The 20 digital marketing tips outlined below will dramatically increase your chances of succeeding online.
The list is by no means complete but it’s a good starting point for beginners to digital marketing.
What is Digital Marketing?
Before digging right into the online marketing tips, let me first explain what is digital marketing for those that are new to this term.
Digital marketing is a broad term that includes all marketing channels and methods you can use to promote products or services on the Internet but also on electronic devices such as TVs, mobile phones, and electronic billboards.
Online marketing has a number of pillars but the most important are:
- Website marketing
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Banner advertising
Digital Marketing Tips
20 highly practical digital
marketing tips for small businesses.
·
Use your own domain.
·
Use VPS hosting
·
Create a
professional website.
·
Make your website
load as fast as possible.
·
Spend time on SEO.
·
Spend money on PPC.
·
Do not forget
about Bing Ads.
·
Start with a low
advertising budget and grow profitable.
·
Build your
presence social networks related to your business.
·
Do not
over-promote your business and services.
·
Use paid advertising.
·
Publish good and
original content.
·
Create a content calendar.
·
Promote your content.
·
Use email marketing.
·
Build an email
list from the beginning.
·
Make sure your
website is mobile-friendly.
·
Do not forget
mobile apps.
·
Buy advertising space.
·
Keep improving
your digital marketing campaigns.
As you can see from the image
above, each component of digital marketing is a huge chapter on its own.
Nevertheless, I will try below
to summarize the most important digital marketing tips for each component so
that you increase your chances of successful online marketing.
Website Marketing
Tips
1. Use your own domain
Buy a domain name that is
relevant for your business and use it to build your brand. The recommended
extension is a .com or .net. Keep the domain name short (max 3 words) and avoid
having spaces.
Before you register a domain
name, search for the name on Google and make sure that no other business exists
with a similar domain. If there is, try to find something unique because
otherwise, it will be very difficult to promote your brand and rank high for
related searches.
2. Use VPS hosting
Website hosting plays an
important role in the success of your website. Your website should be hosted on
a fast and secure server. Avoid using shared hosting solutions. They may be
cheaper but having your website hosted with a bunch of other websites is
dangerous.
On a shared hosting
environment, you share the same IP address with other sites and if they are
involved in spammy actions, it will have a negative impact on your website as
well.
Spending $20-$40 a month for
your own virtual private server is not that much compared to the benefits you
get. Choose an SEO friendly web
hosting company and
make sure that your website is secure with a valid SSL certificate and the
software is up to date.
3. Create a professional
website
When you start a website, spend some time thinking about
your site structure and functionality. A
professional website is not characterized by its ‘looks’ but with how easy it
is to use on all devices.
Identify the purpose of having
a website and make sure that this is reflected in the design. Don’t forget that
a website represents your brand and it should be something you’re proud of.
4. Make your website load as
fast as possible
Page Speed is an important usability
and ranking factor. Try to make your website as fast as possible by avoiding
unnecessary graphics or other cosmetic elements. Test your website speed using
the Google PageSpeed
Insights tool and
follow their recommendations.
Search Engine
Marketing Tips
5. Spend time on SEO
SEO is not a once-off process
but something that you have to do as an ongoing process. If you are not sure
how to do it, go through an SEO certification. It is the best way to learn SEO and optimize your
website.
SEO will help your
website get found on
Google for related
searches. Online businesses that can do SEO successfully, are more likely to
grow and withstand the pressure from other online competitors.
6. Spend money on PPC
Pay per click platforms (think
Google Ads) are great because they can generate targeted traffic to your website fast.
If you are serious about your
digital marketing, PPC should be part of your monthly budget.
7. Don’t forget Bing Ads
Google Ads is the most popular
platform for PPC advertising but there are also other platforms like Bing ads
that can get you good results with less budget.
Bing is the second most popular search engine and something worth
testing as part of your overall online marketing strategy.
8. Start with a low advertising
budget and grow profitable
Once you start with PPC, do not
put all your money from the beginning but start slow, optimize your campaigns,
and make them
profitable and then
increase your budgets.
A common mistake made by
many digital marketing
specialists is to spend
all their budget on campaigns without first testing the waters with one or more
pilot campaigns.
Social Media Marketing Tips
9. Build your presence in
social networks related to your business
There are a lot of social
networks available, and you don’t have to use them all. Select the ones that
are related to your business and potential customers and concentrate on those.
The table below shows the demographics of each network and you can use this as your guide.
10. Don’t over-promote your
business and services
Social media networks are not
about business but it’s about people, so make sure that you don’t over-promote
your business or services but instead try to make your pages useful with
content that may interest your readers.
11. Use paid advertising
Getting social media followers for your business it’s
harder than you think. People like to follow other people and interesting pages
and not ‘business’ pages that try to sell them something.
So, the easiest way for you to
get your business page in front of a lot of people and increase your chances of
getting new followers is to use advertising.
Facebook has an advertising
platform for businesses that allows you to run different types of campaigns and
target a specific audience based on their Facebook activity, location, device,
and demographic information.
Content Marketing Tips
12. Publish good and original
content
Digital marketing is
about content, whether this is text, images,
videos, or audio you need good and original content for your website and social
media pages. Without a content marketing plan is like walking with your eyes
and ears closed.
What is good content for a
digital marketing campaign?
·
It’s content that
users want to read either because it satisfies their intent or because they
find it interesting.
·
It’s content that
is unique, thorough, and well-researched.
13. Create a content calendar
There is a huge competition on
anything you plan to do online so you have to be ready to perform better than
the competition by publishing better and more content than they do.
It’s not exactly a quantity
came (quality is still more important) but it does play an important role.
14. Promote your content
Publishing good content is very
important but it’s also important to promote your content and bring it in front of
the eyes of the right people (these are the people that are likely to become
your potential customers and also more likely to re-share your content).
Email Marketing Tips
15. Use email marketing
Email still converts better
than other sources – Despite the dominance of social networks, email still
performs better than most of the digital marketing channels. A targeted email
list is likely to generate more profit than a targeted social media campaign.
16. Build an email list from
the beginning
If you are starting now make
sure that an email list is part of your plans. Give incentives to people
to give you their
emails and make
sure that you don’t spam them but send them information that is useful to them.
Mobile Marketing Tips
17. Make sure your website is
mobile-friendly
Although you do not have to
make your website responsive, a responsive website has more advantages than
having a mobile and a desktop version. It is recommended by Google as the best
approach to mobile websites and it is also a hot trend in the digital marketing
industry.
The first step is to test your
website using the mobile-friendly
tool and fix any
issues.
18. Don’t forget mobile apps
Besides having a
mobile-friendly website, do not forget that your users and potential customers
are searching and downloading apps (like crazy) from Google Play, Apple Store,
and Amazon. If you want to be found in those stores, you need to develop and
submit your own native apps.
Banner Advertising Tips
19. Buy advertising space
While PPC is the easiest and
most effective way to reach customers, sometimes it is just better to find a
website that has the traffic you want and contact them to buy advertising
space. This way you keep the middleman out and this makes both you and the
publisher happy.
20. Keep improving your digital
marketing campaigns
Digital Marketing does not have
a start and end date. Your efforts should be continuous, and the opportunities
are endless.
A PPC or social media campaign
may have a start and end date, but your digital marketing efforts don’t. The
opportunities for promoting your business online are endless and the above 20
digital marketing tips are just a very quick summary of what you can do in each
area.
The best way to get a complete
picture of how to use digital marketing to the fullest is to enroll in a digital marketing course. Good courses will guide you
step-by-step on how to take advantage of all online marketing techniques and
practices to grow your business.
What else can you add to the
list? What do you think are the most important digital marketing tips that a
beginner should know about?
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