Understanding the pillars of digital marketing
If you use the internet for your day-to-day activities, you have likely been the target of digital marketing. The banner that pops up on the side of the blog you’re reading, the Instagram post telling you to buy new sneakers, and the advertisements you see before a YouTube video (and perhaps the video itself) are all forms of digital marketing. If you run a business, this is going to be a crucial part of your overall marketing strategy. If you haven’t dived into the world of digital marketing before it can seem daunting, but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Here’s a list of the pillars of digital marketing that will hold up your business, regardless of what industry you’re in.
The 4 pillars of digital marketing
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The first of our pillars of digital marketing is SEO. While most digital marketing works on the principle of reaching out to your target audience, SEO is different. It is a form of inbound marketing that allows potential customers to come to you instead. By ensuring that your website ranks higher on search engine result pages, you can increase traffic to your website. The more people you have engaging with your content, the more likely it is you will get customers. The optimisation of SEO is an art in itself. You have to carefully curate your content, not only to make sure that it is relevant but also so that it uses keywords that people often search for.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Our second pillar of digital marketing is SEM. It is similar to SEO, but it deals with paid search results instead of organic ones. Different search engines work differently, but larger search engines like Google clearly mention whether a search result is organic or paid for. This method of digital marketing still requires you to do some keyword research to make sure that your web page shows up, even though it is paid. The ethical aspect of SEM is up for debate, but at present, it is a big part of the digital marketing landscape.
Content Marketing
Content is one of the main pillars of digital marketing. These days, many companies use content marketing to reach potential customers. This kind of marketing is not explicit (although it may include a call to action hidden somewhere). Instead, it tries to generate interest in the products and services of a company by creating engaging – you guessed it! – content. Since different people are interested in different things, an important thing to consider while creating and curating content is your target market. Based on the demographics of your potential customers you can make sure that you offer them tailor-made content.
Content comes in many different forms, but the three basic ones we will look at are text, audio, and video.
Text
The most common use of text in content marketing is in the form of blogs. With the help of online tools, you can start a blog and write engaging articles about your area of expertise to draw in customers – at virtually zero cost. The purpose of this is twofold: you give customers what they want (in the form of a guide or an explanatory blog post) while also showing them that you are an expert in the subject. As you might expect, the creation of text content uses SEO to a large extent. After all, your potential customers have to be able to find your content in order to engage with it.
Audio
The use of audio for marketing has been around for as long as we’ve had radios. But while traditional radios may be on the decline, audio marketing is not. This is probably because it is so easy to engage with. You can listen to a podcast or an audiobook while doing many different tasks – driving, exercising, or even cleaning your house. Having a podcast is similar to having a blog, in that you can entertain and provide value to your customers while also showing them that you know what you are talking about. The ease of consumption of audio content gives you an edge. The only downside to this is that it costs more to create than text content, with the equipment you will need to ensure clean audio.
Video
The rise of YouTube and other social media platforms has made it ridiculously easy to create and share video content. You can easily put together a webinar, a course, or even a live stream where you can interact with your customers in real-time. When it comes to explanatory content, a video is a great way to literally show everyone what your product or service is about. Another benefit of video content is SEO! This might sound strange, but if you head over to Google you’ll see that they have a section of the search results page devoted solely to videos.
The best thing to do, of course, is to mix it up and use different kinds of content that work with each other. For example, you could have snippets of video and audio interwoven into your text content, or even include graphics.
Social Media Marketing
The last of our pillars of digital marketing is social media marketing. This is, after all, a kind of content marketing because you have to create content to keep your social media pages active. However, it is considered to be one of the pillars of digital marketing all by itself, because it goes far beyond just creating and sharing content. As a user of social media, you are part of a community, and it is your brand’s responsibility to engage with that community. This includes replying to comments and messages and conversing with your followers as people and not just customers.
Now that you understand the pillars of digital marketing, it’s time to make use of them!
iTrobes is a digital marketing company based in India. We offer our digital marketing services all over the world. We will work with you to ensure that your digital marketing strategy brings in the best results, while still staying true to your brand.
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