- In this episode,
I'm gonna be teaching you seven digital marketing strategies
that'll work incredibly well whether you're brand new
to the world of digital marketing
and a complete beginner or a seasoned industry pro.
If you learn and listen and apply these strategies
to your business, you will get results.
So, with all that said, let's get to it.
Hey there, my name is Adam Erhart
marketing strategist and welcome to "The Marketing Show,"
the number one place to help you grow your business online.
So, if that's something you're into
and you're looking for a way to generate
more leads, customers, and sales,
well, you may wanna consider subscribing
and hitting that notification bell.
All right, let's talk digital marketing.
Quite frankly, one of my all-time favorite topics
to talk about.
Why, you may ask?
Well, quite frankly,
because digital marketing changed my life.
I know, it sounds completely cheesy, completely unrealistic,
but the reality is, it's very much true.
You see, learning and understanding and applying
the skills that I'm about to share with you here,
well, they allowed me to go out there
and start my own business.
To create multiple profitable businesses after that
and effectively transform my business and my life
so I'm free to work when I want,
where I want, and with who I want.
You see, the beauty of marketing is that
it gives you the ability to transform,
and to influence, and to persuade others over
to your point of view.
So, whether you have a product to sell
or a service to sell,
or whether you simply wanna convince your friends
or your partner or whoever
to go see a certain movie
or go visit a certain restaurant,
well, marketing holds the key
and really holds the power to allow you to do that.
But, before we dive into the nitty-gritty details,
the meat and potatoes of what you really need to know,
first, a huge thank you and a huge shout out
to today's sponsor, Semrush, also known as s-e-m rush.
However you choose to pronounce it is okay with me,
just understand that this has been one
of the most valuable tools that I've used throughout
my marketing career.
But, even more exciting than the tool itself
is the fact that Semrush has a YouTube channel as well.
So, whether you want to learn the latest and greatest
about SEO, all the way up to more complex research
and marketing type of activities,
definitely worth heading over
to their channel and subscribing.
It's a great source of digital marketing knowledge
and actionable tips.
So, I'll make sure to link them up
in the descriptions below, definitely check 'em out.
All right, so let's get back to it
and right to the good stuff
with my number one tip and the very first place
you're going to want to start when you're developing
and when you're honing your skills as a digital marketer,
which is really understanding marketing fundamentals.
In fact, this first tip really isn't so much
as a strategy and more of a basic understanding
or something that you really have to understand,
you really have to know and accept
if you wanna have any hope of succeeding
in the world of marketing.
And it all really does come down to the fundamentals,
those proven marketing principles
that have stood the test of time.
I'm talking about the basics
like identifying your ideal target market
and then diving deeper and uncovering their biggest problems
and pain points and frustrations.
And then, of course, creating and crafting a message
that positions your business as the logical,
and ideally, the only ideal solution to their problems,
and then taking that message or that offer
and putting it directly in front of them,
wherever they may be,
and then smoothing out the entire process
by making it incredibly easy to buy from you using
a simple two-step marketing funnel.
But, more on that in just a second.
The key point here is that when it comes
to being successful with your marketing,
whether we're talking about traditional marketing,
or online marketing, or digital marketing,
or print marketing, or email marketing, or whatever it is,
they're all built on the same core principles.
Those same proven marketing fundamentals,
human psychology, consumer behavior,
why people do, and buy, and act the way that they do.
The better you understand that,
the better your marketing is going to be.
All right, let's keep moving and we'll get
a little more tactical in this next step
which is good old fashioned content marketing.
Now, content marketing is a bit of a weird term
because the reality is,
is that anytime you create anything,
it's gonna be content.
So, whether we're talking about ads, or blog posts,
or a podcast, or a YouTube video,
or Instagram post, or a story, or anything like that,
it's technically all content.
And the reality is, is that it doesn't matter
whether you're a brand new beginner to the world
of digital marketing, or again, a seasoned industry pro,
you pretty much need to be making more content.
I'm talking about more blogs, more posts,
more videos, more everything.
This is especially true if you're brand new to the industry
because you're going to need to go out there
and create a whole bunch of stuff
so you can start to learn what your style is
and what kinda content you like to create,
but more importantly, you need to start
to try to understand what your market wants from you,
what content resonates, what falls flat,
what topics and titles they wanna hear more of,
and what they just don't care about.
This is one of the main reasons
that I run so many polls and so many surveys
whenever I get the chance,
because your opinion, your advice,
well it really guides the content direction
that I'm gonna produce.
You can see here by the example up on this screen
that I ran a poll trying to find out, well,
what is the next kind of video topics you want more of?
And pretty obvious that content marketing
and social media marketing came out on top.
So, I decided to drill that down further
and I said, okay, of the social media channels,
which one do you wanna hear more about?
And pretty obvious here that Instagram is the winner
which clearly indicates there's gonna
be some more Instagram content coming your way soon.
But, aside from that and aside from putting out content
for the purpose of figuring out
what your audience wants from you, well,
the other side is that content marketing, it just works.
And it's kind of obvious why it works to, right?
All you really need to do is think
of two different businesses and put them side-by-side.
Let's say business A over here creates no content.
They don't do anything, they don't write anything,
they never film any videos, they never do any podcasts,
you basically don't know they exist.
And then business B over here, well, they've got a podcast,
and they're creating Instagram content,
and they've got a YouTube channel,
and they're putting out posts,
and they're connecting with their audience,
and they're a whole lot easier to be found.
It's kind of obvious which business is gonna win here.
After all, how are you gonna buy from a business
if you don't even know they exist
and it's a lot easier to form
that know, like, and trust factor
with a business that's going out there
and sharing valuable content, sharing their opinions,
and sharing their viewpoints, and really trying
to connect with you as a customer.
In fact, I could keep going on content marketing
for days because I truly, strongly believe
in the power of it because it's one
of the main strategies I've used to build up my business
and was a huge player in building up my first business.
Along with another strategy
that I wanna share with you right now,
which is SEO, or search engine optimization.
Now, SEO, or search engine optimization,
may not be the most beginner friendly marketing tactic
or strategy to talk about, but it's incredibly important
that you at least have an understanding
of the basics of it because it's going
to directly influence and directly,
essentially guide the way for all of your future content
and your marketing strategy moving forward.
So, first, let's get the basics out of the way.
SEO, or search engine optimization,
is pretty much exactly what it sounds.
It's optimizing your content for search engines
like Google, and Yahoo, and Bing, and even YouTube.
In fact, especially YouTube.
What it means is that it allows your content,
or your website, to appear higher in the search rankings
when someone's typing in a key word
or looking for something directly related
to your business or the products or services
that you offer.
Obviously this is incredibly valuable
because if someone's looking for something,
it only makes sense that you'd want to appear
as the solution to their problem
right when they're looking for it.
Now, where SEO starts to get a little complicated,
or a whole lot complicated,
is the fact that it's a bit of a mystery box.
In fact, there's thousands, hundreds of thousands,
maybe even millions of factors
that go into what causes different websites,
or different videos, to rank.
From titles and keywords, right down to meta tags
and descriptions and URLs and all sorts
of really, really geeky stuff
that's fun to learn if that's kinda your thing,
but the reality is, if you just wanna get better results,
here's where you wanna focus.
First, you wanna understand on-page ranking factors.
This is true whether we're talking about a website
or a YouTube video.
Really what this means is making sure
that your title and the words that you're using
and the tags that you're putting in
are an accurate and really clear description
of whatever it is that you're talking about.
Essentially, if you've got a website
about dog walking, make sure there's dog walking
in the title, dog walking throughout the content,
maybe have a video of dog walking,
how about have a picture of dog walking
and label it dog walking, you get the point.
The other factor is off-page ranking factors.
These are things like links that are pointing back
to your website.
The higher the value a link or the more authoritative
the website that it's coming from,
the better it's gonna do.
So, essentially, if you can get your website listed
in a chamber of commerce, or you can take a YouTube video
and embed it on your website,
essentially anything that's going to allow you
to put a little more link juice back to your stuff
is gonna help it rank more.
But, let's leave it at that for now.
The point here is that SEO is still a valuable strategy
to learn, especially if you have a small niche market,
or you're a local business,
or you've got a very select group of people
and a very specific keyword that you can rank for
because then you can dominate the search engines
without trying to rank for something massive
like real estate, or accounting, or coaching,
or something just way too broad.
All right, that's enough on SEO,
let's move on to video marketing.
Video marketing, in my slightly biased opinion,
is one of the most valuable marketing tools available
to you today.
And, if we're gonna take it a step further,
well, probably the best place to do your video marketing
is on YouTube.
And I'm not just saying that because I'm here,
right now, talking to you on YouTube,
but the reality is
is that YouTube has played
a major role in my business growth over the years
and for every single one of my clients,
pretty much the exact same thing.
Those that choose to invest the time and energy
and yes, money, into an effective YouTube strategy,
well, they're the ones
that do experience the rewards from it.
But, of course, there are some barriers to entry
with video marketing, largely, the video part.
After all, it's a whole lot easier to make an Instagram post
or shoot a quick story, or type up a blog post,
then it is to set up a camera, and a microphone,
and lighting, and a studio, and all the stuff
that goes into it, but, I assure you,
it is money, and time, and energy well spent,
especially if you're strategic about it.
And this means, again,
coming back to those marketing fundamentals.
Really trying to figure out who is your ideal target market,
who are the people that you wanna serve,
what kind of content do they want to see,
and what is going to be in alignment with your market
and your business so that you're gonna be able
to provide the maximum value possible.
So, why do video?
Well, it's kind of obvious, right?
First of all, people love video
and, in fact, it's one of the main things
that people consume when they're online.
Also, next to being in-person or to talking face-to-face,
well video's the next best way
to build that know, like, and trust factor.
You can see someone, you can hear them,
you can get a little bit of the body language
better than you can through audio
and certainly better than through text.
So, if those are some reasons to use video,
well then why YouTube?
Well, again, YouTube allows you to benefit from SEO,
or search engine optimization, by ranking your videos higher
when someone's searching for something,
but it also goes a step further
and it suggests your videos to people that it think
is gonna benefit from them.
Again, this is why you do need to come up
with videos that you think people are going to enjoy
and benefit from so it can suggest them accordingly,
but, at least, you've got that factor working for you.
Plus, you can take your YouTube videos
and you can embed them on your website,
you can download clips and share them
to other social media networks,
and you can even email them to your list
and to your customers,
which leads me to my next strategy, email marketing.
Here's the beauty of email marketing.
Yes, even today, even in today's day and age
when there's so many new and cooler and sexier things
that you could be taking a look at,
well, email marketing still holds its own
in regards to potential return on investment,
or the money you can make back
from an effective email marketing strategy.
Plus, the beauty of email marketing
is that if you can write an email,
you can do email marketing.
Of course, the devil's in the details
and there's nuances and there's good email marketing
and bad email marketing,
but I do not want you to over-complicate this.
Essentially, if you can write an email
to a friend or to a family member, to a customer,
you can do email marketing
and you can probably do it pretty well.
Certainly well enough to get started.
When it comes to email marketing, again,
I really don't wanna over-complicate this for you,
just sign up for an email service provider like Drip
or ConvertKit, anything like that,
and then start emailing people.
If you're currently emailing your customers
or your database or your prospects once a month,
try once a week.
If you're currently doing once a week,
try twice a week.
If you're currently doing twice a week,
maybe three times, maybe even four times.
Essentially, experiment and play around
and try to adjust the frequency,
but the reality is,
is that the more emails you send, well,
you're gonna need to write them
and the more that you write,
the better your writing's gonna get,
the better your email marketing's gonna be,
and on and on it goes in this beautiful circle.
All right, so now that we've got that covered,
let's move on to email marketing's little brother,
SMS marketing, or text marketing.
The beauty of text marketing is much like email marketing
in that if you can send a text,
you can do SMS marketing.
Now, the beauty of SMS marketing
is also a bit of the ugliness
in the fact that we're kind of working
in uncharted waters right now.
Email marketing's be around since pretty much
the beginning of email,
but SMS marketing only really started relatively recently,
in the last few months it started to gain
a little more traction, though we have been seeing it
for the last year or so.
Regardless, the point is
is that those ideal strategies,
those ideal frequencies, the perfect things to say
and how to say them, well, we're still figuring that out
as we go.
All that said, I've been using SMS marketing
for the past few months over a number
of my different businesses and we're seeing
some absolutely amazing results from them.
Talking about 90% plus open rates
and 50% plus response rates,
meaning that we're getting deliverability like nothing else
and we're getting a more engaged and essentially
a more valuable prospect and lead and customer from it.
I think the key thing
that I really wanna leave you with here
is that if you're doing email marketing right now,
then maybe take a look at SMS marketing,
but if you're not doing email marketing yet,
well start there before diving into the waters of SMS
because it's gonna teach you a whole lot
before you get into the slightly more complicated waters
of SMS marketing.
All right, let's move on to the next strategy
which is all about social media domination.
Now, essentially what this strategy is all about
is taking everything that I've just shared with you
and wrapping it up into one cohesive, congruent,
and really profitable bundle.
You see, if I believe that video marketing
is one of the greatest marketing tools
that we have available today,
and I do 'cause I said it,
well, I also believe that social media marketing
is one of the greatest tools that marketers
have ever had access to in the history of the world.
Seriously, this thing is amazing and it's way underrated
and the reality is is that after having been
in this business for the better part of a decade now,
well, things have changed and they've changed a whole lot.
Really to the point that now social media marketing
is a relatively respected and more appreciated industry
because I remember 10 years ago trying
to convince people that they needed
to be on social media and they needed
to do social media marketing
and it was a bit of a tough sell.
In fact, back then, a lot of entrepreneurs
and a lot of business owners,
well they looked at me as really replaceable
just by the kid next door,
or their 12-year-old niece,
or whoever else because nobody really understood
how social media worked and nobody really understood
the true power behind it
and the importance of
a cohesive social media marketing strategy.
Fast forward to today, everything's changed.
Granted there are still those people
that don't quite get it.
They're still kind of passing the buck on social media,
they're still missing out completely,
and the sad reality is, they're getting left behind.
You see, social media today is no longer optional,
it's mandatory, so you might as well learn it
and master it.
What this means is taking the strategies
that I've shared with you and applying them
to one, two, maybe three, at most four different channels
and really doubling down on those areas
you're going to get the most bang for your marketing buck.
This means going out there
and identifying your ideal target market,
figuring out what channel they're on
and then really focusing there.
Ensuring that you're delivering the right message
and the right offer that directly addresses their pains
and their problems and their frustrations
and positions your business as the logical
and only solution to their problem.
Also means creating more texts, more graphics,
more audio, and more video content
and making sure it's ending up in front
of your ideal target market.
It means taking a real good hard look
at your current video marketing
and YouTube marketing strategy
and if you don't already have one,
it's definitely not too late.
Now's the time.
And it means taking all of that
and applying it to your email marketing strategy
and maybe even your SMS marketing strategy
so you can continue to show up in front
of your ideal market, continue to nurture them,
and continue to increase touch points
because we as humans associate frequency with trust,
meaning, the more that you can show up
in front of your ideal target market,
the more they're going to know, like, and trust you.
All right, the next piece of the puzzle
is really mastering those marketing fundamentals
which is why you're gonna wanna check out
the video I have linked up right here
on Introduction to Marketing.
So, make sure to check that out now
and we'll see you in the next episode.
Anytime you try to convince friends or family
to see a certain movie,
or eat at this restaurant or not that, or basically try
to convince them to do anything, marketing's happening.