor of the Success in Email Marketing once they act. Of course, we will not stop there once we have some conversions, do/find more and retarget your current responders for more success.
CONTENT MARKETING
Content Marketing is a broad term but to be specific this type of strategy relies more on the user’s ability of writing contents that are original and engaging. In fact, there are also people who prefer to read articles that give them useful information. Like the Email Marketing, Content Marketing strategy is also one of the oldest or primitive ways of Online Marketing since the invention of the Internet way back long ago. Until now, there are blog websites found over the internet like News, Sports, Feature, Celebrity, Technology, and much more!
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content Marketing is another Online Marketing Strategy that focus more on creating/generating articles inside the website’s contents. These articles must be written well, original and not copied in another sources over the Internet. The articles written must be related to the topic of your website. They can contain videos inside and images. Content Marketing targets specific audiences like bloggers and readers all over the world. There are just people who like to read and do them regularly from time to time like reading the Newspaper for information. Contents can be anything under the sun! From News to Sports, etc.
CREATING A CONTENT PLANNING MODEL
In creating a content, there must be a planned model to follow like:
A good and concise title.
Name of the Author for credits.
Good writing skills must be observed. Follow proper writing guidelines like if English is the Language used, observe proper Grammar and structure.
Use the right form of writing for the right niche/genre of your website. As an example for this, if you website is about News, do articles that are updated and fresh. Create a present-tense mode of writing. There are also feature, editorial, evergreen, general information writing and much more!
Add disclaimer if your articles are not Financial Advices. They are important because some people are mislead by the information the article provides.
Add good images and if they are from another source, use copyright guidelines to avoid complications. If videos are necessary, we may add them.By doing this at least can attract readers for your blog.
SETTING UP A BLOG
There are a lot of free blog website services available in the Internet like the Wordpress, Blogger, Wix and more. Setting up a blog is a part of your website that is dedicated to list all your articles into one place. It is a section where readers, new and experienced alike, go to for information. If purchasing a paid versions of blog website is necessary for more writing features, one may do so. Always remember to apply the right content planning models to achieve quality articles for conversions. Setting up a blog may be difficult and new users can find them techy. For this matter, they can hire professionals to do those tedious tasks for them.
MOBILE MARKETING
I highly suspect that not all people use PCs or Laptops. In fact, since the bloom and boom of smart phones in the early 2010s gave way for new and useful applications exclusive for mobile devices. To further explain my claims, there are just apps that won’t run in personal computers like the famous game all over the world “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” or simply called “ML” by lots of loyal fans. We can find here a very successful mobile marketing done by the company behind the said game and we can get idea from it. The trend is not switch from corded devices to cordless. As an example for this, it is just like saying before we had Walkman's for listening to audios now we have wireless and wrist-watch sized audio devices that we can bring wherever we go. Mobile marketing is another easy of doing online strategy as simple of sending mass text messages to huge number of list. We can use the mass utility of the unlimited texts and calls services from network providers for our doing mobile marketing strategy. Never underestimate this old way.
THE MOBILE MARKETING LANDSCAPE
The mobile marketing landscape is very different than those from PCs and laptops. I would like to say that mobile interface in its own way has its own features nowhere to be found from conventional computers. For me, mobile marketing will continue to evolve, grow and boom more than it has been before! As we continue living in this digital crazed world, mobile marketing is promising. More people use mobiles up to date thus more applications can be developed. By saying this, mobile marketing will be the next big thing. Both “millenials” and the elders alike use mobile devices right now that new normal way of living is thriving from this pandemic plagued world.
MOBILE APPLICATIONS
Like I said earlier for this topic, there has been a rise usage of mobile applications all over the world. More developers continue to do research in making mobile applications that are convenient, fast, handy and most of all, fun especially for the younger generation. One example of the mobile applications being developed today is making the mobile phones as money/cash wallet. Have you not thrilled by it? It became so digital we just need our mobile phones to purchase/pay anything we need or want. It means the old ways are going to disappear sooner than we expect. So, mobile applications will be the next trend and in demand thing for Online Marketing Strategy.
EXPANDING YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING SKILLS
Since the beginning of this course material, I have mentioned a lot of digital marketing strategies that can be used and apply. But they are just few ways as the possibilities are endless in the Online Marketing world. It is good to acquire all those skills mentioned but stopping there is not enough. We have to explore for new things, we must not stop pursuing innovations. We keep improving the things that need developments. As we face challenges along the way, the satisfaction of expanding digital marketing skills is insatiable. Continue to discover for new online strategies, we can combine a mix of strategies together resulting for a new one giving results to a higher level.
RUNNING A/B MARKETING TESTS
Running A/B Marketing Tests is also know as Split Testing. All online marketing strategies that are mentioned in this course can be compared with each other. For example, to find out the best email marketing results, I can do two versions of them. Of course, I will use the same model plans like same content and lists to send but I will use two different approach/process. In this way, I can find which approach is better than the other. This method can be tiring but can be rewarding in the end because we can back-test the online marketing strategies which are the best and the worst performers.
A LOOK INTO AFFILIATE MARKETING
The last but not the least Online Marketing Foundation that I will discuss shortly is the Affiliate Marketing Strategy. Based on what I have learned, Affiliate Marketing is an indirect method of online marketing strategy in a sense that we don’t usually own the website/business, products or services we are promoting but from somebody else. A certain affiliate marketer gets rewards by driving traffic to the lead website/business that can turn into conversions/profits. There are a lot of successful Affiliate Marketers in the internet. One example of Affiliate Marketing is joining the Amazon bounty program. To do that, we setup our own blog or website or any online strategies we may think of in order to promote Amazon products. We get our own unique affiliate IDs in Amazon that we use in customizing contents inside our promotions towards the contents of our website or blog. Affiliate Marketing to me is a hybrid method of online marketing where all other strategies can be applied together. In short, we are helping others in Affiliate Marketing.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer Marketing is another form of Social Media Marketing that is aided by a social influencer in a certain social media platform. A social influencer is a person that is expert in creating engagements in a social media. He/she makes positive reviews over a specific products or services that may positively affect its value among other people. Their critical approaches may affect how the community reacts. In influencer marketing, we can observe persuasive type of endorsements and aggressive style of advertising.
INTRODUCTION TO INFLUENCER MARKETING
Another helpful online foundation strategy to consider or can be used is the Influencer marketing strategy. It is commonly seen in the social media community. One concrete example of Influencer marketing we can see all over the Social media platforms are well-know brands hiring famous Celebrities to endorse their products or services. I find this strategy to be expensive and good for short-term goals of generating conversions.
FINDING AND ENGAGING INFLUENCES
It is easy to find the most engaged influences in the social media stream. Sometimes, those viral posts we find can be good source for an influencer marketing strategy. We may ask the certain persons or groups involved to do influencer marketing on our behalf at the expense of paying for their services. Of course, there will be always talent fees as a payment for their efforts on making advertisements for someone’s website or products.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Overall, all the online foundations mentioned in this course are in their own ways helpful. But there are also risks that cannot be avoided even in doing Online Marketing promotions. As long as we know what to do, carefully laying out the plans for the right strategy models, we can minimize the risks and leverage the conversion results. Just do our best in making the best online marketing strategy we want to be in. Always remember to be positive and love the online marketing strategy you want to use. Be the best digital strategist you can be! Sky is the limit.
Thank you for reading until the end of my article!
I do hope you have learned something new with your stay. Please feel free to share your comments and corrections below. I definitely appreciate it a lot if you do so!
May the LORD Almighty God the Father protect you and your entire family through the precious blood of His Son Jesus Christ our LORD always.
God bless...
