What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the act of promoting and selling products and services by leveraging online marketing tactics such as social media marketing, search marketing, and email marketing. (source)
It helps potential customers find you throughout all stages of the purchase funnel: awareness, consideration, evaluation, and purchase.
Where should you start?
There are several ways to reach your target audience online: Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Display Ads, Social Media (Management & Ads), Content Creation, Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
A combination of all tactics is the most effective approach – because they all work together to lead a potential customer through each stage of the purchase funnel.
However, not all tactics work for every brand. Sometimes, budget may limit the tactics. And, that’s ok. We can help you prioritize based on your goals and objectives with a digital marketing strategy.
Combining Tactics For Best Results
Let’s take a look at how this could work.
Imagine you own a local boutique pet store, Blossom Bark, and your goal is to generate new leads & increase sales of organic dog food.
Combining different digital marketing tactics can help achieve these goals.
To illustrate this, we’ll follow the journey of a potential customer named Candace. She’s a fur mom to two mixed-breed rescue dogs. She’s interested in feeding her dogs better food but isn’t sure what brand, where to buy it, or if it’s worth the investment.
AWARENESS
Candace, like many of us, turns to the internet to start researching the benefits of organic dog food. She goes to Google and searches “benefits of organic dog food.”
She clicks on an organic listing and finds an article from your, Blossom Bark, website talking about organic dog food: why it’s important, what ingredients are considered good and bad, and what brands your store carries.
Each of the brands listed link to related pages on your website. Candace follows the links to read more information about each brand.
Candace returns to Google and continues her research on organic dog food.
CONSIDERATION
Preparing for a trip to the dog park, Candace checks the weather on a local news website.
She sees a display ad for Blossom Bark highlighting one of the brands she previously researched on your website. She clicks the ad and goes to your website, where she finds more products this particular brand.
Candace has now decided she wants to start feeding her dogs organic dog food. She searches for “organic dog food store near me” on Google.
She sees a Blossom Bark ad and learns you’re local. At this time, she clicks through to your website to learn more about your company.
She visits your About page and then visits your Facebook page.
EVALUATION
While on your Facebook page, she checks out your customer reviews and notices a couple of them are from her friends.
If they trust you, she can, too.
She checks your store hours, loads her dogs into the car, and heads to Blossom Bark.
PURCHASE
Candace buys a bag of organic dog food.
This may seem like a long customer journey – but think about the last new purchase you made. What did you search? What tools did you use? This journey can be applied to any business.
Candace became a new customer and purchased a bag of organic dog food. However, her journey doesn’t end here.
You should utilize digital marketing to continue earning her business and to build a better relationship with her (and all of your customers) – but we’ll discuss that in a future post.
Get digital marketing guidance from our team.
Back40 provides honest and transparent campaign setup and management, regular reporting, and open communication about your campaign performance. We continually optimize for performance. If something isn’t working, we’ll research and adjust our strategy to reach your business goals.
Start your journey by contacting our team (or reviewing our digital marketing services – if you’re still gathering information). We’re here to help you grow your business.
