Best Digital Marketing Tools and Resources List (Both Free and Paid)

Digital MarketingMarketing

Marketing tools are essential to all digital marketing operations. Using great tools will help boost your entire marketing process, making your workflow much more effective and smooth. This is why we will be discussing some of the best tools you can use in different aspects of your digital marketing that will work for you.

 

Marketing Tools for Content Ideas

 

Google Trends (Free)

This is one of the best marketing tools that is great for spotting trends and verifying what topics are popular at the moment. Use this tool to help guide you on the kinds of content to write that can gather more engagement and attract new customers.

 

BuzzSumo (Free and Paid)

BuzzSumo is a very powerful tool that can help you find content that receives a high engagement, influencers that posted those high-engagement content, and the different channels they are receiving the most engagement on.

 

Ubersuggest (Free and Paid)

Ubersuggest is another one of the most popular marketing tools. It is similar to the Google Keyword Planner tool. However, this tool helps to come up with hundreds of ideas for any topic you type into the system as well as keyword researches.

 

Social Media Marketing Tools

 

Hootsuite (Paid with a 30-day free trial)

Hootsuite is one of the best platforms for social media management. It helps with managing and scheduling all your content on many different social media accounts and platforms. You can answer your customer DMs through their platform as well as assigning your team members certain responsibilities. This tool is one that Marketing Guru is also currently using! 

 

Buffer (Paid with a 14-day free trial)

Buffer helps with scheduling your social media content. It handles your social media marketing from the planning process, all the way to collaboration, scheduling and publishing. They also have a separate offer for your social media analytics that can create a beautiful custom in-depth report of all your social media.

 

Sprout Social (Paid with a 30-day free trial)

Sprout Social is a premium social media management tool that has everything you need to manage your social media well.

 

SEO Tools

 

SEMrush (Paid)

This tool is great for overall SEO support features. It is also the easiest to start with compared to other SEO tools as ones like Ahrefs has a learning curve that can take time to get used to. SEMrush has a great website rank tracking report to give you complete control over your SEO strategies. It also provides keyword research, link analysis, as well as competitive analysis. This tool starts at $99.95 and ranges to higher prices depending on your company size and your desired features.

 

Ahrefs (Paid)

This tool is the best for people who are much more advanced on SEO. Since Ahrefs is packed with tons of features, beginners can get overwhelmed when they see all that Ahrefs has to offer. Marketing Guru recommends this tool, especially if you are planning to create a lot of backlinks because the link analysis feature of this is quite detailed.

 

Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress (Free and Paid)

This tool is created for WordPress websites and is basically required for any sites created on the WordPress platform. Yoast helps to automate a lot of SEO tasks as well as making meta titles and descriptions very easy to update. The free version also offers a lot of great features and updating it to a paid version is unnecessary.

 

Marketing Tools for Analytics

 

Google Analytics (Free)

Google Analytics is a classic must-have tool for any business with a website. It shows the clickstream, or the user behavior of a website, tracking various metrics such as total website visits, conversion rates and more. While there are other alternatives, Google Analytics is one that Marketing Guru recommends as it was created by Google itself.

 

Crazy Egg (Paid)

Crazy Egg is a great tool for tracking your website metrics, specifically, for the purpose of optimizing your website. It allows you to build heatmaps and track user behaviors based on where they click as well as conduct A/B split tests. From here, you can brainstorm the different ways to drive traffic and reduce any friction in your customer journey. The price for this tool starts at $9 and ranges to $99.

 

Marketing Automation Tools

 

HubSpot (Paid)

HubSpot is undoubtedly one of the best marketing automation software. From creating an email drip campaign to creating a visual of your workflows, HubSpot has it all. However, good software also comes with a high price tag. The price starts at $50 a month, but for the full automation features, it costs $800 and is billed annually. They do offer 90% for startups, however.

 

OptinMonster (Paid)

As the name suggests, OptinMonster is great for lead generation. To elaborate, this tool helps with building automated landing page campaigns starting at $9 per month. It is still lacking in some marketing automation features, however. Therefore, you will have to integrate OptinMonster with your CRM software.

 

ConvertKit (Paid)

ConvertKit is a great marketing automation tool for beginners. This tool will be able to help get you started on familiarizing yourself with some basic marketing automation features. They offer easy-to-use visual editors and done-for-you automation templates which is why you can get started much quicker compared to other tools.

 

Conclusion

Picking a specific digital marketing tool for your business may require some research. We hope we have helped you simplify the process! Whichever tool you decide to go with on this list, you will be able to benefit from them so there is no need to stress out too much when picking a tool as the options out there are endless.

If you are interested in including or developing your marketing strategy, let our experts at Marketing Guru help you! Get your free consultation today.

24 Essential Digital Marketing Terms To Know in 2020

Digital MarketingMarketingNews & Trends

Every industry comes with its own jargons and digital marketing is the same. Knowing at least some of the marketing terms will help you work and collaborate with others much more efficiently.

We’ve separated the marketing terms into categories:

  • Broad Digital Marketing Terms
  • Metric-related Marketing Terms
  • Operational Marketing Terms
  • Sales funnel Terms
  • Website Strategy Terms

Broad Digital Marketing Terms

1. Brand awareness

Brand awareness is the degree to which people will be able to recall and recognize your brand. Therefore, brand awareness largely depends on brand recall and recognition of your consumers.

Brand recall is the extent of how closely connected your brand is to a product. 

Brand recognition is the extent of whether consumers will be able to recognize a brand through its attributes.

Generally speaking, brand awareness involves a situation where your customers will be able to see your brand and know of the solution that you can provide for them.

2. Buyer persona

Buyer persona is one of the most common marketing terms. They are basically a representation of your ideal customers. The information usually included in a buyer persona are demographics, psychographics, lifestyle and, sometimes, their role in a company. The more in-depth of a description you can provide of your buyer persona, the better because your buyer persona will help brands understand the motivations of their customers.

3. Digital marketing

This refers to any form of online communication aimed towards persuading people to buy a product or service.

4. Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing approach that focuses on the customer. Usually, this focuses on the most ideal customer to a business instead of simply showing marketing messages to simply anyone. This can be done through various strategies, from social media marketing to blogging. As a result, you will be able to attract the right customers to your company which also helps with long-term scaling with better ROI.

5. Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is a process that educates and builds trust between your business and your prospects to help guide them down the sales funnel. This involves providing personalized experiences to your prospects and converting them into customers.

6. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Often confused with SEO, SEM is the process that is aimed towards increasing your website traffic through paid ads on search engines. One example of this is by using Google Ads.

7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a free digital marketing channel that takes a lot of time and effort that is all about pushing your website to the first page of search engine results where more people will be able to see and enter your website.

Metric-related Marketing Terms

8. Churn rate

Churn rate is one of the many marketing terms used to measure customer retention and contributes to the recurring revenue of the company. It also identifies the number of customers that a company loses within a given time period.

9. Cost per lead

Cost per lead is how much you spend on acquiring leads and it is also quite related to Customer Acquisition Cost which can be easily found in paid advertising channels.

10. Customer acquisition

Customer acquisition is related to the resources and processes involved in attracting new customers. This is related to brand awareness, lead generation and nurturing.

11. Customer acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost related to turning leads into a customer. In order to calculate CAC, you have to divide the money spent on attracting customers with the number of customers acquired in the time period that the money was spent.

12. Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a predicted amount of net profit that can be acquired from one customer over the course of your business. Therefore, if you can increase your CLV, you will be able to increase the value of each customer. CLV is calculated by subtracting customer revenue with gross margin and dividing that number with your churn rate.

13. Growth marketing

Growth marketing is a marketing process that involves designing and experimenting. The purpose of this is to optimize and improve the results of a target area. As a result, growth marketing can help you achieve growth in your business.

14. Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used as part of tracking the progress of a character towards a marketing goal. By setting your KPIs, you will be able to evaluate your business’ performance and optimize your marketing strategies.

Operational Marketing Terms

15. Content Management System (CMS)

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software tool that helps marketers and content creators organize and manage, as well as track their performance on the website content.

Some popular CMS examples are HootSuite, SproutSocial and Buffer.

16. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a software used as a contact database mainly used in sales. It helps to identify insights and provide analytics to the business. However, its main feature is the ability to store contact information to help salespeople track their interactions with stakeholders.

Some popular softwares are HubSpot, Salesforce and Zoho.

17. Marketing automation

Marketing automation is a software designed to automate marketing tasks. It is all about nurturing leads along their customer journey by leveraging content to address your customer’s needs depending on which stage they are in. In short, you are catering content to your prospects based on their behavior which is more powerful than simply sending out emails to everyone. As a result, marketing automation will elevate the efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Sales Funnel Terms

18. Top of the funnel (ToFu)

The funnel shows how you turn prospects into customers.

The top of the funnel (ToFu) refers to the first stage of the buyer’s process. At this stage, the buyer is aware of a problem and, as a result, they are actively looking for a solution. They will likely consume informational or educational content such as reading a blog or watching a video. You want to have your visitors take the desired step to move down the funnel.

19. Middle of the funnel (MoFu)

The middle of the funnel is the middle stage of a prospect’s buying process. They will have identified their problem, are still actively looking for a solution and consuming content that can present your business as the solution. This is also where responsibilities move from marketing to sales.

20. Bottom of the funnel (BoFu)

The bottom of the funnel is the last stage of a buyer’s process. It is also when the buyer has identified a problem, done their research and is ready to buy. Here, buyers will usually request a free demo or a free consultation and are beginning to talk with a salesperson.

Website Strategy Terms

21. A/B split testing

A/B split test is an experiment comparing 2 variables. Specifically, it does this by presenting it to a randomly split audience and comparing the results over time.

22. Conversion rate optimization

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a method used to increase the number of conversions on a webpage without having to bring in more web traffic. In any case, CRO is a method you should go with if you’d like to make the most of your marketing efforts.

23. Landing page

A landing page is a web page used for lead generation. In addition to this, the more optimized a landing page is, the more likely that your website visitors will turn into leads.

24. Thank you page

Once customers submit information on a landing page, they are usually redirected to a thank you page. Its purpose is to thank them for the submission as well as providing more steps that they can take with your business. These help to immediately nurture your leads and provide better customer experience.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is filled with jargons, therefore, learning these terminologies will help you understand more about this topic and optimize your marketing efforts. Ultimately, we hope you have gained some great knowledge from this article!

If you are interested in including or developing your marketing strategy, let our experts at Marketing Guru help you! Get your free consultation today.

Grow Your Business with Content Marketing Strategy

Content & DesignDigital MarketingMarketing

According to Marketing Charts, 64% of marketers want to know how to build a scalable content marketing strategy.

You may be wondering the same thing right now.

“Content is King”. This is one of the most well-known internet phrases. As cliche as it sounds, it is undeniably true.

There are a few ways to use content marketing strategy in your business. One is to create ‘clustered content’ that will help you dominate a topic. Another is to have an editorial balance between a search-focused and thought leadership content. The third is to align your content with the problems that your business solves.

In creating your content marketing strategy, here are a few questions you should answer first.

  • Who will read your content?
  • What problems will you solve for your readers?
  • What makes you unique?
  • Which content channels are the best for your business?
  • How will your content be created?

Here is how to create your very own content marketing strategy.

1. Set your goals

Before anything else, you must learn the aim of your business for why you want to develop a content marketing strategy. You can use the SMART goal model to help with this step. The SMART goal must be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. 

  • Specific – Define exactly what you are trying to improve with your content marketing strategy. This should a few sentences long and easy to share with others.
  • Measurable – Making your goal trackable is key to tracking your progress. This should be numeric. For example, if you want to increase your social media following, without giving a number to this goal, it is unlikely for you to know how far you’ve come.
  • Attainable – Know where your business is in relation to your measurable goal. Your goal must be 
  • Relevant – You have to know why exactly you are pursing your content marketing strategy. How will it contribute to your company? Ultimately, it should be tied to creating a business impact.
  • Time-Bound – Set your timeline to have a meeting about your goal. Determine what changes you can adjust to help you get back on track.

2. Create buyer personas

Creating a buyer persona will help with identifying who your target audiences are. It is especially important for people to start out with having an idea of what your readers want to read and what you can realistically provide.

3. Run content audits

Although most people start their content marketing strategy by writing blog posts, there are a whole variety of content types you can create. For example, if you have been running a blog for a while, consider writing an ebook that put together all your previous blogs and forming them into a guide. This is one of the many ways you can repurpose your content into several different formats. 

Running a content audit will help you review your previous content marketing efforts. This will make it easier for you to come up with newer types of content you can try out to develop a variety in your content marketing strategy.

4. Choose a content management system

There are various Content Management Systems (CMS) you can try out. Some of the most popular CMS are HubSpot and WordPress. These are systems that will allow you to plan and publish your content, handle email marketing, track analytics, and more.

5. Brainstorm content ideas

After setting up everything, it is time for you to come up with content ideas. There are a few tools that can help you with this. A great place to start is by browsing for topics on BuzzSumo. This platform will help you discover popular content and ideas that you can build off of when planning your own content.

6. What types of content will you create

There are a variety of content types you can explore and experiment with. Consider what you or your team are capable of creating and the time limit you have.

Here are all the content types you can try creating:

  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Social media
  • Blog posts
  • Ebooks
  • Case studies
  • Templates

After having worked on the same few formats for a while, try adding a new type of content into the mix. 

7. Publishing and managing content

Apart from just deciding on what types of content you will create, you will also have to manage and schedule your content appropriately. 

This is where a content calendar comes in. Putting all the content you plan on publishing in one calendar will allow you to see what needs to get done first and manage your time working on those content accordingly.

Great content are usually evergreen. Evergreen content are content that will stay relevant after months from when it is written. While evergreen content is important, seasonal content, or content that is based on news or events, is just as important to have. 

Those timely content will help create a spike in your traffic. They bring in more visitors compared to the consistent but lower traffic evergreen content. 

Therefore, make sure you incorporate different kinds and different types of content into your content marketing strategy.

For seasonal content, it is good to make a list of important holidays in your content calendar to help remind you of when to create and publish them.

Conclusion

Implementing a content marketing strategy will undoubtedly help you grow your business. With this, you are providing value to your audience and providing solutions to them consistently. Whether your business is a B2B or a B2C, there is always something you can create content from. It is just a matter of execution!

If you are interested in learning more about how to use digital marketing in your business, take a look at our digital marketing guides here. But if you are considering having an expert help you out, let MarketingGuru help you! Contact us for a free digital marketing strategy consultation today!

How To Go About Creating an Email Marketing Strategy

Digital MarketingMarketing

The most important element of an email marketing strategy is the relationship between you and your audience. Do they trust you? Do they know who you are? 

According to Statista, roughly 281 billion emails are sent every single day. This number is predicted to grow to 347 billion emails daily by 2023.

There is no doubt that email marketing is still playing a huge role as part of digital marketing strategies. This is why today we will be writing about how to create an email marketing strategy.

Even former President Obama was using email marketing which led to his success in the 2012 Presidential election.

An opt-in page for Obama’s email marketing strategy

So, to help you win more customers the way President Obama won the election, we will be looking at some email marketing strategies. Then, you will be able to find ones to incorporate into your business.

1. Personalization

Personalization tactics are key to increasing your customer experience. One of the best email strategy, or any digital marketing strategy these days, are the use of personalization. Research has found that an average of 71% of consumers express frustration when their shopping experience is not personalized.

One example is adding your recipient’s name in the email. For example, instead of “Dear valued customer,” use “Dear Steven,”. 

Another way to personalize your emails is by recommending your products to the customer based on their purchase history. This will help you cater products to your audience.

This kind of strategy can be implemented using email marketing tools such as MailChimp.

2. Subscriber Segmentation

Market segmentation is a huge part of all marketing planning. Subscriber segmentation is the same. The more you know your customer and the more you are able to cater to them, the better your chances of delivering better customer experiences by incorporating the right content to them. By segmenting different kinds of customers, you can deliver an email marketing strategy that will best suit them. Here are a few ways you can segment your audiences:

  • Industry – Let’s say you are a retailer and your target customer is a business that sells computer hardware. Your email campaigns will receive a much higher engagement rate if you send them emails recommending computer hardware compared to sending the same email to a business that sells books.
  • Company size – By segmenting with company size or annual revenue, you can market certain levels of B2B product or service depending on the business’ capacity. 
  • Sales cycle – Buyers who are in their earlier stages will likely be less receptive to an aggressive sales pitch or product demos. However, they will likely appreciate information on industry research. In contrast to buyers deeper in the cycle, they are likely to respond better to free trial offers or product webinars. 

3. Mobile-Friendly Emails

Emails opened on mobile devices account for 46% of all email opens and the number is growing. This is exactly why your emails should be mobile friendly as it will tremendously add value to customers in your email marketing strategy.

Half of all promotional emails sent to customers are still desktop-oriented. Therefore, you will be further ahead from your competitors just by implementing responsive design in your email marketing strategy.

It had also been found that 55% of smartphone users make at least 1 purchase after receiving a mobile promotional email.

However, while simply sending emails alone can be effective, you can increase the effectiveness even more by optimizing your emails. Here are some ways you can optimize your emails for better conversions as part of your email marketing strategy:

  • Implementing responsive email design – most email service providers already provide you with the solution as part of their features.
  • Keep subject line and pre-headers short and simple – Subject lines can make or break your email open rate. Don’t let your emails go to waste by implementing an attractive subject line. You can look at ones in your own email box for some examples of a good subject line.
  • Include a Call-To-Action (CTA) – Make sure that CTAs in your emails are noticeable whether they are viewing the emails on desktops, mobiles, or tablet devices. Make your CTA big and bold.

Tip: 41% of marketers say that email is the most effective method in sending offers to mobile consumers during holiday shopping seasons.

4. Automate Email Campaigns

Email marketing automation should be set up when possible.

These are trigger-based emails that are automatically sent out to users who signed up after showing certain user behaviors. One of the most common trigger emails are ‘welcome’ emails, ‘thank you’ emails and ‘transactional’ emails.

According to Campaign Monitor, automated emails generate up to 320% more revenue compared to non-automated ones.

The reason why automated emails perform so well in an email marketing strategy is because of the context. It is the middle ground between transactional emails and direct marketing emails.

For example, let’s say you visit an eCommerce store. You’ve added some items to the cart but started to grow some doubts and decided not to complete the purchase.

With email marketing automation, you will receive an email for the product you were shopping for just an hour later. Your interest in the item will likely grow because of it. Imagine if there were a link back to your shopping cart and a free shipping code or a 10% discount code for the order? You’re likely to go back to complete the purchase.

This is why trigger emails are so powerful. Setting it up does not have to be expensive or complex either. You can simply start with any one of the auto-responders out there today.

Conclusion

Having an email marketing strategy will provide you with a better way to connect with customers and grow your ROI. Keep in mind that if all your emails are about selling your product, it is less likely to sell unless your audience trusts you enough to deliberately sign up and be on your mailing list for the sake of receiving promotions.

MG-Blog-8

How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Beginners | 2020 Guide

Digital MarketingMarketingNews & Trends

Passive income. Most people who strive for passive income initially achieve it using affiliate marketing. You may be wondering about how to start affiliate marketing on your own or as a side income for your business. 

The idea of affiliate marketing is to promote other people’s products. It is usually with the help of affiliate marketing programs or networks. You typically earn a percentage of those products sold through your marketing as part of revenue sharing. 

As defined by Shopify, “Affiliate marketing is an online sales tactic that lets a product owner increase sales by allowing others targeting the same audience—“affiliates”—to earn a commission by recommending the product to others. At the same time, it makes it possible for affiliates to earn money on product sales without creating products of their own.”

There are 4 different parties involved in the process of affiliate marketing: the product creator (or the merchant), the affiliate network, the marketer, and the customer. It allows for both product creators and product marketers to receive a share of revenues in accord with their contribution.

The Merchant

The Merchant, also known as the product creator, or the brand. These people are the ones who create the product for selling and can range from big corporations to small businesses. As long as they have a product to sell, they are the merchant.

The Affiliate

Similar to the Merchant, this party can be big as well as small companies. They can earn from a few hundreds of dollars to thousands or millions a month.

They are the ones who do the marketing to attract and, essentially recommending the products to potential customers. This marketing effort is all in hopes that the customers will end up buying the product through our link or using our code, usually for an extra discount. It can also be in the form of an entire site dedicated to certain products.

One of the most popular affiliate network sites is This is why I’m broke.

The Consumer

This is the customer, they are the ones who allow the affiliate system to run. Without customers, there will be no sales for the Merchant. Neither will the affiliate receive any commissions.

The affiliates are ones who market their products to the consumer however they see fit. Some examples are through social media, content marketing, or even digital billboards. 

The Network

Not many people consider the network as part of affiliate marketing. However, it is still an essential part of affiliate marketing programs. There is an intermediary between the affiliate and the merchant.

Affiliate networks such as Commission Junction or ClickBank will help the affiliate marketing process much easier by handling the payment and product delivery.

Depending on the product, the affiliates may be required to enter the affiliate network as some products may not be available elsewhere for affiliates to enter.

To summarize, you can become either a merchant or an affiliate marketer. 

If you were to become a merchant, you can have others promoting your product. This promotion is in exchange for giving others a commission for their sales.

If you were to become an affiliate marketer, you can choose one or more products to promote. Then, you can market them to consumers to make money.

For today, we will be discussing how to become an affiliate marketer.

For Merchants: How To Start Affiliate Marketing

If you want to be a merchant, you will have to create affiliate marketing programs. You will be selling your product with the help of affiliates. This can be done in 4 steps. Keep in mind that these are not easy, but many people have already achieved it.

  1. Come Up with a Product Idea
  2. Validate Your Product Idea
  3. Create Your Product
  4. Become Part of an Affiliate Network

Step One: Come Up with a Product Idea

This step is most likely the easiest among all the other ones. Your idea does not have to be completely original. Rather, innovate from something that already exists. 

Think of how to make a product you are already using better. This should be within the field of your own interest. However, do not get too attached to your idea. Stay flexible to make sure that you can adapt to what consumers want out of your product.

Reading reviews of those products are extremely helpful in coming up with those ideas.

Always ask yourself, will people pay for this idea?

This leads us to the next step…

Step Two: Validate Your Product Idea

This step is essential to making sure you can actually obtain sales. It will help you save time, money and effort. 

Now, to really make sure that people would be willing to buy your product, simply ask them. 

Be specific and make sure that you are asking if they want to buy your product because, most of the time, people will likely say that they like something just for the sake of being nice. While it is perfectly alright to be nice, we need a surefire answer in order to make sure that your product idea is good enough that people will see the value in buying it.

You can ask your friends or strangers on various social media. Make sure that you are asking people who are related to the product!

For example, if you are interested in selling a step-by-step guide to starting a small business, you can ask people who have commented or tweeted about a blog related to entrepreneurial ventures. Send out plenty to make sure you have enough people in your for the rest of this step.

If most people replied that they would not buy this product idea, take into account their feedback. What other comments did they make? Is there a way for you to improve upon this idea? Either develop your current ideas or pick a new one and repeat the steps above.

After a good number of people have replied with a yes, the next step is to answer those replies. Provide a link for them to buy, and that once a certain number of people buy it (let’s say 5 ), you will create it.

The reason for this is to confirm that people actually want your product idea enough to spend their money on it. 

Once enough people have bought your idea, it is time to start making the product.

Step Three: Create Your Product

Depending on your product idea, this step will vary. One of the best ways to create any product is to first learn how to do it.

Let’s say you will be selling an online course, there are plenty of resources online that can teach you how to do it. So learning these are a great starting point for you. 

Digital products are probably the easier ones to create without too much financial investment needed. 

Step Four: Become Part of an Affiliate Network

If you are selling a digital product, tools like Digital Product Delivery or Gumroad can be very easily set up as these platforms will already take care of the commission process and other payments.

Next, search for and reach out to other merchants who have a decent following within your products’ niche to promote it. This can easily be done with some simple social media and google search.

Depending on how niche your product is, the easier it will be to pitch to other merchants.You will want to contact them by simply introducing yourself, your product, and asking them to partner together for a shared revenue.

Side note: For digital products, affiliate commissions are usually 50% or even higher. This is because there is no cost of replication. Everyone wins from the revenue share, therefore, there is no need to be greedy on this.

Start from trying to get at least one partner first, you can work out the commissions and details later. Just make sure you get started.

Another route to start affiliate marketing for beginners is to become an affiliate marketer yourself.

For Affiliate Marketers: How To Start Affiliate Marketing

It is much easier to start out by building enough traffic on your marketing channels first before actually selling. 

Below, we will be describing the 4 total steps you can use to start out with affiliate marketing. Keep in mind that this is just one way you can go about affiliate marketing and there are other ways as well. Here are the 4 steps:

  1. Pick a niche and review products
  2. Building an email list
  3. Live Webinars
  4. Pay Per Click Advertising

Step One: Pick a niche and review products

Think of the product you are already using in your day-to-day life. Is there one you are particularly interested in? 

This could be a book, a kitchen gadget, or hair styling tools. 

You can look around for the exact product or something similar in affiliate marketing networks. 

One of the places with a wide variety of products is Amazon Associates.

Make sure that your product recommendations are genuine and authentic, that way people will not be thinking that you are just trying to make some quick money off of your audience.

When writing blog reviews, you can use affiliate links. Affiliate links are the links to the products you are recommending. They usually follow a regular URL with “/ref…” at the end.

However, as you can see, relying on other people would require a large amount of traffic to actually make a good amount of money. This leads us to step two.

Step Two: Building an email list

Email marketing is still one of the best channels these days. It is also a great way to start affiliate marketing for beginners. Here are 3 ways you can do this on your website.

Header Bar

A tool we recommend is Hello Bar.

This will put up a call to action at the very top of your website. Offering an incentive such as an ebook that includes your product reviews or sending your audience to an email of the product review video will help as part of your marketing strategy.

Exit Intent Pop-up 

Hello Bar can also be used for this.

An exit intent pop-up will show up on the screen when visitors show signs of leaving your website such as moving the mouse towards the “X” button. You can use it as a way to offer some kind of resource your audience will be interested in as an exchange for their email.

Sidebar Widget

When it comes to sidebars, affiliate marketers must make sure that the ones on their website are not overly cluttered. Having only one call to action is enough. This should also provide some kind of value to your audience in exchange for their emails.

Some tips in affiliate marketing for beginners are to send your audience an update once a week. It is important to not make all of your emails about sales. Only when you create a new product-reviewing post.

Step Three: Live Webinars

This step can be done once you have gathered a few contacts.

These are much more engaging content that is very helpful in higher ticket items. Your audience are likely to prefer watching a live presentation much more than reading a blog review.

LeadPages is a popular tool that you can use to create a simple landing page for your audience to sign up for your webinar. Don’t forget to promote it on your social media to inform your followers one  week ahead of the event!

These can be hosted on Google Hangouts for free or on Zoom as well.

Use this opportunity to talk all about your product as well as answering your audiences’ questions about it. 

If you can get your merchant to provide you with a deal or bundle especially for your audience, it will serve as a great incentive for people to buy.

Step Four: Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Once your affiliate marketing starts to take off, it is time to move up to paid advertising.

Although this can be a bit of a learning curve, your affiliate marketing business can scale much more with this step. You can use PPC to:

  • Grow your email list
  • Grow your sales
  • Get more people to sign up for your webinars

When more people sign up for your email list, you will be able to market to them again. This will grow your chances of sales because they have shown interest in your content and are more likely to trust your recommendations.

An efficient and time-saving method of email marketing is to set up your own autoresponder that markets to your email list in an email sequence. There are various tools to help you with this, one we recommend is MailChimp.

Conclusion

To sum up how to start affiliate marketing, there are two paths that you can choose. As a merchant or as an affiliate. Although becoming an affiliate is somewhat of an easier path compared to merchants. The two routes are equally worthwhile. It all depends on your preference as well as your current knowledge.  

As this guide is about affiliate marketing for beginners, we hope this step-by-step process has been helpful! Now go out there and make it happen.

If you own a business or are currently looking for ways to increase your sales, let Marketing Guru help you. Get a free consultation for your digital marketing strategy today! Contact us here.

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Quick and Easy Guide to Picking a Digital Marketing Channel For Your Business

Digital MarketingMarketing

Picking a marketing channel to run with as part of your digital marketing strategy is not the easiest task without some foundational knowledge on the topic. Here’s the quickest way to learn all the basics of different digital marketing channels. The text below will be giving you a short overview on this topic. Covering all the information you need from what each of the platforms does, how to use them, and how it will benefit you.

Marketing Channel: Social Media Marketing

The most well-known online marketing channel. You can engage your customers much more personally here as most users go on social media as part of their daily routines to stay connected with the world. 

However, each social media platform does not have the same audiences and this is where you can play around with your choices depending on your ideal customers.

Facebook

This platform has been around for a long time. The main audiences on this platform are usually millennials or older as younger generations tend to migrate to newer platforms. 

Either way, this marketing channel alone is powerful enough to use for most businesses because of its paid ads feature which allows detailed targeting of who you want your advertisements to appear in front of by selecting their age range, gender, job industry, and interests.

As long as you know who to target and how to optimize your ad campaigns, Facebook Ads is like a machine that keeps giving.

Instagram

Instagram is currently owned by Facebook. The native content of this platform is mostly visual-heavy in both image and video formats.

What matters here when promoting your Instagram profile are authentic interactions with people in the same industry and your ideal customers. Always be sure to add popular hashtags to your posts, especially when building your account.

Twitter

Twitter is a “loud” platform that allows you to post multiple short-texts posts in one day without annoying your audience.

Things go viral and die out very fast and trending topics are always changing. 

Twitter profiles are also great for interacting with your audience. To get more engagement, post your text post with images, gifs, or even better video content.

Retweeting reviews or relevant posts are also helpful in adding more variety to your content. Aside from this, retweeting reviews can help increase your social proof and authority as well.

TikTok

This platform had only recently been created yet Gen Zs have already made it went viral. Tiktok has a very interesting algorithm that makes it so that fills the users’ “For You” page with content that is similar to ones they have already liked. 

The native content format is short-form videos where users can directly edit videos on the application before posting. This allows the younger generations to fully explore their creativity which is the essence of this platform.

As TikTok is still relatively untapped and post engagement rates here are much higher compared to any other social media platform (one random video can easily accumulate a thousand views), businesses can create short-form videos to promote their brands and more. Keep in mind, however, that the users on this platform are younger audiences and businesses catering to more mature audiences may not perform as well here.

Pinterest

Another highly visual social media platform, however, the majority of Pinterest’s audience are females. They usually go on Pinterest to find inspiration for their hobbies or artistic works. This platform allows users to save pins from all over the internet and form them into albums. You can easily get followers liking and “pinning” your posts or “pins” as the algorithm in this platform supports the engagement of new posts. 

Therefore, if your business caters to female audiences and visual assets can be produced, consider using this platform as part of your marketing strategy to build new followings and to drive traffic to your website.

LinkedIn

A professional social media platform, LinkedIn is great for B2B business. Not only do most decision-makers use this platform, but it is also an opportunity to showcase your company’s internal happenings to stay relevant and increase brand awareness. You’ll be able to build your brand and attract the right candidates for your job openings as well. Content on LinkedIn is similar to the ones on Facebook, you can share text posts, website links, videos, and images.

LinkedIn ads are also an option. You can boost your post for engagement, send a large number of direct messages to people you target, and more. Therefore, if your business is a B2B type, consider using this platform.

LINE

This channel is particularly popular in Thailand. However, its usage is growing in other countries all around the globe. There are options to advertise using the LINE Ads Platform. However, advertising with this requires contacting partnered marketing agencies. Marketing Guru is one of them! Aside from this, there are also free Official Accounts for businesses to create. This allows companies to text and advertise to customers who follow them via messaging apps to create more personal interactions.

Read more about LINE Ads Features here!

Marketing Channel: Google Adwords

Everyone uses Google on a daily basis. This is a powerful paid platform to advertise with. The audiences on this marketing channel are usually searching with intent. This means that they know what they are looking for.

There are a few methods to advertise with Google Ads. You can use these strategically depending on the marketing objectives you want for your business. The different types of ad campaigns you can create are:

  • Search Network (text ads)
  • Display Network (banner ads)
  • Shopping Network (product displays)
  • Video (Youtube ads)
  • App (App installs and promotions)

Marketing Channel: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a way to earn commissions from selling other products. This can be done through product recommendation videos on Youtube, for example. You will have to contact the company you want to be an affiliate to obtain a link or a code. This is where your sales will be tracked and you can earn a percentage off of them. This channel is great to use as an additional income source for your business.

Marketing Channel: Email Marketing

Email marketing is still effective! Once a customer opts-in to your email list, you can create content that is educational or relevant in your industry. Make sure, however, that you are answering to what they will find interesting. The most important part of a good commercial email is the subject title and the first sentence.

Marketing Channel: Search Engine Optimization

We can have a great website but without anything to attract visitors to your website, that website is practically useless. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to help your website be discoverable on search engines such as Google. However, the process of building your SEO well enough to rank on page one of Google can take a minimum of 3-6 months.

Marketing Channel: Content Marketing

Content is the key to all forms of digital marketing. This online marketing channel will help build brand awareness, convert customers, and build customer loyalty. Your content should be relevant to your audience and the content, whatever form it is or where you post them, will help to promote your business and who you are. 

In terms of content, there are 3 main types: evergreen, topical, and ephemeral.

  • Topical content provides relevant and targeted information.
  • Evergreen content are ones that can still be relevant to your audience months or years from the time it is posted.
  • Ephemeral content are ones that are short-lived. Like Instagram stories, for example, these last only 24 hours but they are used by many businesses to stay relevant and encourage brand recognition.

The best way to build following and engagement with this is to focus on producing content based on quality over quantity. 

Marketing Channel: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing, while it can be costly, will help you reach the type of audience who are your ideal customers. The most important factor in choosing an influencer is the type of audience that follows them and their engagement rate. Having a high engagement rate will not only give a show that their followers are real, but it also increases the likeliness of producing sales.

In this field, we separate the influencers by the number of followers they have. 

There are a few main ways of using influencer marketing in your business. First, you can create a list of all the influencers you think will fit into your brand. Calculate their engagement rate with tools such as Influencer Marketing Hub’s Instagram Influencer Earnings Calculator. From here you can filter who you want for your brand.

Marketing Channel: Native Advertising

This marketing channel is similar to paid ads but instead of appearing as an ad, the content looks native to where it appears. This could be in the form of a recommended content on a website or on social media feeds. The core of native advertising is to have the advertisement appear non-disruptive and does not directly push its product or service to the audience. As a result, the form of marketing has the potential to work even better than regular advertisements.

If you are interested in implementing digital marketing into your business or adding more channels to grow your revenue, let MarketingGuru help you save time and effort from experimenting on all of these channels to figure out what works best. Get our expert’s free consultations on your digital marketing today!

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Improve Your Online Marketing with Google Micro-Moments

Digital MarketingMarketing

Google has defined the micro-moments as the key moments in a customer journey. They are ones that consumers use to interact with a brand, specifically, in the form of mobile searches.

These key moments are ones where consumers make certain decisions and reach for their devices to find answers or assistance. This is why it is something all digital marketers must always keep in mind when forming marketing strategies.

The key micro-moments are

  • I-want-to-know moments
  • I-want-to-go moments
  • I-want-to-do moments
  • I-want-to-buy moments

How can they improve your customer experience?

There is always someone, somewhere searching on Google. In fact, Google gets an estimate of 3.8 million searches per MINUTE!

Therefore, learning how these micro-moments impact your customer’s journey will help with your business. Specifically, in learning how to increase your brand awareness, boost your customer experience as well as creating the right marketing strategies for your business.

According to PWC, 73% of all people agree that customer experience is a critical
factor in their purchasing decisions and 43% of all consumers are willing to spend a premium for greater convenience.

That’s why this is one of the most exciting opportunities to invest in 2020!

I-want-to-know moments

At this stage, your brand should be giving relevant informative content to your potential customers. Google has discovered that up to 69% of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that gave them the relevant answers they are searching for. Not only does it increase brand awareness, but this touchpoint can also help in growing your customer base.

The most common searches in I-want-to-know moments are for general topics (“What’s on the news today?”), food and groceries (“What are healthy dinner choices?”), and shopping-related searches (“What’s the shipping policy?”).

I-want-to-go moments

Location-based searches are critical for this micro-moment. This is where physical shops can bring in more customers. Research has found that up to 76% of consumers are likely to visit the store they have found when searching online that same day.

Therefore, any local shops looking to increase their customer reach should pay attention to this micro-moment to plan and market accordingly.

For example, local SEO can be used. Make sure your local shop has signed up on the Google My Business site to show up on Google’s search ranking page when customers searches for “near me” businesses.

I-want-to-do moments

91% of smartphone users look to their devices for ideas while completing a task. To elaborate, most consumers search for “how-to” information or examples to help them follow through with some type of activity. This is where the I-want-to-do moments comes in as a touchpoint between your brand and your customer.

Brands can leverage this micro-moment to create a lasting impression on the consumers. Keep in mind that up to 48% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from a company that provides instructional video content which is why this micro-moment is a great way to position your brand as an authority in your industry and help create trust between your customer and your company.

I-want-to-buy moments

Customers in I-want-to-buy micro-moments are ones who are ready to buy from a business. These are great for raising brand awareness and increasing conversions as Google has reported that up to 51% of consumers discover a new brand or product when conducting searches on their smartphones. This moment provides brands with great opportunities to sell their products and close their deals.

The most common types of searches in these micro-moments are usually shopping-related (“smartphone comparisons”), food and grocery-related (“best place to buy imported fruits”), and restaurants and bars (“pizza delivery near me”).

More than one type of micro-moments can be used simultaneously. For example, when a consumer searches for “coffee near me”, it is likely that the potential customers are in both I-want-to-go and I-want-to-buy stages.

How To Apply The 4 Micro-Moments?

Now that you know of the Google micro-moments. How do you apply this to your business?

The first thing you should do is to know your customer. No business can survive for long without truly understanding the everchanging needs of their customers and answering to that.

One of the most important tasks for any business to do is to develop customer personas and come up with the type of questions they will have for your brand’s products or services. With this, you will be able to imagine your customers as real people rather than just profit numbers. Always approach your business from a value-first approach. The easiest way to do this is to put your customers first and strive to deliver the best for them.

After developing customer personas, map out your customer journey, or even better yet, go through that customer journey yourself. By experiencing it yourself, you will be able to empathize with your customer and search for the best ways to deliver even more value for them.

From here, observe the potential touchpoints customers may have with your brand and think of the types of information your customers will likely search for. Each business is unique and what works for other businesses may not work for you. Therefore, it is extremely important to base your business decisions on real data.

There are plenty of tools you can use for market research and to explore certain topics and trends. Google Trends, for example, helps in learning more about the popularity of certain topics and industries which is useful in predicting the market direction.

Maximize the touchpoint opportunities and create relevant content according to those moments that will help in increasing your opportunity to grow closer with your customers.

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5 Digital Marketing Myths You Most Likely Haven’t Heard Of

Digital MarketingMarketing

Digital marketing myths come from misunderstandings. These are rather common when it comes to complicated topics such as online marketing. Make sure to keep a heads up for all things regarding this industry. Any news can be either an opportunity or a risk.

 In the following text, we will be describing some common myths that most people assume about digital marketing. 

1. “Digital Marketing is Everything”

Digital marketing has definitely become the marketing area of choice for most businesses. Brands these days are much too diverse to assume that traditional marketing does not work for them.

Digital marketing is a form of acquiring customers is getting harder every day to tap into. This is due to how much competition there is. Some traditional marketing channels that are still widely used today. For example, billboard advertisements, networking, giving away free product samples, and, of course, cold calling.

Most corporate brands use both traditional and digital marketing to execute a truly omnichannel marketing strategy. With this method, their marketing flawlessly fits into their customers’ lifestyles.

These strategies work amazingly for bigger brands. However, only 8% of all businesses with an omnichannel strategy believe that they have mastered it.

Digital marketing can be highly interactive for your ideal audience. Nevertheless, traditional marketing can also work just as effectively when done right.

2. “Paid Ads Alone is Enough” 

Customers that you are advertising to are real people, not just data.

Another digital marketing myth is that many people think that paid ads alone will work for their business. Paid ads are definitely one of the best tools to use in promoting your business. This is because you can bring people from Google’s search page into your website. However, if your website does not have a responsive design, you will simply be throwing your money down the drain. 

Hence, it is extremely important to keep in mind that a business requires much more than just paid ads in an effective digital marketing strategy. 

A study has shown that website visitors can take just 50 milliseconds to judge if your website is worth staying on. Therefore, any digital marketer and business owner must know more than just this channel.

For example, website optimization and an attractive ad are all essential parts of successfully converting leads.

3. “Online Negative Reviews Will Affect My Business”

It is true that negative reviews can chase potential customers away. People are eager to vent about negative experiences on a product or service, especially with the advantage of online anonymity.

However, that is not a reason to fear them. There are plenty of solutions that will help you turn negative reviews around to something that can help your brand. 

Of course, we all would love to have an entire list of feedback filled with positive reviews. We know that positive reviews mean that you have made your customers happy through your products or services.

But it is never possible to satisfy everyone. 

On the other hand, negative reviews can also help your business. It is one way for you to really listen to your customers and learn how to improve your business.

Research has suggested that complaining customers are more likely to revisit a business compared to unhappy silent businesses.

Another way to turn this problem into a brand-building strategy is to have a great customer support service in place. If the complaint is handled well, you may be able to clear out your problem. Complainers are likely to come back to leave a positive review or even delete their own negative reviews. Therefore, there is no need to fear those negative reviews as long as you know you can handle them well.

4. “I Can Get Instant Results” 

This myth is not entirely a myth. 

It is true that paid ads can definitely bring you relatively fast results. It is only when you have the right target audience and products, however. But it is unlikely for it to be any close to ‘instant results’. 

While some businesses may be able to get results within a few hours, it is not always the case. Think about it from the customer’s perspective. If you saw one advertisement for an interesting product, you probably wouldn’t buy it. Not unless you really felt like you needed it enough to make the impulse purchase. 

If you were to see the same interesting brand over the span of a few days, then you might be interested in what they are trying to communicate. In this case, customers are then more likely to convert.

There are also plenty of other digital marketing channels that require time and expertise. SEO, for example, usually takes 2-6 months for your website to start ranking page one on search engines.

Hence, instant results may not always apply to every business and, as with all things, sacrifice comes before success.

5. “Email Marketing is Spam” 

Despite most people’s inbox being a mess of a junkyard for emails, good email marketing is still reported by small business owners as the second most effective strategy in building their brand awareness.

Email marketing does not always have to be spammy. There is a difference between effective prospecting emails and spammy ones. 

To avoid sending your emails into the abyss, make sure that you know who you are writing to. Also, add an attractive subject line. Your customers will judge your email within the first few milliseconds of reading those subject lines. 

One method to train yourself to write great email subject lines is to look at your own email inbox. Observe the ones you’ve opened or ones that attract you. 

What made them worthy of your click?

Observe this and apply it to your own email subject lines when writing.

Another important factor to ensure your emails won’t be spammy is to create valuable and relevant content in those emails. These could be personalized, educational, or offer-related.

Conclusion

Now that those myths are busted, I believe you now have a better understanding of what digital marketing is. It is not easy to market any brands online. Every business requires its own customized combination of channels and content strategies. Constant tweaking of your social media and websites will also help to keep your online profile modern.

If you are ready to grow your business with digital marketing, but you are not sure where to start. Let Marketing Guru help you and get your free consultation today!

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How Does Digital Marketing Strategy Benefit Your Business?

Digital MarketingMarketing

There is no doubt that businesses in this day and age should adopt at least some form of technology in their business. From social media marketing to CRM, the rapid growth in tech innovations have grown to provide so many benefits to every part of our everyday lifestyles as well as our businesses.

It is obvious that certain businesses have much more of a presence on the internet. This kind of authority presence is what most brands strive for. Why is this the case? It is due to how they incorporate a digital marketing strategy into their business. We will dive into this topic below:

  • How your business can benefit from a digital marketing strategy
  • Things to be wary of when planning and executing your strategy

The Benefits

When it comes to digital marketing, the most important part is to decide on your marketing strategy. Your digital marketing strategy should depend on where your ideal customers are. Aside from this, experimentation can also be used to help decide which channels would work the best for you.

Keep in mind that all businesses are different. One channel may work well for one business in the same industry while another may find success in other channels. Either way, investing in some sort of digital marketing strategy will undoubtedly help in growing your business. It is a surefire way to increase your brand awareness and grow your business due to the following reasons:

Small Investments and High ROI

It is well-known that marketing is one of the most costly aspects of running any business. Digital marketing can open up opportunities with its relatively lower cost of marketing compared to traditional marketing. However, without the right expertise, you may end up spending more on paid ads. Therefore, investing and implementing the right digital marketing strategy into your business is critical in gaining a profitable ROI.

It is important to note that without the right knowledge in digital marketing, both time and money can be wasted. There are various digital marketing tools such as Facebook advertisements. These may cost you to spend more trying to figure out how it works.

Learn About Real People

Social media is not just powerful in the way it connects people together. They are also powerful in how they are able to understand what your customers are interested in. Take a look at Facebook Audience Insights, for example.

Say, you have an eCommerce website selling women’s clothes in San Francisco. You want to learn more about who your customers are and what they are interested in. Facebook Audience Insights can help you learn about all of this from just searching based on the users’ interests. Some of the related interests would be “online shopping” and “women’s clothes”. Aside from this, you also have the ability to target specific locations to help narrow down your audience.

digital marketing strategy tool - Facebook Audience Insights
Image captured from Facebook Audience Insights

As you can see in the image here, the tool shows exactly the age range of your potential customers and how many of them are within a specific location, in this case, it is New York, USA.

The majority of potential customers interested in women’s fashion and online shopping are in the age range 25 to 34 years old. The total number of these audiences are 2.5 million to 3 million people.

Retarget Your Customers

Have you ever gone on a website, and find that the same website’s advertisement keeps following you around? In the world of digital marketing, this is called retargeting ads and it is a great addition to all digital marketing strategies.

You may have heard of the term “Facebook Pixel”. It is a tool that helps you advertise yourself to the people who visited your website. However, Facebook only allows you to keep this data up until 180 days.

This tool is massively useful from a marketing perspective. Just think of how often you actually buy a product the first time you see an ad? Retargeting can be used strategically to help your customers learn more about you and remember your product or service when they need them.

Things To Be Wary Of

Digital marketing can bring a lot of benefits to your business but one wrong move can really hurt. Without the right knowledge and application, your business can be significantly affected. Here are some main things you should be careful of:

Targeting The Wrong Audience

When advertising, you don’t want to randomly target everyone. That’s a quick and easy way to going broke. Your product/service needs to be put in front of the right audience. If not, it is unlikely that will be able to make any sales.

If you have been running advertisements for a few days and there’s been no purchases or conversions for your ads, make sure that you are not targeting too broad of an audience. Try adding a variety of different audiences and see how your ads perform. Eventually, you can cut out advertisements that have little to no conversions and invest more into ones with conversions.

Low Ad Quality

All paid advertisement platforms care a lot about the experience of their users. Without these users, their platform could not exist which is why advertisement quality is extremely important. These platforms have built-in algorithms that decide which advertisements to show their users depending on how much the advertiser pays and how good the quality of the ad is.

If your advertisement is not up to standard, it is likely that the platform will prefer showing your competitor’s ads instead. Audiences also have the option to report your advertisements which can affect your advertisement quality score.

Remember: Your competitors are just a click away.

Bad PR

News on the internet spreads like wildfire.

If some sort of negative or controversial news were to be released about your business, that could potentially be the end of your career. Therefore, always keep track of what is being said about your brand online.

It is important to use social listening tools to not only learn about what your customers feel towards your brand but also to keep your brand image in check. Some of the tools for this are BuzzSumo and HootSuite.

Conclusion

So, we have learned why businesses should use digital marketing strategy and some factors to avoid. With this in mind, it is extremely important for companies to execute their digital marketing strategy properly. Having experts in this field help you out will tremendously save time and money.

Aside from this, paid advertisement costs are also gradually increasing due to corporate entities tapping into this channel. This is the reason why the time to invest in digital marketing should be now, rather than later.

If you are interested in implementing it into your business or upgrading your digital marketing strategies contact Marketing Guru today for a free consultation!

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Level Up Your Business With Digital Marketing Strategies

Digital MarketingMarketing

From SEO to Facebook ads, the marketing industry has evolved tremendously in the past few decades. Digital marketing is an important branch of marketing. This channel requires you to develop digital marketing strategies to strategically promote your business. This branch was developed due to the internet phenomenon and has since become an essential part of all modern businesses.

Digital marketing is defined as the act of promotion and selling of products and/or services through the use of digital marketing strategies. Some of the most popular ones include social media marketing, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click advertising.

By 2023, the total digital marketing spend is predicted to reach $146 billion; a growth of about 9% compound annual growth rate.

While there are many digital marketing strategies out there, it is important to keep in mind that not all strategies will perform effectively across all types of businesses. This is where the real challenge of online marketing comes in. To execute the most effective digital marketing strategy possible, one must have the right skills and expertise, not to mention the time and effort required to create all the right content.

The Mechanics

How digital marketing works is by putting your business in front of customers online. However, your business must use the right digital marketing strategies to make your efforts worthwhile. For example, you can keep your existing customers aware of you by creating consistent and engaging content.

There are many different ways to put your business in front of your customers, here are a few common ones:

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Google Pay Per Click Ads (PPC)
  • Facebook Ads
  • Email Marketing

The History

Back at the start of this field, digital marketing was extremely different to what it is today because there were much simpler algorithms that were not entirely user-friendly. Marketers at the time were uncertain and hesitant about this method of promoting businesses. The digital age began way back in the mid-90s and this was when the term digital marketing was first used.

Let’s dive even deeper into the history of marketing. It is helpful to first learn of the terms Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0.

What is Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0?

  • Web 1.0 refers to the beginning of the internet where websites were in simple formats with very minimal user interaction. Users were able to consume information on a website. However, it was more of a one-way communication from websites to audiences.

  • Web 2.0 is the next part of this evolution. This began in 2006 when the internet became much more widespread. Website designs also became much more interactive and user-centered due to the creation of social media. As a result, sharing and collaborating between people online was encouraged which completely turned the table on what marketing means.

  • Web 3.0 is the internet we know of in 2020. This era is one where websites are given the ability to learn about its users. It is also able to give new data such as personalized suggestions.

The evolution of the web shows the progression of its intelligence and affects how digital marketing is applied. From simply showing information to an exchange of information to today’s personalized website experiences.

In Web 1.0, businesses were promoted online by paying simple-looking websites. However, the problem with this was that these advertisements may not have been able to target their ideal customers directly.

Web 2.0 helps businesses reach their customers directly and conduct business online. Social media marketing and paid advertisements rapidly grew. These marketing channels became a huge success and the turning point of both the internet and the marketing industry.

As for Web 3.0, machines now have the ability to create much more complex actions. Customer preferences have been helping businesses put their products in front of the right people, at the right time. Many are still looking forward to what Web 4.0 or even 5.0 would bring. Its impact will likely transform internet users’ interactions as well as the digital marketing industry completely.

Picking The Right Channels For Your Digital Marketing Strategies

There are many different channels you can use to get your customers to see your products. However, not all of them are the perfect fit. The best way to find out which to use is to learn of what each channel has to offer. Start by picking the ones that your ideal customers will see. Then, experiment with these channels for some time, and adapt to what works for you and your business.

Learning From Case Studies

Shopify

Shopify homepage
Source: Shopify’s website

Let’s take a look at Shopify. It is an e-commerce platform that helps businesses create their own websites without having to learn how to code. Since their main customers are entrepreneurs, their content is created to help people build successful businesses using their service.

They were able to grow their revenue by 90% in just 365 days.

This was largely through an intensive content marketing plan that involves a combination of blogging, video marketing, and podcasts. With an in-depth knowledge of who their customers are, Shopify answered these needs by providing quality content as part of their digital marketing strategies. If you visit one of their blog articles, you will see the various kinds of content that they have. They cater to all kinds of people with content about e-commerce to digital marketing.

Daniel Wellington

Daniel Wellington homepage
Source: Daniel Wellington’s website

This popular trendy Swedish watch brand is one that truly understood the power of influencer marketing. They were able to grow to sell a million watches a year. This was largely from them sending their products for free to Instagram’s micro-influencers. How did this help grow their sales? In exchange for sending their products, the business asks the influencers to post a photo of them with the watch.

Each influencer that they send their products to were able to put their own creative spin on their posts. This creative spin gave the brand a source of influencer-generated content which ultimately became the brand’s source of success.

Tai Lopez

Tai Lopez homepage
Source: Tai Lopez’s website

Tai Lopez is a personal branding business that sells online courses. These have helped hundreds of thousands of people grow their wealth. His digital marketing strategies were a mix of social media and paid advertisements, especially on Youtube.

One of his videos called “Here in My Garage” became a viral success. This video shows him in front of his Lamborghini. He was talking about self-improvement and encouraging his viewers to visit his site. This video became a meme due to how often people would see his advertisements before watching their content on Youtube. It brought about many more promotions for him through social sharing. As a result, Tai Lopez is now one of the most well-known names among the business-related online courses.

We have now seen the different ways that digital marketing can help businesses. If you are interested in implementing it into your business or upgrading your digital marketing strategies contact Marketing Guru today for a free consultation!

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