It used to be that if you wanted to advertise your company or a product, you had to put an ad in the paper or a commercial on television or the radio. You had to erect billboards and strategically place someone in a ridiculous costume outside of your business to wave in passersby. Traditional marketing methods are still effective, but digital marketing is the flavor of now and the future.
These days, if you want to grow your customer base, you have to have a digital strategy. The best things about digital marketing are that it’s much cheaper than traditional marketing and gives you the opportunity to meet potential customers right where they are, online. Continue reading to learn some of the best digital marketing and advertising methods.
Blog like your business depends on it.
One of the biggest myths about people is that we don’t like to read. The truth is that we just don’t like to be told to read or what to read, but as the saying goes, reading is fundamental. That’s why blogging has become such a big thing over the past couple of decades.
Blogging started out as a way to show off your writing chops and build a readership, but it has since evolved into something more than a sounding board for aspiring writers. Blogging has become one of the most effective means of communicating and has sparked a marketing trend know as content marketing.
So, what is content marketing? In a nutshell, it’s blogging with the goal to attract traffic, grow your online presence, and grow your customer base. The thing that separates content marketing from traditional methods isn’t the use of long-form content as an advertising tool. What separates content marketing from other tactics is that it’s a subliminal form of advertising, but instead of speaking directly about your company, you write about topics relevant to your field of industry.
For instance, if you were a mobile dentist trying to drum up business, you would write blogs about oral health. You could cover everything from how to maintain a healthy smile to how COVID-19 has affected dentists and their patients. In other words, you write about the dental services you provide in a general way that doesn’t explicitly say “Pick me for your dental needs.”
Build backlinks with your competitors.
It’s understandable if your initial reaction to the subheader for this section was, “Say what?” However, you have to remember that marketing is much different in the digital world.
In traditional marketing, the way to draw lines between you and your competition is to highlight how you’re different from the competition. But with how online presence and credibility work, being associated with your competition isn’t a bad thing.
Reciprocal link building is a link-building tactic in which you agree to hyperlink keywords in your content to another creator’s content and they do the same in return for you. When your readers click on the hyperlink, it will take them to your competitor’s website and vice versa. By trading backlinks with your competition, both you and they can increase your online presence.
Try to get influencers to use or review your products in an online video.
One of the biggest developments in digital marketing is the emergence of social media influencers. Influencers aren’t famous actors, athletes, or musicians, that’s to say they’re not traditional celebrities, but they’re people who have gained a social media following simply by “doing them.”
In marketing, product placement is everything. If you can place your product in the hands of an influencer and get them to use, display, or review your product, you could end up attracting a lot of their followers. When you use influencers, you don’t have to shoot commercials, but you get them to incorporate your products or mention your brand in their content.
