N.

SAI YASHWANTH

121823603046

MBA-C

1st course: The fundamentals of digital marketing

Invest your time and resources in strategizing, it is important that you

understand the digital marketing basics regarding the various platforms. An
effective marketing strategy can incorporate a variety of components like:

Website design

Search engine optimization

Social media advertising

Social media management

Pay-Per-Click advertising

Email marketing

Content marketing

Engaging with each (or any!) component in the right way WILL grow your
brand’s presence online in a powerful way.

Website Design

Understand this: your website is the face of your business. Its structure, color,
design, and even writing (content) impact the way your audience perceives
your brand.

That’s why we always stress that your site should reflect your brand style and
personality in addition to the general theme of your business. Consider your
website an important extension of your business.

Here are some important tips you can follow to make sure your website helps
you build brand authority:
Invest in a responsive website: It goes without saying that your website should
look beautiful and organized. Also, your site should have a responsive design
with an updated CMS (content management system) – don’t worry; your web
developer will know what that means.

The key is to have the right mix of design and functionality. An incredibly pretty
website that takes over 10 seconds to load is not a sign of a great website –
neither is a website that looks so cheap and haphazardly put-together that
visitor starts to question your brand credibility.

Optimize your website: We are talking about Search Engine

Optimization (SEO) here. We will go over it in more detail later in this post, but
the key point from digital marketing basics you need to understand is SEO
helps your business appear in the search engine results. From your website’s
design to the keywords you choose, SEO covers everything.

And in optimizing your website, here are some points to keep in mind:

Your website needs to be fast. Research says that 53% of users will hit the back
button if they don’t see anything happening on your website after 3 seconds.

Your website needs to be secure. With that being said, you have to purchase
SSL. Not only because your users know the dangers of interacting with
websites without it, but it is also a factor in ranking your website.

Your website needs to be mobile friendly. Most users today visit your site using
their smartphones so it’s a no-brainer that your mobile website should be fully
optimized and functional like the desktop version.

Create an easy-to-navigate website structure: A website should be structured

in a way that the inbound users can explore easily. Every web page should be
tagged and labeled so the users can find what they need.

On the most basic level, your website should have pages/sections such as:

Home page

About the product/services page

List of services
About us/ Meet the team page

Blog

Contact information

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) So you have created a masterpiece of a

website. You have made sure it is optimized for mobile phone users as well.
You paid special attention to the responsiveness of the design if you do say so
yourself.

Now all that’s left is for your target audience to find you.

Find the right keywords: Research your industry and find the keywords that
identify your business. The keywords you target determine how Google (and
other search engines) rank your website and how much traffic you bring in.

Use those keywords in your website’s URL: One of the best ways to optimize
your website is to incorporate keywords in your site URL.

Search engines go through each line of text in your website to understand

what it’s about. From your website URL to the content on your web pages,
everything is analyzed and indexed by the search engines.

Use keywords in Title tags, Meta descriptions, and Heading tags: Title

tags are the name of a web page. When you open an internet browser, the
text you see right on top of the dialog box is the Title tag. These are the links
that show up in search engines. It’s the hyperlink that people click on.

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising means using social media platforms to promote and
sell your products/services. If you want to master the digital marketing basics,
starting with social media marketing is a great idea.

One of the major advantages of advertising on social channels like Facebook,

Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. is that you can choose your target
audience.
Content Marketing Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy which
focuses on creating strong relationships with your audience by giving them
high-quality, relevant content.

So when customers make a decision to buy something, they are already loyal
to you.

This content can be blog posts, articles, email newsletters, white papers, case
studies, research papers/reports, infographics, videos, webinars, e-magazines,
e-books, and much, much more.

In conclusion

Well, that’s about it for the basics of digital marketing! Although this is an ever-
growing field, you now have an adequate understanding of the main
components of a digital marketing strategy.

The number one challenge for most businesses is that it is multi-faceted; you
need experts who are experienced and skilled in each area of digital marketing
– SEO, PPC, social media marketing, email marketing, etc.