Over the past twenty years, advertising and marketing strategies have continued to grow and change. With a bigger push than ever for a larger online presence, digital marketing has taken over and has encompassed multiple different skill sets. Today, we’re going to take you through the basics of digital marketing and where you can start to grow your online network and strategy.

SEO

One of the most common forms of digital marketing is search engine optimization. SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence and utilizing organic search results to drive traffic to your website. Every business wants to achieve the first page of Google results, SEO can help you get there. There are multiple forms and strategies that you can utilize to build your SEO strategy but the basics include keyword research, link building, and content marketing.

You should start by having a series of content that relates to what your intended audience is searching. Google’s algorithm ranks on a series of factors and webpage content quality is one of them. You can use tools such as Moz to develop keyword lists and better understand how your website is performing. By understanding user search queries you can tailor your content to their needs and have a better chance of ranking.

Digital Advertising

While SEO focuses on obtaining organic results, digital advertising is more of an aggressive approach. Digital advertising encompassing multiple strategies such as Pay Per Click, SEM, social media and Retargeting. These channels are often considered paid “ad” channels because instead of focusing on free “organic” results, you will often have some kind of payment involved.

PPC refers to paid ads through Google’s Adwords network that will trigger your ad to show when a user searches based off a specific keyword. This is helpful because the ad is only shown when the user has shown intent to search for something similar to your product. Another major form of paid advertising is retargeting. Retargeting involves hitting people that visit your site with your ads later on different networks. There are a variety of networks that offer this service including Google’s AdRoll, as well as social media networks like Facebook and Instagram.

Social Media

With over 2 billion active users on Facebook and 1 billion monthly users on Instagram, if your business is not already being represented on social media then you need to start today! Social media gives you a creative platform to reach users and gain more sales. Whether you’re posting about your daily specials or interacting with your customer base. There are a plethora of valuable conversions to be discovered when implementing social media.

To build a successful social media strategy, you need to curate creative content that will grab a user’s attention. This can be done by showcasing upcoming products, specials you currently have running, or related posts. At Red Shark, we focus on showcasing our company culture. Check out the Red Shark Digital Instagram for behind-the-scenes content! You also want to consistently post throughout the week, setting up a campaign manager such as HootSuite can help you schedule posts ahead of time and remain consistent.

With any marketing strategy, you’ll want to set measurable goals to better recognize your efforts. Having a reliable digital marketing vendor can provide you with in-depth reports, as well as keep your strategy on track. It’s never too late to start building your online presence. At Red Shark Digital we tailor all of our digital marketing solutions to provide you with a customized campaign to better target your audience. Call us today to get started!