- Digital marketing is one of the fastest growing
and most in demand industries today.
With more people around the world,
turning to digital technologies for both work and fun,
there's never been a better time to get involved.
with digital marketing.
But, what exactly is digital marketing
and how can you get started
with digital marketing as a beginner?
Well, let's answer that now.
(electronic music)
Hey there, my name is Adam Erhart, Marketing Strategist
and welcome to the channel.
The number one place to learn proven marketing strategies.
So if you're new here,
you may wanna consider subscribing
and hitting that notification bell,
so you never miss a future episode.
All right, let's talk digital marketing.
Specifically, what exactly is digital marketing anyway?
Well, digital marketing is just marketing
but done through digital channels
like a website or social media.
And marketing is just a basic,
but very important business function
that's responsible for connecting businesses with customers.
So by this logic then, digital marketing
is just the process of connecting businesses
with customers through the use of digital channels.
Yap it really is that simple.
But of course there are a number of different ways
for you to make this all happen
within the context of the digital marketing world.
And this is where digital marketing,
starts to get a little more confusing.
After all, some people think digital marketing
is just SEO or search engine optimization,
which is the process of getting a business's website
to rank higher in the search engines,
when somebody is searching on say Google, or Yahoo, or Bing.
Others think digital marketing
is more like social media marketing,
using platforms like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube
in order to reach more customers.
And then of course there are those that think
digital marketing is all about the numbers
and using data, and analytics, and metrics, and statistics
in order to craft compelling
and high converting marketing campaigns
to grow a business.
And here's the deal.
All of those people are right,
but they're also all a little bit wrong.
This is because digital marketing is actually
a whole lot bigger than any one of those single things,
and actually involves a number of different subcategories.
Each subcategory is important on its own,
but not all of them are required.
So, let me explain.
The best way to think about digital marketing
and the subcategories of digital marketing,
which we'll get to in just a minute.
Well, the best way to think of those
are kind of like ingredients to a recipe.
Things like flour, or salt, or sugar, or water.
You then get to pick and choose
and decide between different ingredients
and different combinations of ingredients,
in order to essentially craft a recipe
that's perfect for your business, or your market,
or your goals, or whatever you're trying to achieve.
For example, for some businesses, a social media strategy
is really going to be what drives the business forward,
with a heavy dose of Facebook and Instagram,
and maybe a little bit of YouTube sprinkled in there too.
For other businesses however,
this might be a terrible strategy,
and they may wanna go
with more of a search engine optimization
or SEO type strategy,
especially if that business involves
a lot of people searching,
or actively looking for the solution that that offers.
Just like with recipes,
there really is no one size fits all approach.
That every single person is going to love
and is going to fit every single market
in every single business, in every single industry.
Which is why you really need to take a customized,
personalized, really specifically tailored approach
to each goal, each business, and each market
that you're designing your digital marketing for.
Picking and choosing from different subcategories,
whether it's social media, or web design,
or search engine optimization,
in order to craft that perfect winning strategy.
So, what are some of the digital marketing ingredients
that you can draw from
in order to craft this perfect strategy?
Well, let's cover those now.
Well, when it comes to digital marketing,
you have a lot of options available.
And having all of these options
is part of what makes the digital marketing industry,
a little bit overwhelming and a little bit confusing,
especially if you're just getting started.
But on the other hand,
it's also what makes it so fun and so exciting,
and always changing and always evolving
with all these new technologies
and new tools and new strategies,
and always something new to learn.
Not to mention, whether you consider yourself
more of a creative, or artistic type of person,
or more of an analytical, or data driven type of person.
There's something in digital marketing for everyone.
So, let's cover some of those now.
First up, we have web design.
And this is pretty much exactly what it sounds like,
designing websites.
This is a skill that's not going anywhere anytime soon.
And even though there's new tools, new software,
new technologies that may creating a website
easier than ever before,
people are probably still going to need help,
especially if they're not that tech savvy
or sophisticated with online tools.
Not to mention, web design is the perfect split
of both creativity and data driven analytics.
And you can really decide which one suits you best,
whether that more artistic and creative side
doing the designing and front end of the website,
or more of the analytical data code driven side.
Doing the backend website development,
and actually coding and structuring a website
and how it all works.
Next of course, we have social media,
which is what many people naturally associate
with digital marketing.
Now, of course, when it comes to social media,
you have a number of platforms to choose from as well.
Whether we're talking about Facebook, or Instagram,
or YouTube, or LinkedIn, or whatever else.
You can choose to focus
and really specialize in one single platform,
that's going to be best for your market,
or whoever it is that you're trying to serve.
Or you can take a more broad, more general
kind of higher level strategic approach
in order to craft a winning social media strategy.
Under the digital marketing umbrella,
we also have content marketing,
which could be argued as both kind of an online
and an offline tool,
because pretty much everything in marketing is content.
The words that you write on the website,
the social media post you make,
the script that you have for a video or a podcast
or anything like that,
it's all content.
This is why content marketing is such an important
and such a powerful part of digital marketing because,
it's what all of the strategies and all of the tactics,
all of the stuff you put out there,
is going to be built on.
So having a solid foundation on content marketing
and what to create, and how to create it,
is incredibly important.
Another great digital marketing tool of course is email.
Yes, email marketing, even today.
And that's because people still check email, a lot.
This is why learning email marketing software,
as well as that content marketing aspect of
how to write a compelling and high converting email,
is still a valuable tool to have today,
and probably will be for quite some time.
Also, you can't talk about digital marketing
without talking about video marketing because,
video has quickly become the Internet's preferred form
of content marketing and of digital marketing media.
Not only do customers love video,
not only do the people you're trying to reach love video,
but the social media algorithms, the internet in general,
it loves video too.
This means it's weighted slightly heavier to give priority,
and to really help push your video content
more than other types of content.
Whether it's texts, or graphics, or even audio.
Add to the fact that video is was one of the most
persuasive and influential forms of content marketing
that you can do because,
you can hear someone's voice,
you can see their face,
you can judge their body language.
Well, it just makes sense that video
is really at the time core of almost
all of the marketing strategies that I create
for my clients and my students.
Next up, we have SEO and SEM,
also known as search engine optimization
and search engine marketing.
Now, little bit of a confusing aspect here, which again,
kind of plays into why digital marketing
is kind of an overwhelming and confusing field.
So let's clear these up right away.
First of all, you have SEO or search engine optimization.
This is optimizing a website
by doing things both on the website,
as well as off the website,
like sending links and traffic and all sorts of signals
to show the searches engines
that this website is the answer to a searcher's question.
Basically, SEO is making your website
rank higher in the search engine.
SCM on the other hand, or search engine marketing,
is a combination of both SEO, but also PPC,
or pay per click advertising.
These are things like Google ads,
or the things that appear
at the top of the search engine rankings
that you can actually pay for.
And this is why a lot of businesses
that really focus on search heavy traffic,
will involve both an SEO
and pay-per-click or SEM strategy.
And while we're on the topic of pay-per-click
or people PPC advertising,
well, let's talk about online advertising,
which is another incredibly important part
of digital marketing.
Online advertising is simply paying for your content
to be promoted, to be pushed,
to be put directly in front of your ideal target market.
Whether we're talking about running ads
through Facebook ads, or Instagram ads, or YouTube ads,
or LinkedIn ads, or Google ads,
pretty much any time you see ads after it,
it's online advertising.
Now, while the ones that we just covered
are the biggest kind of the largest subcategories,
well, there are other elements of digital marketing as well
you may wanna look it too,
if it kind of peaks your interest,
or would be helpful or relevant
to the business or to the market that you're in.
Other aspects of digital marketing include things like
podcasting, marketing funnels,
conversion rate optimization,
or essentially getting visitors on your website
to take more action, or to do the thing
that you want them to do.
App development or Software as a Service,
not to mention other aspects
like online PR, and branding, and data and analytics,
and e-commerce, and the list goes on.
Of all of the tools, and of all of the strategies,
and of all of the subcategories available to you though
within the digital marketing world,
well, one of my favorite aspects of digital marketing
is the fact that we all have access to the exact same tools,
which really levels the playing field.
This allows small businesses and small entrepreneurs
and small digital marketers
and those new to the field.
Well, really, it allows them access
to the exact same tools and strategies and technologies
that the big guys are using.
This means if you commit to learning
and to studying digital marketing,
and the tools and the technologies involved,
and more importantly,
the strategies behind digital marketing,
what makes it all effective,
you can compete and you can win.
And this is why the next thing you're gonna wanna do,
is check out the video I have linked up right here
on introduction to marketing.
So, make sure to check that out now,
and I'll see you in the episode.
Marketing is a major business function
that's made up of a bunch of other parts.
One of which of course is advertising,
but there's also a ton others,
like PR, market research.
(electronic music)