Strategy

What is Digital Marketing?

by Rob Osborne | Nov 26, 2024 | Digital Marketing

What Is Digital Marketing?
Why should I use it to market my business?

Lets get started with your digital marketing

Digital marketing as a term covers so much, but in summary it is using the opportunities presented by social media, email marketing web marketing and other related digital services to promote and grow your business.

There are three key elements to digital marketing that apply to all businesses.

Social Media Marketing
E-Mail / Messaging Marketing and
Web marketing.

There are then additional digital marketing opportunities that are business specific. For instance, if you sell products, you should consider being on Amazon, if you are running a hotel or B&B then you want to be on room booking websites such as booking.com.

The digital world is expanding all the time and you can now include other forms of digital marketing, such as podcasting too.

One of the benefits of digital marketing is that you have access to very detailed analytics, so it is easy to see how well your digital marketing activities are working.

Social Media Marketing

There are a vast number of social media platforms available, and they are growing and evolving all the time.

The big four has now become the big five, so you need to be looking at which of these social media platforms you should be on:

Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter / X
TikTok

You don’t have to be on them all, but you should be on at least one of them if you are looking to include social media marketing in your digital marketing mix.

There are a wide range of other sites that can be used for marketing too.

YouTube can be considered a social media platform too.

Case Study - Social Media Management Image

E-Mail Marketing

In recent years email marketing has become much maligned due to its mis-use, but it is still a really important way to promote your company and the goods and services you offer to existing customers, to remind them of all the goods and services you offer and to make them aware of new goods and services.

In recent times new forms of messaging have become available, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, that allow you to send messages to contacts in a similar way to using EMail.

Web Marketing

Every business should have a web presence of some sort, so you have a chance of being found when somebody does a search for your goods or services in a search engine.

This can be in the form of a pre-built platform such as Etsy, Shopify or Wix, or you can have your own website.

There are lots of different ways to build a website but the most common website development tool, often called a Content Management System (CMS) is WordPress.

Whichever website presence you choose, you will need to consider some of the following if you want your website to be found:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Google Business Profiles / Local SEO
Google Ads
Website optimisation

Content

Content is a key part of any digital marketing.

You should have a content creation strategy about the topics you will create content about, where you are going to use that content and what format that content will take.

You need to consider:

Where you will get ideas from
How to create your content
What key words and phrases you should include (especially for your website content)
What type of content you are going to create.

It can be a challenge to find time to create content for small businesses, so finding time to create content needs to be planned.

Paid v organic digital marketing

Social media platforms and search engines have an option to pay for adverts, or you can create content and hope it is optimised well enough for it to appear to enough of your potential customers to make it worthwhile.

It all comes down to what you can afford to give up – money for paid marketing or time for organic marketing.

Looking at website on a laptop and a tablet

Analytics

Every platform will have analytics available for your activities, but you may need to do some work to configure the analytics tools to get the best results.

Put time aside to check your analytics on a regular basis. Do more of what is working well and less of what isn’t.

Here to help

If you’re looking for help with your digital marketing then check out the wide range of digital marketing services we offer, or get in touch as we’re always happy to have an initial chat about Digital Marketing.

Why you need a digital marketing strategy

by Rob Osborne | Mar 11, 2017 | Digital Marketing, Strategy

It is really important to have a digital marketing strategy and at Red Knight Solutions we have developed a 6 step process for developing a successful digital marketing strategy. We will work with you to help you develop and implement yours.

The 6 steps are:

Know WHAT you are promoting;
Know WHO your target audience is;
Know HOW to engage with them digitally;
Develop a detailed plan showing WHEN you will be doing things;
Take regular Action, following your plan;
Measure the outcomes

The most common mistake companies make is to start doing digital marketing, often just trying to copy the latest trend, without developing a detailed picture of what they are promoting and who they are promoting it to. The outcome is normally an expensive disappointment.

Know what you are promoting

Build up a detailed picture of the product or service you are looking to promote digitally. This should include a detailed description of what the product or service is, what problems it solves, the benefits gained from the people using it, how much it costs to produce, how much you can afford to spend on marketing it, profit margins that you are generating, whether there are any associated products you can upsell, whether these are likely to be one-off or repeat purchases.

Who you are marketing to

The detailed picture should include age, gender, existing or new customers, location, what their needs, wants and fears are, how they are likely to want to be approached, what their likely budgets are going to be and whether they are business customers or consumers.

Know how to engage with them digitally

Now you have your detailed pictures of your product and customers you can consider all the options available to you for digital marketing. You need to consider which are the best social media options to reach your target market and how best to use more traditional web tools.

Develop a detailed plan

Your plan should detail how you are going to use each of the digital marketing options, when you are going to use them, how you are going to use them and who is going to be doing these for you. You should also include details of budgets available, as although some digital marketing options are free, others will need to be paid for.

Take Action

This may appear to go against the advice this article is laying out, but it is important to take action, quickly once you have your plan laid out. One of the slogans that Facebook use in their offices is “Break things – Fast”, which is good … provided you fix them fast too.

Measure your success

Make use of all the available digital marketing tools to keep an eye on your digital marketing campaign. Use Google Analytics to see how visitors to your website are increasing and what they are doing, use the analytical tools available on social media platforms to measure the effects of your social media activities and other tools to track your progress up the Search Engine rankings.

Do more of what is working well, do less or even stop doing things that aren’t working and don’t be afraid of trying new things either, as digital marketing is evolving all the time.

Help with your strategy

Although it sounds simple to develop and implement a digital marketing strategy, there is a lot of expert knowledge required to do it right. If you would like to know more about the services we offer to help you develop and implement a strategy, call us on 02392 265725, e-mail us at enquries@redknightsolutions.co.uk or fill in the form below:

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