At this stage, digital marketing is vital for your business and brand awareness. If your business doesn’t have a website, you essentially don’t exist in the current economy. Websites should be considered a digital representation of your business, at the very least you should have a social media presence, but just that alone will not guarantee you are reaching your desired audience or customers. A digital presence is what consumers expect and rely on, as a way to learn about and engage with brands.

If you are planning to come through this pandemic and rebuild momentum for your business you will need to embrace some aspects of digital marketing. We recognize that because digital marketing has so many options and strategies associated with it, that it can be a bit overwhelming when you are getting started. McQueen can help you get creative and experiment with a variety of marketing tactics regardless of your budget.

Digital Marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend an abundance of their time… online. From the website itself to a business’s online branding assets — digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond — there is a spectrum of tools and methods that fall under the umbrella of “digital marketing.”

The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal. We have been working with clients in the digital space since 2009, and have first hand knowledge of what works, and how to get the most for your budget.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most common digital marketing tactics and the channels involved in each on:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Affiliate Marketing
Marketing Automation
Email Marketing
Online PR
Inbound Marketing
Sponsored Content

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the process of optimizing your website to “rank” higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website receives. The channels that benefit from SEO include websites, blogs, and infographics.

Content Marketing
This term denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers. The channels that can play a part in your content marketing strategy include:

Blog posts: Writing and publishing articles on a company blog helps you demonstrate your industry expertise and generates organic search traffic for your business. This ultimately gives you more opportunities to convert website visitors into leads for your sales team.

Ebooks and whitepapers: Ebooks, whitepapers, and similar long-form content helps further educate website visitors. It also allows you to exchange content for a reader’s contact information.

Infographics: Sometimes, readers want you to show, not tell. Infographics are a form of visual content that helps website visitors visualize a concept you want to help them learn.

Social Media Marketing
This practice promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business. Some of the channels you can use in social media marketing include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and SnapChat.

Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is a method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is Google Ads, which allows you to pay for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links you place.

Affiliate Marketing
This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on your website.

Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to a software program that serves to automate your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as newsletters, social media posts, and other workflows.

Email Marketing
Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people toward the business’s website.

Online PR
Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It’s much like traditional PR, but in the online space.

Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing refers to a marketing methodology wherein you attract, engage, and delight customers at every stage of the customer experience. You can use every digital marketing tactic listed above, throughout an inbound marketing strategy, to create a customer experience that works with the customer, not against them.

Sponsored Content
With sponsored content, you as a brand pay another company or entity to create and promote content that discusses your brand or service in some way. One popular type of sponsored content is influencer marketing. With this type of sponsored content, a brand pays an influencer in its industry to publish posts or videos related to the company on social media.

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