Detailed Guide to Digital Marketing

• Content marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• E-mail marketing

Before we look at each of these areas, it is essential to define the target market for your marketing strategy.

Once you have a defined target market, you can tailor your digital marketing performance to reach out to your potential customers and make what you offer to solve their specific problems.

Defining the target market

Who are the people who would be interested in (or already buying) your products and services?

If your answer is “everyone,” it’s time to work on your targeting.

A target market is a specific group of people you want to reach with your marketing message. These are the people who most often buy your products or services, and they are united by common characteristics such as demographics and behavior.

People who are not involved in your target market can still buy from you - but they are not your main focus when it comes to designing your marketing strategy.

You can’t target everyone, but you can sell the product to everyone.

Your target market should be based on audience research, not subjective feelings. You have to be willing to adapt and target people who want to buy from you.

If you are doing digital marketing for a business that is already in business. The fastest way to get target market data is to collect data on the characteristics of existing customers.

Once you understand the characteristics of your existing customer base, you can look for more people who match the same profile.

Some of the user data to collect are:

• Age group. It is desirable to know the age group of your customers. You do not need to specify the average age but the approximate age group. Example: People aged 18-24, 24-35, 35-45, etc.
• Life phase. What is the life stage of your customers? Do students, parents with small children, retirees buy the most from you? Some product categories will be more attractive to people in specific stages of life.
• Location. This information is essential for companies that offer products or services regionally or globally for local businesses, the answer is obvious.
• Terminology. Especially if your services involve some professional Terminology, there is a good chance that your customers use different terms to describe what you offer. For example, digital agencies in the region often communicate to offer "web development" and "web design" services, while for clients, it is site development. You must communicate in the language of your audience because if you do not, your marketing communication will not resonate with customers, and they may go to a competition that has better-customized communication.
• Interests. What do your customers like to do besides using your products or services? What TV series are they watching? Do they have any specific hobbies? What other companies do they communicate with?

 

2. Review the analytics

View analytics data from your website or social media page. It can help you understand who is interacting with your digital channels, even if those people are not yet your customers. 

3. Observe the competition

Now that you know who is communicating with your business and buying your products or services. It’s time to take a look at who’s buying from your competition.

This is especially useful if you are starting your own business and do not yet have existing customer data.

4. Define what benefits your product or service provides to customers

There is a difference between the characteristics and the benefits that the product provides. Characteristics are an integral part of your product describe what its features are and purpose.

Benefits describe how your product makes someone’s life easier, better, or engaging.

When you precisely define the benefits, it will be easier to define the target market. If you don’t already have a clear list of the benefits your products or services offer, now is the time to make one.

Not sure what benefits your customers get from doing business with you? Ask them.

Create a questionnaire and allow customers to fill it out when shopping or send them a questionnaire by mail after a while, depending on what makes more sense in your industry. You can also post the questionnaire on your website or social media pages.

Once you've defined your target market, it's time to create your customers' personalities.

What are customer personas?

The customer persona describes the characteristics of your ideal customer that you need to keep in mind when creating marketing communications. This profile defines who your target customers are, how they spend their time, the challenges they face and how they make decisions.

Depending on how many main categories of customers you have, you will have so many different personalities.

For example: If you sell gym and fitness equipment, you may have a person persona for the gym owner to whom you sell equipment, business people who train from home, and middle-aged people who want to get back / stay fit. These groups of people are very different and have different needs, so it is necessary to form marketing communication accordingly.

If you have gone through the previous step of defining the target market, it will be easier to create customer personalities.

Think of customers as real people, and you will be able to compose marketing messages that will resonate with them. If we continue with the example of fitness equipment, one category of customers might be business people.

In this case, we can create a persona called Jesica. To better understand her, we will give her characteristics.

Jesica:

He is 36 years old
He lives in New York
He is a manager in the IT industry
She is married and has two children
It is motivated by a healthy life and maintaining physical condition

Jesica:

Age: 30-38

Occupation: Professional

Motivation: Healthy living, good looks, consumer

Objectives: Success in career, healthy habits, acquisition of new knowledge, family progress

Frustration: Commitments, lack of free time

Biography: Jesica has two children she is dedicated to career progress and balanced family life. In his free time, he likes to train and read books. He travels to other countries twice a year. He has a medium-high income.

Personality: Responsible, ambitious, disciplined, organized.

Technologies: Social media, pc software

Brands: Samsung, Honda, Amazon

 

It often happens that companies use a lot of jargon and corporate terms. That doesn't mean much to end-users. If you create a marketing message specifically for Jesica and other people, it will not happen to you.

Remember, a list of features is not the same as a persona. Persona is a realistic description of a person who represents one segment of your customer base.

Of course, not all people from one customer group have 100% the same characteristics as your persona. But that persona represents that group and allows you to think of them as individuals.

Keep your customers in mind as you work on your marketing strategy and communication. Focus on the person, and you will create a connection with the real people you represent. In this way, you increase sales and customer loyalty to your company.

 

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a long-term strategy that aims to build a connection between you and your target audience through quality content that creates value.

Instead of forcing your products or services, Content Marketing works by attracting the attention of your target audience and helping them get answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.

The three main components of content marketing are:


To build a relationship with your audience, your Content Marketing must match their interests - not just your business goals.

Content Marketing is most effective when it meets specific needs, such as providing critical information that customers are looking for, providing tools or techniques that will make their lives easier, or helping them cope with a complicated process.

It is not enough to make one example of quality content. Content Marketing gives the best results if done in the long run and constantly provides quality and value to your audience. 

Good Content Marketing creates a loyal audience. When it comes time to buy, the customer will buy your products or services and prefer you over the competition.

People want to feel that you care about them, not that you only want to sell them something. Specifically, today, when they are attacked by marketing messages through all media. Customers appreciate a lot when you take care of their needs.

Types of Content Marketing

There are many types of Content Marketing that your business can use. Let's look at some of the more popular options:

1. Content Marketing through social media

There are many social media that you can use (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Pinterest…) and on which you can create and share content. All of these platforms offer you a multitude of opportunities to connect with your audience.

2. Infographics

Infographics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand visual format. Combining simple design, short descriptions, and quality graphics infographics is a great way to display helpful information. They are most effective for simply displaying complex information or complex topics.

3. Blog

A blog is a powerful tool for providing information to your customers and target audience. It can be used to turn readers into customers, increase awareness of your brand and build relationships with your audience.

Depending on the goal you want to achieve at a given time, you can write on your blog about topics from your industry, helpful information for your audience, or your products and services.

To get the most out of your blog, you need to optimize it for search engines and promote it on social media.

4. Podcast

Podcasts can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. They are becoming more and more popular because of their practicality. You can listen to them while traveling to work, doing something around the house, or relaxing.

Podcasts help you build a brand, connect with your target audience, and promote your products and services.

5. Video Content Marketing

You can use Video Content Marketing to promote your product or service, increase social media interaction, educate customers, and engage audiences through video content. With video marketing, you can increase your conversion rate improve your advertising return, and build relationships with your target audience.

The most common platforms used by companies for video marketing are YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

To be successful in video content marketing, you need a strategy that includes:

• Exploring the problems and challenges facing the target audience
• Identify topics that solve the problems of the target audience
• Designing a script for a video
• Video recording and editing
• Combine videos with your other marketing content
• Distribution of video content on different platforms
• Measuring video marketing results
• Improving the strategy based on the reactions and suggestions of the target audience

Video marketing is constantly growing, and this trend will only continue in the future. If you have not included video marketing in your marketing performance, you should consider this format.

No matter what type of Content Marketing you use, your content must be current and relevant. To begin with, determine which kind of content is most effective for your company and audience and develop a strategy.

When you notice that your content is no longer producing results, you need to decide whether it is time to refresh it with new information, archive it for another period, or remove it from your marketing strategy.

Also, you need to regularly analyze your Content Marketing strategy and make changes in line with your company's goals.

 

SEO (popularly known as “how to be first on Google”) is the practice of optimizing a website for better ranking on organic search results, with a focus on popular search engines like Google.

The goal of SEO is to signal to search engines that your site or blog is the right solution for the terms your potential customers are searching for, which is why search engines will rank you better.

There are many search engines, but the market is dominated by Google, which has over 93% market share. Bing might be attractive to you if you are doing marketing for the North American market because of its share of about 5% in that market.

If you optimize your site following the recommendations of Google and Bing, a good ranking of your site will not be lacking in other search engines.

Google claims to use over 200 indicators to rank sites. It may sound scary, especially considering that they have never published a list of all these indicators.

However, some factors that affect rankings are known and can be used to rank your site high for relevant terms.

Speaking of terms, let's start from the beginning.

 

Keyword research is the process of discovering terms and phrases that people use in search engines with the ultimate goal of optimizing the content on your site or blog around those terms and ranking for those terms.

Before starting any site optimization, you must first determine which terms you want your site to be ranked. There is no definitive ranking list, but each ranking is done for specific terms or phrases.

This process can also reveal to you the desires of your target audience and the challenges they face because you gain insight into the specific words they use.

Many tools can help you research your keywords. Here are some of the more popular:

• Google Keyword Planner is Google's keyword research tool. Free and fairly reliable. You will need a Google Ads account to use, which you can create for free with a Google Account or Gmail address.
• Ubersuggest is a great tool that can help you with a lot of things related to SEO in general. You can use it for keyword research, SEO analysis of your site, competition analysis, finding ideas for Content Marketing, and link building. Some advanced features are currently only available in a paid version. If you are new to the SEO world, these two tools will be enough for you to do basic keyword research and learn how the process works.

You can also try our Free Keyword Research Tool.

If you want to be a professional site optimizer, I recommend that you start using at least one of these tools:

• Ahrefs is The tool most used to find link-building opportunities but can also be very useful for keyword research and other SEO activities.
• SEMrush is a great tool that offers you many options for SEO research, especially for competition research.

The process with all tools is similar. The quickest way to get to the keyword list is to enter the address of a competing site in one of the tools, and you will get a list of keywords for which the competition ranks. You can then enter those keywords individually into the tools to get more related keywords. Repeat this process until you form an exhaustive list of keywords that are relevant to you.

Now that you have a list of keywords that your target audience searches on Google, it's time to write content. Thanks to keyword research, this step should be simple - create good content for each keyword on your list using your Content Marketing knowledge.

On-Page and Technical SEO

What follows is the optimization of each page of your site around one (or several) terms. If you're just getting started with optimization, focus on your long-tail keywords first. Long-tail keywords are the ones that don't have many searches, but because of that, you don't have much competition in ranking for them. This increases your chances of being on the first page of results.

Here are the most important things to look for when it comes to On-Page SEO.

You need to add the keyword in the text several times. However, it must be in the first 100-150 words of the text because Google attaches a little more importance to the text at the top of the page.

Title Tag pages, URLs, H1 and H2 titles are some more places where you should use the keyword for which you want to optimize a particular page. The keyword should also be in the title of the images on the page and their alt text.

You don't have to add a keyword to the Meta Description page, but you do need to optimize that part for as much organic CTR (click-through rate) as possible. You can do this by writing a Meta Description text that will interest them to read more. CTR is the percentage of users who click on a link and visit your site when it appears in their search results. Better CTR helps with rankings, and this is one of the more important factors that Google takes into account.

Internal links are links that lead from one page of your site to another page also on your site. Although they do not directly provide SEO benefits, they help Google find and index multiple pages of your site, which helps in the long run in ranking.

The design of your site is an important SEO factor. People today access their sites mostly through mobile devices, and Google knows this. The font must be large enough for users, and the design elements must fit well on the mobile version of the site.

Site loading speed also has a significant impact on rankings. Users are impatient today, and if your site doesn't load in seconds, they'll go back to Google and click on a competitor's site.

A tool you can use to measure speed is Google Pagespeed Insights.

Ok, you did detailed keyword research, wrote quality content, optimized On-Page and Technical SEO. Is Google's first page yours ?!

Not really we are missing another essential part of the process.

 

Linkbuilding is the most challenging and most essential part of your SEO strategy. If no site links to you, you probably won't rank well on Google results.

How do you get sites to link to you? We'll get to that first let's consider who should link to you.

Google does not value all links equally when it comes to SEO. One link from a site that Google considers authoritative can bring you more SEO benefits than hundreds of links from sites that Google considers suspicious or spam sites.

You can determine the authority of a site with this free analysis tool. The better the domain score, the more benefits a link from that site will bring you. I recommend that you aim to build links from domains with a minimum score of 10.

You need to pay attention to news sites that often add a no-index tag to links that lead from their website. Links that contain a no-index will not bring you SEO benefits.

Okay, now you know how to determine if a link will bring you SEO benefits or not, but how do you get links at all?

It all starts with Content Marketing. If you have quality content, that is useful to people, other websites will be happy to link to you, not because they love you, but because they love their audience and want to give them value by directing them to your quality content.

How do you know your content is quality?

How do you know your content is quality?

Your content is quality if it provides users with useful information / solves a specific problem.

Sites that link to you will probably not be your direct competition. There is a greater chance that tp will be organizations that offer complementary products or services.

If you are new to the market, you must promote your content. Post it on social networks, promote those posts, send them to other sites in your industry, etc.

Quality content requires time and effort. If you do not promote it, you are depriving yourself of the results of hard work and valuable information to users.

 

SEO Summary

SEO is a long-term process, and it often takes months to see results. This may sound daunting, but the benefits of good rankings on search results are more than worth the effort.

When you rank well, that doesn't mean you can stop creating content. To stay there, you must continue to work on optimization to maintain that position.

 

Social media marketing

Social media marketing involves the use of social media as a marketing platform. The goal is to build a brand through social media and gain customers for the products and services.

Since social media marketing involves the active participation of an audience that spends a lot of time on these platforms, it has become a popular way to attract attention.

The most popular social media marketing platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

The differences between these platforms are essential to know to make a strategy for appearing on these social media. Depending on the type of business you are in (or marketing for), some platforms will give you better results, and some you may not have to spend time on. 

Facebook

Facebook as a platform for the vast majority of people is nothing new. He has been present for a long time, and most people have a profile on Facebook

Globally, Facebook has over 2.5 billion active users, while about 1.6 billion people use the platform every day.

With this highly developed advertising platform that allows precise targeting of people by various demographic characteristics and interests, Facebook is probably the most flexible digital marketing medium.

Different age groups are also well represented on Facebook, and the audience is average much older than on other social media.

Thanks to all this, most businesses should have a presence on Facebook and advertise on this platform.

Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has been growing steadily. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, and today, the two platforms have a common advertising platform.

Instagram has over a billion active users worldwide.

You probably already have an Instagram profile. But for business purposes, you should open a new Instagram business profile or make an Instagram personal blog. This will allow you to connect to your Facebook page and make it easier to advertise through Ads Manager on Facebook.

This platform is of the visual type, and all the content you post here should be high resolution, clear and eye-catching. Things you need to pay attention to are Story format and hashtags.

Your Story posts are more likely to be seen than Feed posts, so don’t think it’s enough to post on Feed. You can save some of the more important Stories in Highlights so that your users can view them whenever they want.

Hashtags help potential customers find you on Instagram. Use a maximum of 10 hashtags per post and be relevant.

 

This platform is mostly used by the younger population. If your target audience is under 35, you need to be on Instagram. 

YouTube

YouTube is a medium that is not mentioned so often in social media marketing guides, probably because it is significantly different from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

YouTube is at the same time a social medium and the second largest search engine on the Internet. This way, you can reach a very wide audience through YouTube, and it is great for building brand awareness.

Of all the social media, YouTube is probably the least used in our market, especially considering its popularity.

Twitter

Twitter is not the biggest social medium, but it probably has the most loyal users. Of the 330 million Twitter users worldwide, 40% use Twitter every day.

What sets Twitter apart from other social media is the limited number of characters you can have in a single tweet. This will lead you to be creative to make the most of the characters available to you.

On Twitter compared to Facebook and Instagram, you have a higher chance of your content going viral on Twitter than on other social media, and the audience is generally more involved in the conversation.

Twitter is also used more by men than women, so if your offer is predominantly male-oriented, Twitter is the platform for you.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the largest business social network in the world.

LinkedIn is considered a more serious network than the others we have listed so far, and therefore communication should be adapted to such an environment.

The advanced targeting provided by the LinkedIn advertising platform allows you to target micro-targeting that is not available on other social media. You can target users by the specific organization they work for, organizations of a certain size, job title, experience, education, interests, and demographics.

Research has shown that active LinkedIn users do not usually spend much time on other social networks. This means that with good access to this platform, you can reach an audience that would be inaccessible to you if you focused only on Facebook or Instagram.

Used properly, LinkedIn can be a great place to find new business partners and clients, especially if you are doing business in the B2B marketplace.

The Pinterest social network has about 444 million users worldwide, and that number is growing rapidly.

This is another visual social network where you create albums that you can mark pin on boards and share with your followers. In this way, users can share their collections with others and find content that interests them.

One of the best ways is Rich Pins. These are the pins to which you can add calls to action and direct Pinterest users to your website.

There are 6 types of Rich Pins:

• Product pins
• Article pins
• Recipe pins
• Movie pins
• Location advertising pins
• Pins for mobile application promotion

Depending on what you want to promote, you can choose one of these Rich Pins options.

 

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

PPC (pay per click) marketing is a form of advertising in which advertisers incur costs when users click on their ads. Advertisers bid for the value of the click they are willing to pay depending on the keywords, platform, and audience they want to target.

PPC advertising is used for:

• Sales increase
• Finding potential customers (generating leads)
• Raising brand awareness

The most important thing is relevance. Users are looking for specific products, services, and information at all times. With PPC advertising, you can display the targeted ad at the exact time this search is performed. For example, if a user types in a "black leather jacket," you can show them an ad that contains the words "black leather jacket" and that takes them to a page with that product when they click on that ad.

Today, many platforms use the PPC advertising model we will focus on the largest and most popular ones.

As the name suggests, Google Ads is a platform that allows you to advertise on Google search, Youtube, Google partner sites, and Gmail.

The Google Ads platform offers the most advanced options for PPC advertising and allows you to advertise on the world's two largest search engines - Google and YouTube.

To get started with Google advertising, you need to have a Google account and open a Google Ads account with that account.

When opening a Google Ads account, you'll need to enter some basic information about your project or business (business area, website address, etc.), specify the currency in which all digits will be valued, and adjust your payment method.

You can then start creating your campaigns. Some of the campaigns you can run through Google Ads are:

Search - Text ads that appear on search results and are triggered for specific keywords.

Display - Only banners or banners with text ads that appear on Google partner sites that have opted into that part of the site for advertising.

Gmail - Ads that appear in Gmail at the top of your mail and look like an email ad. They also usually contain banners and text.

Video - Video ads that you can place on YouTube or Google partner sites.

Shopping - Ads that display products and descriptions at the top of search results.

App - ads that appear on mobile devices on Google search results, Google partner sites, and Playstore, and aim to promote and install the application.

Smart - Automated campaigns that display ads on search results and Google Maps results. They can be set up within 5 minutes and are an ideal option if you urgently need a campaign. Also, a great way to advertise on Google Maps results.

Discovery - Ads are shown on Youtube, Gmail, and Discovery and are a great way to build brand awareness. The advantage of this type of campaign is the giant reach. Google claims that it is possible to reach 2.9 billion users through Discovery campaigns.

Remarketing - campaigns aimed at advertising to an audience that has already visited your site. People usually need to have more than one interaction with your brand before they buy from you, which makes these campaigns ideal for increasing your conversion rate.

When creating a campaign, you'll need to determine the average daily budget you want to invest, the geographic location of your potential customers, the language they use, and the start and end dates for your campaign.

When it comes to budgeting, keep in mind that the price you pay for a click on your ads depends on the competition for the keywords you're targeting. The pricing works on the principle of the auction, where you and your competition bid for a position on the first page of results.

The next step is to create a campaign structure. Each campaign consists of an ad group, and each ad set consists of ads and targets specific keywords.

 

Organize similar keywords into a set of ads (over 10-20 keywords per group is not recommended) and write ads for them that contain those keywords and adequately describe your bid.

How do you know which keywords to target? If you have done the research listed in the SEO section of the guide, you already have a list of ideas. You can also use the Google Keyword Planner to generate additional keywords that you can include in your campaigns.

Don't forget to add negative keywords as well. These are the keywords that your ads will not trigger. For example, you probably don't want your ad to activate a term that contains the word 'free.'