Digital marketing: the basics

In this article you will learn more about the basics of digital marketing. Digital marketing is a broad topic that is hard to describe in 1 blog. But let's start at the basics so you know where to start. We cover the following topics in this article:

1. What is digital marketing?
2. Getting started with digital marketing in Google
3. Different digital marketing channels
4. Is KeyWI a solution to do digital marketing yourself?

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is the marketing and promotion of products or services through digital technology. The Internet is one form of digital technology that we are going to talk about in this article. But there are also other digital technologies, such as phones where digital marketing is applied through SMS without access to the internet.

Digital marketing via the internet has several variants such as search engines, social media, email and other websites that bring your company in contact with new and existing prospects and customers. It is important to be visible on as many channels as possible with the most relevant content. By now almost every company in the world has a website and digital marketing is essential to increase brand awareness of your company. 

Performing digital marketing: how do you do it?

Step by step, you can implement digital marketing structurally. When starting a piece of content or a campaign, there are a number of steps that will help you increase the quality:

1. Determine the goal of your campaign
2. Think about the budget you need
3. Target the right audience
4. Create content that fits the channel and the target audience
5. Optimise for desktop or mobile
6. Test different versions, also called A/B testing
7. Analyse performance

In all cases, it is important to analyse whether your efforts have led to you achieving your desired goal. Fortunately, KeyWI analyses every task you have performed in detail. In addition, KeyWI learns from the performance of the tasks you complete in order to provide better tasks that stimulate your growth.

Inbound marketing

An important part of digital marketing is inbound marketing. By applying inbound marketing, you ensure that you keep ROI high and bring in quality traffic. Creating and adding relevant content on your website is the driving force behind inbound marketing. The content you create should be an answer to the questions of searchers in the search engine. People who search are looking for information, products, services or answers. You want to be there when they are searching.

SEO, also known as search engine optimisation, is at the core of inbound marketing. KeyWI is an expert in suggesting SEO friendly content. Each week you will receive content related advice that will positively contribute to your ROI.

Getting started with digital marketing in Google

To get started with digital marketing and inbound marketing, you first need to get the back end of your website right. There are useful free tools from Google that help you collect visitor data, view website performance and manage advertising. Keep in mind: you also need these tools to get started with KeyWI. Check them out below.

1. Google Search Console

An essential tool for any website. In SC (short for Google Search Console) you get insight into the organic performance of your website, but also which issues you need to fix to ultimately be found by people who search. Google analyses your website, also called crawling, and assesses whether your website is healthy. If your website is healthy in the eyes of Google, where placing relevant content is a key factor, you have a chance of being on the first page.

Learn here about how to create an account to get started with Search Console. To use KeyWI, you will need a Google Search Console account. Learn how to pair KeyWI with Search Console through this link.

2. Google Ads

Through Ads, you can create paid campaigns that should increase the visibility of your website. Google receives a commission on the campaigns you place in Ads. The commission can be settled in 2 ways:

• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) 

The advertiser pays an amount to Google per click or per 1000 impressions. When bidding on keywords, billing is done on a PPC basis. A display banner is charged on a CPM basis.

By placing bids on keywords or placing display banners you increase the chances of attracting visitors to your website. When you bid on keywords, your campaigns appear at the top of the first page if your budget is sufficient with a label: Ad. Paid advertising is called SEA, which stands for search engine advertising. 

Learn here about how to create an account to get started with Ads. To use KeyWI, you will need a Google Ads account. Learn how to link KeyWI with Google Ads through this link.

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3. Google Analytics

This tool helps you gain insight into traffic and user data from your website. 

Where are your visitors coming from? Through what channels do visitors reach your website? How long do visitors stay on your pages? These are some of the insights you can get from Google Analytics, to name a few. Google Analytics is a data source where you can see who your website visitors are and where they come from.

By linking your Google Analytics account with Search Console and Ads, you can also see, among other things, which keywords you rank for or how your paid campaigns are performing.

It is also possible to create events. Events are custom insights that you can export to a report. You can specify what you want to see as for example: device type, page, source (organic, paid, affiliate etc.), in combination with a time period. 

Learn here about how to create an account to get started with Analytics. To use KeyWI, you will need a Google Analytics account. Learn how to link KeyWI with Google Analytics through this link.

Different digital marketing strategies

To be visible, you need to decide on which channels you will promote your brand or website. Each channel has a different strategy. Below are 5 of the most important channels you can use for digital marketing.

Search engine marketing

Also known as SEM (search engine marketing) is one of the most important channels for bringing in visitors. Search engine marketing splits into 2 options: SEA and SEO.

As you know by now, SEA stands for search engine advertising and is a paid form of bringing in visitors to your website. How quickly you want to and can reach your target audience depends on the available budget for SEA. SEA can deliver fast results, which is great of course, but you must have the financial means for it. 

Applying SEO is not only a smarter budget choice but through SEO also brings in higher quality traffic. That's because people are often looking for the page you rank on. At least, if you're on the first page. By setting up your website technically well and placing relevant content with text, video and images you ensure that Google sees you as a reliable website. And if Google sees you as a reliable website, you will end up on the first page. The disadvantage of SEO is that it takes time before you get on the first page. You have to consider at least 5 months. Traffic that comes in through SEO is called organic traffic.

Fact: 70 to 80% of people searching in Google skip paid ads and click on an organic result.

Content marketing

In addition to writing relevant blogs, you can also create other types of content. Think about video or recording a podcast. Google is looking more and more at quality content on a website  so it is extremely important to share well structured content that resonates with your target audience.

Content marketing is the engine of lead generation and helps to increase your visibility in the search engine. Combine content marketing with SEO to boost your organic authority in Google.

KeyWI helps to make your website more visible organically without the need for technical knowledge or endless research. Within 4 minutes you can get started to get to the first page of Google. Create an account using this link.

Social Media

Social media allows you to target a very specific audience. There are different platforms on which you can advertise such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok and more. Each social media platform has its own advertising setup. All in all, you can bid on keywords or advertise with banners/videos, which is largely the same across social media channels. The PPC and CPM models apply not only to search engine advertising, but also to social media websites. 

Think carefully about which platform you are going to spend your advertising budget on. Your target group is using certain social media platforms and certainly not on all of them. Think about a webshop with school supplies. It would be useful to advertise on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat because the younger target group is spending a lot of time on these platforms. Twitter would be less interesting because of the higher aged user base. Always think from your target group first, then look at the social media platforms to start your campaign.

Email marketing

With email marketing you can actively reach out to your database to get them to take action. What the action is differs per website and per goal of the email, such as an informational or buying goal. 

To be successful in email marketing, you must first build a database of email addresses. Building a database can be done by getting visitors to your website (SEA/SEO) or by creating a paid digital campaign, for example through social media. An example of a campaign could be: sign up for the newsletter and receive a free KeyWI t-shirt (who wouldn't want that!).

It is important to keep a set pattern when applying email marketing. Send mailings frequently to your database. Depending on your business activities, you should send emails a few times per week to once a month. 

Building a database has become increasingly difficult over the last few years because of privacy laws. A user must give his or her consent before you can send an email. If this person signs up and agrees to the terms then you may send them an email. 

Another option to quickly build an email database is to buy one. But even then you must first ask for access to the people in the database via an opt-in email, so unfortunately there are no guarantees that you can send promotional emails to this database.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an important channel especially for businesses that sell products, services or subscriptions online. As a business, you can post what you sell on another website, such as a blog, to promote. The website promoting your product earns a commission based on PPC or CPM

Through affiliate marketing you can not only drive conversions but also get more exposure. Make sure to choose the right platform to advertise your products, service or subscriptions. Always ask for visitor information from the partner's website.

Is KeyWI a solution for doing digital marketing yourself?

KeyWI helps any business owner, marketing manager or marketer to get higher in Google on their own without having expert knowledge in search marketing. By completing the proposed weekly advice by KeyWI you can let your business grow. But KeyWI is not a total solution for digital marketing. For example, KeyWI does not provide advice to improve your social media visibility.

KeyWI is your go to solution for search engine marketing. You no longer have to worry about the complexity behind creating relevant content pages or website improvements. KeyWI does the heavy lifting for you and takes care of keyword research, competitor analysis or technical checks.

Looking for new opportunities to reach your target audience or improvements needed to your website? KeyWI identifies opportunities and improvements through search engine analysis. You only have to concentrate on the execution. How great is that?

Do you have questions about digital marketing? Don't know where to start or do you just need some help in digital marketing? Then contact us here. We'd love to help you out.