Introduction
If you want your business to be seen and be known by as many people as possible then stay tuned for some great tips to help you do so. In the video “Marketing Tools: Digital Marketing,” Anson Alexander provides effective tips on how to pick and use different marketing tools and platforms to help increase your brand awareness.
Foundations of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing consists of a variety of different tools and platforms that can be used to attract new customers to your business. The different areas of digital marketing are:
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Display Advertising
- Video Marketing
- Content Creation and Curation
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Affiliate Marketing
Knowing which platforms and tools to use can significantly help build your brand awareness. Alexander states that it is important to know how to pick the right tools and platforms that are right for your business. For example, it is important to pick tools and platforms that have a proven track record, are scannable, and can provide multiple solutions (Alexander, 2019). They should also be time efficient and cost effective.
Social Media Marketing
This type of marketing is when you post updates to social media platforms such as:
- Snapchat
These platforms are used to increase your brand awareness while also allowing you to build relationships with current and new customers. That being said, it is important to know which platforms will be the most beneficial for your business. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow you to post content that is available to customers 24/7, whereas content posted to Snapchat is only available for 24 hours.
In order to help you pick the right platforms, Alexander suggest setting goals to measure what you are looking to get out of social media marketing. This can be about whether you are trying to drive traffic to your site, looking for direct sales, or trying to build a following (Alexander, 2019).
Promoting your content using social media provides many benefits for a business. For example, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow you to boost your posts so that it appears directly in front of the viewer in the middle of their feed. These platforms also allow you to narrow down your reach by the demographics your business targets. Not only does promoting your content by boosting your posts help increase your following but it also gives you results on the engagement your post received such as the shares, comments and reactions on your post.
Once you have decided on the social media platforms that you think will be the most beneficial to your business, you can use automation tools that will help you manage these platforms all at once. Each tool allows you to schedule your posts, review analytics, and take part in social listening to help you monitor what people are saying about your business. Each tool has some unique features that set it apart from the others. For example,
- Hootsuite
- Is $30 a month and allows you to access 10 social profiles
- Agorapulse
- You can revive evergreen content, which allows you to upload a post that never becomes “out-of-date” (Alexander, 2019) however often you please.
- It is $40 a month
- Buffer
- Offers a free plan and allows you to access 3 social accounts
- The next plan is $15 a month and allows you to access 8 social accounts
- SproutSocial
- Has a customer relationship management (CRM) system, built right into it.
- It is $100 a month and allows you to access 3 social accounts
All of these tools offer a free trial, so be sure to check them out to see which ones offer you the most benefits.
Digital Advertising
When it comes to display advertising,there are a few options to use for your display advertisement campaigns. While each tool is free to use, you still have to pay for your advertisements.
- Google Ad Manager:
- Has the highest reach out if all the other tools.
- Ads appear on mobile devices they would on a computer.
- Is accessible at admanager.google.com
- Facebook Ads Manager:
- To access Facebook Ad Manager you must have a Facebook page in which you can then go to Facebook.com/adsmanager to get started.
- It allows you to run campaigns and create ad sets for your targeting such as the demographic you are targeting.
- Bing Ads:
- Displays ads in the Bing Ad network and bing search results
- Yahoo Ads:
- Displays ads on Yahoo and Yahoo search results
- To access Yahoo Ads go to gemini.yahoo.com/advertiser.
- Media.net:
- Combines the Bing and Yahoo Ad networks so that you can advertise on both networks from one place.
- Propeller Ads:
- Is its own network
- Specializes in popup ads
- Nanigans:
- Is a smaller tool
- Has a big network
Now we are going to look into search engine marketing. This is when you pay to get a link at the top of search engine results. The following are some of the main search engines:
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Baidu (Chinese search engine)
- SEMrush
- SpyFu
Video Advertising is also a great digital advertising tool. Here are some tools that are great for this:
- YouTube
- Has a good reputation
- Easy to use
- Oath
- Owned by Verizon
- Enables cross-platform advertising
- Great option for larger organizations that have a higher advertising budget
- You will have a go-to person to help you with your advertising campaigns
- OpenX Video
- Has the highest-quality advertisements out of all of the ad networks
- AppNexus
- Owned by AT&T
- A cross-platform video marketing tool.
- You can advertise on website videos and on television.
- Facebook
- Allows you to boost video posts
- Oath
- Owned by Verizon
- Enables cross-platform advertising
- Great option for larger organizations that have a higher advertising budget
- You will have a go-to person to help you with your advertising campaigns
- OpenX Video
- Has the highest-quality advertisements out of all of the ad networks
- AppNexus
- Owned by AT&T
- A cross-platform video marketing tool.
- You can advertise on website videos and on television.
- Facebook
- Allows you to boost video posts
Mobile Advertising is a form of advertising via mobile apps. Here are some great options for this kind of advertising.
- Google AdMob
- Media.net
- an all-encompassing advertising network.
- Apple Search Ads
- This is for advertising in the Apple App Store.
- Unity Ads
- This is a gaming engine that many developers use to program mobile games.
- InMobi
- They focus specifically on mobile advertising
- They have a large network.
- Very high quality
- TextMagic
- Allow you to market with text messages.
- eg) receiving a coupon by text message that you have signed up for with your phone number.
Content Creation and Curation
When it comes to actually creating content for your marketing campaigns, there are a number of different options for you to choose from.
- Adobe Spark
- Known as one of the top companies for producing graphic design softwareIt is free, and it allows you to create graphics, videos and slideshows
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Great tool for very detailed and complex content creationContains Photoshop – best for editing photos.
- Contains Adobe Illustrator, which is good for vector art.
- Contains InDesign, which is great for layouts. It also contains Adobe Premiere for video
- Final Cut Pro
- Is Apple’s video editing software
- Has a very high learning curve.
- Gimp
- It’s the GNU Image Manipulation Program
- It is a free program with open-source Photoshop.
- Canva
- Is great for creating graphics like infographics, things to post on social media and memes
- Easy to learn and use
- Pixler Editor
- Free program for simply editing images.
- You can change all of the saturation contrasts, you can crop images, do a lot of the stuff that you would do with Canva or Gimp,
- More user-friendly than Gimp.
Content curation is about “building trust and showing users that you care about them enough to find the most valuable information to share with them” (Alexander, 2019). Alexander provides some tools to help curate your content.
- Scoop.it
- Is easy to embed into your website.
- It is one of the most popular tools used for delivering curated content.
- Great tool for embedding some curated content on a website or blog.
- Feedly
- Is one of the most popular RSS and blog readers in the world.
- Great way to subscribe to certain blogs you find interesting.
- Pocket
- Is great for saving the content that you’ve found to post later on.
- Allows you to capture content from everywhere.
- Allows you to can save videos and articles.
- You can even go into apps on your phone and save it in the Pocket app.
- Pinterest
- Pinterest is a great tool for curating visual content such as graphics and photos.
- Scribble
- A good option for larger-sized organizations
- Pearltrees
- You can organize all of your posts that you’ve found, and then you can embed it on your website.
Email Marketing
Alexander (2019) mentions someof the considerations that you should look forwhen trying to decide on the best email marketing systemfor your business. Email marketing systemsshould include and consider:
- Size of Email List
- Lead Generation/Integration
- Automation
- Ease of Use
- Scalability
- Analytics
- A/B Testing
Now that you are aware of the key qualities to look for in email marketing tools, you can decide which one is the best suitable to your type of business.
- HubSpot
- It is a full-fledged reader-centric email marketing system.
- You can integrate social media and most website platforms.
- They offer very robust analytical data, A/B testing, lead generation, lead scoring, and automation.
- You can start at $50 a month for the version that includes email marketing.
- Constant Contact
- Offers good personalized support.
- You can start with a free trial
- AWeber
- A great tool for lead generation
- Provides a 30-day free trial then amounts to $19 a month for up to 500 subscribers.
- They offer automation tools and an easy way to create and customize templates with a drag and drop editor.
- ActiveCampaign
- A fully functional email-marketing platform that has CRM functionalities.
- Integrates really well with WordPress and you can market based on your user behavior.
- Offers A/B Testing
- The first tier, the Lite tier starts at $17 a month and you can email up to 1,000 contacts.
- MailChimp
- It is one of the most popular platforms
- It is easy to use
- You can get your email newsletter out there an hour or two after you sign up for your account.
- Has a lot of app integration
- You can use Google remarketing along with Mailchimp.
- It integrates with your social media
- It integrates with Salesforce, Shopify and WooCommerce.
- Offers a free trial
- The free account starts with 2,000 contacts.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization has many benefits, in which it can result in an increase in traffic to your website, provides trackable and quantifiable results, and is cost-effective as it targets users who are actively looking for your products or services online. Some of the free SEO tools consist of:
- Google
- Think of a good name for your topic
- Yoast SEO
- This is a plugin for WordPress.
- Ubersuggest
- Allows you to see how many times something was searched along with the actual volume of searches
- Informs you how much advertisers are willing to pay for clicks on these search terms.
- It also tells you how difficult it will be to rank for this search term.
- Google Keyword Planner
- Built into Google Ad Manager
- Must have a Google account for this
- Allows you to see the estimated bids and how high the competition is, along with the average monthly searches.
You can also use paid SEO tools that are just as effective in search engine optimization.
- Moz Pro
- An all-in-one tool.
- It will check back links to our website
- It will see which keywords you are ranking for, and will suggest new keywords that we can try to rank for.
- We can even look at some of our effectiveness of our social media campaigns, how we’re trending on our Facebook and Twitter, and that sort of thing.
- It is $99 a month for the standard account
- SEMrush
- A great tool for doing research on your competitors.
- You can see what key phrases they are ranking for, how they’re trending, and what the back links to their websites look like.
- SpyFu
- Ahrefs
- This tool has the largest database, second to Google, of back links.
Affiliate Marketing
Alexander mentions that running an affiliate marketing campaign for your product or service is not easy. He has provided some tips for you to think about when selecting an affiliate marketing platform. A good affiliate marketing network should have:
- Good Payment Structure
- Robust Tracing Features
- Commission Customization
- High Quality Affiliates
- Good Reputation
Now that you have the key qualities to look out for when searching for a good affiliate marketing network, you can choose which network will be the most beneficial for you.
- CJ affiliate
- Is free to enter
- Has a good reputation
- Rakuten Marketing
- Focuses on quality
- It has a very robust screening process in place to make sure that the publishers that are promoting the products and services of the merchants are very high quality,
- A reputable network
- Clickbank
- Focuses more on digital products.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is a great way to increase your brand awareness and attract new customers. Alexander provides many great tips and advice on what qualities to look for in different tools and techniques for digital marketing. I work for a local retail-clothing, and we use Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat as part of our social media marketing campaign. In the past year we started boosting our posts on Facebook and Instagram and narrowing our reach to the types of people that may be interested in our products and who are located in Alberta. As a result, it has helped our business reach a larger audience of people that are interested in our products and who may be potential customers. Not only has it increased our brand awareness but boosting our posts has allowed us to see the engagement our posts receive, such as the shares, comments and reactions on the posts. This enables us to see what kinds of posts are more interactive than others. We encounter new customers in our store almost every month that let us know that they discovered us on either Facebook or Instagram.
Now that you have all the tips on what tools and techniques to use for digital marketing, put it to use and watch how your business grows.
References
Alexander, A. (2019). Marketing tools: Digital Marketing. Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/Marketing-tutorials/Discover-top-digital-marketing-tools/753915/5021042-4.html
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