From Fluff to Fundamentals: the 3 Digital Marketing Basics post thumbnail

As digital marketing grows from strength to strength, so too should your presence and brand online. With so much information out there, in can feel overwhelming or confusing with where to begin.

Compared with traditional marketing, digital has a much wider audience. It allows you to connect faster and more conveniently to ideal demographics, and people that are more likely to purchase your service or product. In 2021, Data Portal published a digital report which stipulated that 32.3% of the population is on social media. With a third of the world online, it therefore makes sense to ensure that your brand, business and services are available to be viewed.

So where to begin? As a rule of thumb, we like to strip back the fluff to ensure that an organisation’s digital basics are operating successfully first and foremost.

The Digital Basics

Brand
Your brand doesn’t stop at a logo design and colour palette. It is much more in depth than this. A strong brand is the overall identity of your business; your values, vision and positioning. Your brand should encompass a strong understanding of who your ideal client is. What do they like, which social media pages are they on, how do they interact online, what do they search for – what are their pain points?

Your brand is an intangible thing – people don’t necessarily see it, but it reflects who you are what you do. As such, a brand helps to shape peoples’ perceptions of a business, their services, and people. Getting it right is important because from this, stems everything else.

> Need help building a strong brand identity and strategy? We are experts at this! Get in touch for a complimentary brand health check.

Content
The saying goes, “content is king” – but it should be used wisely. There are many forms of content strategies out there, but as we’re stripping back the fluff our one main rule is: make your content work for you.

An endless, repetitive churn of content is not a savvy content strategy. Write a blog, but don’t just leave it on your website. Repurpose it across multi-channels in different formats (top tips, resources, quotes, infographics), and then make sure you schedule it again and again across a 12+ month period. Not all of your followers will see your content the first time, so (as an example) instead of having 365 days worth of content, you probably only need 90 – 120 days worth, on a strategic rotation. If the content is valuable enough, it will serve its purpose. What’s the purpose? Brand awareness, consideration and conversion.

SEO
Search Engine Optimisation. This can be an overwhelming digital task for many. What it boils down to, is a strategy to ensure that you appear on the first page of Google when someone is searching for a service or product that aligns with your business.

There are many, layered ways to optimise your website, advertising, social and email. One of the basics to implement sooner rather than later is keyword research. This is an action that is necessary to discover the types of words that people are using to search for products and services like yours. Once you have that information, you can then implement these keywords into your content across your digital platforms. Google is much more likely to place you into its search results pages when it has a clear idea of what your business does or offers, so ensuring that you give Google as many chances as possible to crawl through your website and pick up these specific words, is key.

Digital marketing, including the basics such as the above, can still feel like a chore for many business owners. We know you have a lot of plates to spin, and often digital marketing can be pushed to the side for more immediate, urgent tasks. By outsourcing an expert to take care of the basics, you gain the best of both worlds – you can get on with the tasks that require a business owner’s attention, safe in the knowledge that a skilled professional is ensuring your digital reputation is intact and growing.

Need to discuss your digital marketing requirements?

You’re in the right place. Get in touch with the Energise team for a chat.