Updated July 2023
This concludes the two-part set of posts about digital marketing.
Marketing continues to evolve. Understand that digital marketing isn’t one thing, but it’s many things. Many digital tactics are executed through various digital outlets to achieve brand awareness and generate leads.
Email Marketing
Naturally, email is a big part of digital marketing. So much so that it has its own subset. Sending these digital messages allows you to do which of the following:
a. Solicit new clients
b. Nurture existing clientele
c. Procure leads
d. Provide updates and announcements
e. All of the above
The answer is “E” for all of the above. How many of us have received unsolicited emails presenting a solution to a problem we didn’t realize we had? Have you ever received an email about deals and discounts from your favorite store? What about a simple email wishing you a happy birthday or providing tips for the new season?
It takes a bit of market analysis and research to build an email list initially. It also takes great visual design, a consistent schedule, a clear call-of-action, and content of interest to your target audience to compose a successful email campaign.
Stay in your customers’ minds with occasional emails filled with timely messages or resources to help their lives. You’ve now got a newsletter to send weekly, monthly or quarterly! This digital form of marketing does wonders for maintaining customer relationships and loyalty.
Web Development & Web Design
Design, programming, coding, server database management, and user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) can overlap. But they are different mindsets that operate on different wavelengths towards similar goals. To oversimplify something that’s already simply misunderstood: think of web design as the creative force and think of web development as the technical force.
“Among web professionals, "web development" usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building websites: writing markup and coding.” – Wikipedia
Web design is concerned with creating a meaningful experience for the user, ensuring functionality, look, and style. Web development is concerned with clean coding and programming that enables functionality. Development is also concerned with client-side/server-side scripting and network security configuration.
How does this all factor into digital marketing? Nine times out of 10, your digital strategy includes driving traffic to your website. People may come to your website organically as a result of your SEO efforts. When users get to your site – via discovery or any means of marketing – you want them to explore your website. You ultimately want people to convert by consuming your product or service. How optimized your website is for conversion is affected by the design and functionality.
Landing pages are a part of your website. This is where your conversations happen. Ad campaigns lead visitors here to prompt them to take the next action, leading to the “point of conversion.” That page is designed with a goal in mind and has a clear call to action (i.e. sign up for our newsletter, download our e-book, fill out our contact form for a free consultation).
Digital Marketing Analytics
Without measuring your marketing efforts, you’re wallowing blindly with no sense of direction. If you’re spending money on your marketing efforts, you’re likely losing and wasting it without using analytics. Web traffic from Google Analytics is informative, but it’s part of a comprehensive digital measurement analysis. NAtive web analytics, social media insights, and email clicks and open rates help marketers understand the effectiveness of our efforts.
It’s important to track just about everything. Building a UTM link to include in a Facebook ad or post can tell us how many visitors were driven to our website from that medium. Observing how many users out of the total subscriber list actually opened an email can give us an idea of how useful or relevant users found the content - or how striking the subject line is.
Studying analytics, building a report, and forming an analysis requires great attention to detail and numbers. It requires an analytical and technical mind to compute results that validate a digital marketing strategy. And most importantly, you have to know what you're looking for and what information is important to extrapolate from the overload of distracting data available.
Digital marketing is powerful. It encompasses different segments that require expertise. It requires specialists and designers, experts, and ideally, a whole team to tackle each field. It takes marketing creatives and marketing technicians to handle all parts. To plan and execute successfully, strategists and tacticians are necessities.
Want to learn more about digital marketing and how best to use it alongside other marketing efforts? Connect with J. E. Hill Digital Marketing on social media.
J. E. Hill Digital Marketing specializes in content writing and website content management. Learn more about my services.