Advertising and selling online is an excellent way to expand your business scope and target a broader potential customer market. But how can you utilize digital marketing for your business? And where should you start?
What exactly is digital marketing?
Digital marketing refers to any advertisement or campaign that can be viewed on an electronic device. This could be a social media campaign to gain more website click-throughs or, perhaps, even local targeted Facebook ads for a brick-and-mortar store.
Where should you begin?
One of the vital elements of any advertisement campaign is to have a clear purpose for the content you are creating. A clear purpose will then translate into a clear message and therefore be more likely to gain the desired response. A lot of time with putting content on social media, there should be a mutually beneficial transaction between you and your audience. People don’t love being bombarded with advertisements. When they log into social media, they want to be entertained or informed. Therefore your advertisement posts should offer something in return for your audience’s attention. What you offer to your audience could be several different things; here are some examples and where you can find some successful examples:
- Information or fun facts – Lush Instagram
- Entertainment (Video content, photography or even an interactive challenge) – Netflix Instagram
- Inspiration (Quotes, art and statistics) – Apple #shotoniphone
- Encouraging conversation (using leading questions or quizzing your audience) – Tiktok 10 Quiz
- Discount codes and competitions – Pretty Little Thing on Twitter
Who is your target audience?
Another element you’ll need to consider before you start thinking of ideas is who you are targeting. Your product should already have a few different customer profiles of those who would be interested in buying from you or hiring your service. Once you have an idea of age groups and interests, you can begin researching how to target these groups. You’ll need to consider:
- Platform – which platform is most popular with this age group? Older people may be less likely to use Tiktok, whereas they will be much more likely to have a Facebook account they use regularly. In comparison, younger people will be entirely the opposite.
- Style of content – What content are your customer profiles actively seeking? And how does this pair with your brand?
- Time – When is your customer profile most active? If you choose to post at a particular time, will your audience see it? Or could it get lost in the algorithm?
How can you create content for your digital marketing campaign?
Once you know what you want to gain from your content, it’s easy to put together some concepts and ideas. There are also many different ways of creating content, and with trends ever growing and changing, there are always new ideas for content creation.
You can choose to create content yourself using graphic design programs like adobe illustrator or, for a more budget option, Canva. Alternatively, you can shoot photography and videography and edit using premiere pro or photoshop amongst hundreds of other editing programs.
Whether you are beginning a new business online, creating an online store for an existing store or even advertising for a brick-and-mortar store without branching online. Digital marketing is an invaluable tool to getting your voice heard. Learn more about eCommerce, photography and marketing right here.
