What Is Digital Marketing And How Do I Get Started? A Beginner's Guide

Digital marketing is an umbrella term that refers to the various ways to market or advertise your products online. That means utilizing digital channels like social media, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and retargeting.

Digital marketing has risen exponentially in the last few years. With this growth has come questions about how to get started or even what digital marketing is! Here are some tips for beginners to help you along your journey.

Goals: What type of digital marketing do you want to do?

There are broad goals like branding and establishing authority. Still, if you are a small business owner, you will also be marketing your products and services to reach a smaller audience than you might be comfortable with.

Some good options would be creating a newsletter, asking your customers to fill out a survey, or creating a blog for your website.

There are many social media networks and marketing platforms out there that you can start to use right away or decide to skip and use more professional, established ones later.

Resources: Do you need help with your marketing efforts?

To get good at digital marketing, you need to start by understanding customer-centricity. Customer centricity is the same as customer service, but it's done with digital marketing instead of in-person customer service. Customers can contact you in various ways. How well you treat each customer based on how they communicate with you will determine how well your digital marketing can influence them.

The six-point customer centricity model is an excellent place to start when assessing the challenges of digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Basics: What is Digital Marketing?

Many of us can buy things using digital means such as email, Facebook, and Amazon, making digital marketing very powerful. Digital marketing also refers to the different standards to get your customers to your websites, such as Google search, banner ads, blog posts, and more.

You can say digital marketing has many different aspects to it:

• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• SEO
• Marketing automation software (I recommend HubSpot)

These are some examples of how the different parts of digital marketing overlap.

How To Get Started

There are multiple places where you can go to start digital marketing. For example, your own website can help you reach potential customers, and potential customers can find you on search engines, social media, and even in-store.

Your web is the first place that you can go to show your presence online. If they come to your website, you'll be able to show them who you are, how to reach you, and how to contact you.

Social media is the best way to influence your target audience without wasting a lot of time.

Define Your Goals for the Campaign

Before you dive into digital marketing, it's important to decide what your goals are for the campaign. For example, determine who your target audience is, your competition, and how you can better assist your customers. Once you have goals in mind, you'll be able to better allocate your marketing efforts.

What steps do you need to take to accomplish your goals? You'll need to write a plan that will guide you through the process and take your marketing to the next level.

Gathering Data and Researching Your Audience

Digging around the internet can be overwhelming, and if you are new to digital marketing, it can feel overwhelming. You might not know where to start, or you might be confused about where to start. The first thing you need to do is gather the data you need to prove the value of your business. Start by focusing on your end goal. What do you want to accomplish by utilizing digital marketing?

Following this, examine to find out the numbers you have available to you. This could be in the form of visitors, leads, or customers. You will want to collect and collect as many numbers as possible.

Gathering Feedback from Your Audience

One of the first things you need to do is figure out who your audience is and how they want to receive your message. Whether they prefer texting or emails, whether they use a digital tablet or computer, and even how they use a smartphone versus a traditional phone are all variables you should take into consideration.

Your online presence should be a place where you can communicate directly with your audience as well as your company, but it should also be a place where they can interact with you. This can range from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and your website. Please keep track of how your audience reacts and make changes based on their feedback.

Digital marketing can seem intimidating at first, but it doesn't have to be. If you learn what the different types of digital marketing are, you'll be able to achieve your goals without too much trouble. There are also lots of great resources online that can help you understand and even create your own digital marketing campaigns!