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Digital Marketing for Business – Guide for the Perplexed

Every business owner knows that today an online presence is not enough – it has to be declared complete. A series of articles will help you find your way around the marketing of 2016.

Accidentally you see enticing offers of SEO that will propel your site to top positions on Google; Your neighbour tells that he was looking on Facebook and found your business page; The accountant asks how is your blog going – Every business owner knows he must, simply must have, an online presence. And just attendance is not enough. Your business needs a mouthpiece to declare its existence under every rock and at every search. The answer is digital marketing. But where do you start? What does mean the acronym SEO and SEM? Does every business has a Facebook page? How about the blog? And an Instagram profile?  Or Google Plus? What should you do with your list of emails you have collected? And how to measure success? Series of articles “Digital Marketing Business – Guide for the Perplexed” try to sort out  what the network offers and a variety of options for business owners to spread the fog around the endless list of initials. Also, we will give you the tools to help you find your way around the digital marketing but let’s start at the beginning.

What is Digital Marketing?

Marketing means promotions for most of the products or services. It is important to differentiate between sales and marketing. The role of the salesperson is to make a real customer from a potential customer, one who pays. But how will the salesperson perform it’s duties without a steady stream of potential customers? This is where the marketing specialist, is responsible for creating a flow of customers.

Digital Marketing for Business has the same classic marketing principles, but  it is limited, usually, to digital arena – the Internet. Before delving into tactical tools to review our facilities where the main marketing channels are available on the Internet, it is important to make sure that in our hands we have a cohesive design detailing the digital marketing plan and the business goals which we aspire to reach.

Strategy versus Tactics

Just before we go any further we stay on the important differences between strategy and tactics. The strategy is an overall vision that we want to implement in order to achieve our business goals. The strategic plan is the way to create a framework which aims to ensure that all daily tactical operations, are performed at the forefront of digital marketing, and are conducting the business to the goal.

Tactics are often practical or technical actions, that occur frequently and contribute to the realization of the strategy. For example: establishing an advertising campaign, advertising campaign optimization, articles written on the blog, creating partnerships with leading websites etc. – are all designed to serve the tactical operation’s strategy.

Planning should start with business goals to which we aspire, advance the strategy by which you reach those goals, and tactics which you use every day to reach the level of realization of the strategy.

For example:

Objective: Increase the mailing list company’s newsletter.

The strategy: penetration into the relevant segment of new – high-tech workers aged 24-35.

Tactics: cutting the audiences and the creation of an advertising campaign on Facebook; Labelling visitors who came to the landing page or site; With targeted advertising campaign all visitors will leave you their details on the landing page

Digital marketing channels

The variety of marketing channels on the web is enormous, but over the dense jungle there are four prominent sectors that are particularly important: organic SEO, sponsored promotion, social media marketing and email marketing.

Organic SEO or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Today, a Google search results page typically contains two types of results: The results that are funded are marked with a small icon with the phrase “ad”, and are called ordinary organic results. Traffic generated by clicking on organic search results is called, accordingly, organic traffic.

The purpose of organic SEO is to increase the traffic coming on the organic site through search engine results. SEO is a long term process and companies that are promoting it require a commitment of at least 6 months, until fruits and promotion work can be seen.

Funded promotion – is actually a promotion sponsored in internet advertising. Payment of money in return of traffic to the site. There are many online channels, such as advertising on Facebook (as distinct from managing a business page on Facebook), advertising sites, advertising on video, publishing applications, and more. Sponsored promotion in Google is one of the most popular channels. Google advertising is divided into two main channels: displaying ads to users searching for specific phrases on search results pages (SEM – Search Engine Marketing), or displaying ads on pages of Web surfers who cooperate with Google (Display Ads).

Promotion / marketing in social networks or Social Media Optimization (SMO) – the promotion of social networks or profile management means  to have a business page on one of the countless existing social networks on the Internet. In Israel social networking is reduced, usually to Facebook. However, networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest exists and have a place of honour as tools of effective realization of an appropriate strategy.

E-mail marketing – Many businesses are holding the e-mail addresses of their customers, or even potential customers. E-mail marketing allows a business owner to leverage media in favour of initiating contact with his customers. Intelligent management of email campaigns proved itself in time as an effective tool for promoting various marketing agendas, including converting a potential customer in an active customer.

Ask the expert

Many businesses choose to manage their own digital marketing campaigns. Sometimes this decision is correct, and sometimes there is space for a Marketing digital agency, either for advice or for the good management of all business digital marketing efforts. What is the point that a business owner needs to meet in specialist and how can he use his services in a marketing campaign?

The first questions that should be asked are:

What is the purpose of the marketing plan that is proposed?

Is there a marketing strategy company that can adapt tactics to the digital area?

Are existing business resources in terms of manpower and time enough to manage a marketing campaign?

And last, but not least, the budget – how much money can be set in favour of the digital marketing?

If you are missing the marketing team and a marketing strategy, it is advisable to involve an outside agency for the benefit of advice in defining the business goals, building a plan of action and setting tools through which the strategy will be transformed into reality.

Another factor to consider is the human resource – whether the business has the workforce that can or cannot handle the digital marketing campaign? Whether you choose to manage your own campaigns or if you choose to call the agency, you will need a specialist to coordinate the behaviour in the field.

Ultimately, the decisive factor is the budget. For some of the channels mentioned above, there is no threshold below which the price can go, but be careful of professionals willing to advise or provide services for very low amounts. As in any field, it is advisable to request quotes from several providers and compare the service among the various proposals. In some cases, for small business owners with modest budget for marketing, it is best to try to focus on one of the channels mentioned above by themselves, to use the learning materials available on the Internet and to start out the digital marketing independently.

 

The next chapter of our journey in the world of digital marketing businesses, we will devote to SEO, to understand how you can harness the power of Google for your site.

| 18/03/2016

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