If you’re a marketing manager or business owner, you’re more than likely very aware of how important digital marketing is destined to be in 2017 and beyond. Before you speak to any agency about how they can help you with your digital marketing needs, it’s helpful to get your head around some important basics.

Still in doubt that online marketing is more important than ever? Have a read of this Forbes article for a clearer picture of what’s ahead for digital.

Our team at Woven has put together the following guide that looks at 5 key areas in relation to your Digital Marketing Strategy in 2016.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Put simply, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, relates to any activity that helps to improve a website’s search engine ranking. In other words, on what page your website ranks when you type any keywords into a search engine like Google or Bing. A number of factors influence a website’s SEO and it differs from search engine to search engine. In Google search these factors which include relevance to search term and domain authority, which are weighted differently by Google Search PageRank algorithm. When you hear about companies paying for SEO services, this is generally what is being referred to. These days, you’ll find that an agency like us, targets Google because it has the majority of market share. To be more specific, Google’s market share currently sits at 92.82 per cent, with Bing gaining traction.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

This type of advertising, commonly referred to as PPC, covers both Google AdWords ( Google AdWords ) and Google Ad Sense (on-site website). PPC revolves around what we call ad rank, which is determined by:

Relevance to search + Landing page performance (both in terms of speed and on-site content) + click through rate

When it comes to PPC, companies are spending a decent amount of money paying for impressions, also known as the amount of times users see your advert and the amount of times they go ahead and click on the advert.

Social media advertising

We all love a bit of time on Facebook and Instagram, but what else do you need to know about social media advertising? Firstly, it’s important to realise this covers not only Facebook and Instagram, but other social media channels such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat… the list goes on. Businesses pay money to display their adverts on different networks - the real advantage of this kind of marketing is that it allows you to drill down and target specific demographics that each different channel allows. In addition to paying for the actual ads, companies are paying for an agency or consultant to capitalise on their expertise in this area. Running a successful social media campaign is a lot more complicated than it may sound on the surface.

Email marketing

One of the most effective forms of marketing is email marketing, which allows you to speak directly to leads on your list that are already warm as they’ve signed up to receive your alerts. Email campaigns are sent via a marketing platform - Mailchimp and Hootsuite are among the most popular but there are others such as Campaign Monitor and so on. While some platforms are free to use up to a certain number of subscribers, eventually, most companies will pay to use a platform. From there, an email can be created in-house or alternatively, an agency can do this on behalf of a client if they’re looking for something more complex such as an entire email marketing campaign. Effective use of email marketing sees you reaching your target market on a different platform and can be used strategically (to notify people about a sale or to simply touch base and keep your brand top of mind).

Content marketing

We can’t overstate the importance of quality content marketing, or in other words, the page content targeted at your ideal customers. We’re talking about news items, blogs, targeted articles and so on. A lot of companies choose to outsource this, engaging with a copywriter who writes on their behalf and in-line with your brand’s tone. The copy is targeted towards your ideal client, with writers usually working off a content brief of some kind or an interview. The art in great copywriting relies on the ability of the writer to customise the content to target users, while incorporating relevant keywords in a natural manner that flows within a piece.

Contact Woven today for a Digital Marketing Strategy workshop or to discuss how we can help you with your Digital Roadmap.