How to Learn Digital Marketing
If you want to find new ways to capture consumers’ attention, learning digital marketing might be a good move.
Digital marketing is a catch-all word describing strategies used by companies to connect with customers through non-traditional channels, such as email, search engine results pages, and social media. Digital marketing has the benefit of enabling companies, nonprofits, and other organizations to target the customers most likely to use their services or purchase their goods.
"Digital marketing may be a lot more effective than earlier forms of marketing because you can target the precise population that you want to reach and obtain detailed information on how well your efforts are performing," says Julia Bocchese, CEO and consultant of Philadelphia-based Julia Renee Consulting.
What Disciplines Makeup Digital Marketing?
Businesses can reach consumers through a variety of digital marketing channels. These include:
- Search engine optimization
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Video Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Website/conversion rate marketing
Digital marketing does not include traditional advertising methods, such as TV, radio, billboards, and print ads.
Even if you outsource those tasks as your company expands, small business owners and entrepreneurs should grasp the fundamentals of digital marketing. This will assist you in better understanding your target market, how to approach them, and what results to anticipate from various marketing initiatives. Professionals in the marketing industry who want to learn more may also get something from this manual.
Learning digital marketing is possible given the abundance of free resources available and the lack of a formal education prerequisite. Before delving deeper into particular disciplines, start with an overview, such as the free certification course on the principles of digital marketing offered by Google Digital Garage.
Learning and trying various platforms to find the best fit for your sector and strengths are necessary steps to becoming a good digital marketer. If you utilize search engine optimization to maximize the usage of keywords on your website or social media to interact with customers, you may not have ever created a digital marketing game plan per se, but you already have some knowledge of the concept.
The method of enhancing website traffic based on natural search engine results, or results that are not sponsored adverts, is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. Are you experiencing more traffic as a result of your SEO strategy's concentration on quantity? - and quality - are you giving them the information they want? - of a place.
Crawlers are used by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to gather and index the data they discover on web pages. The index is fed through an algorithm that attempts to match the results that appear on a user's search engine results page or SERP. The algorithm of a search engine is influenced by a number of variables and is updated on occasion.
When you, as the site administrator, work to make your material both user- and search-engine-friendly, you are engaging in search engine optimization. By using popular search terms and keywords in your writing, making sure your title tags—the clickable headlines on a SERP—are educational, and adding links to other helpful content on your site, you may improve your SEO.
What Tools, Software, and Other Skills Are Necessary for SEO?
Being analytical, able to see data trends, and staying current with algorithm changes are all necessary for SEO. Yet, if you're more creative, don't let that worry you; there are many tools accessible to assist you.
SEO specialists measure metrics like the number of unique visitors to their site and the pages that visitors spend the most time on using tools like Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly, and Google Analytics.
A free tool called Google Search Console assists marketers in comprehending, tracking, and troubleshooting the visibility of their website on Google SERPs.
Tools that find keywords related to a topic and analyze keywords by search volume are available on websites like SEMrush and Moz.
Helpful SEO Industry Resources and Courses
Those that want a complete arsenal of graphs, statistics, and charts on the performance of their website can subscribe to subscription packages from SEO software providers. Also, they provide free materials for people just getting started.
Reading blogs and introductory articles for the industry, such as:
- The Beginner’s Guide to SEO from Moz
- Google’s SEO Starter Guide
- Backlinko’s SEO Fundamentals
Sites offering courses to help you get started learning SEO include:
- SEMrush Academy, which offers free digital marketing courses and certification exams to registered users
- Google Analytics Academy, which offers free courses to help you understand the product’s functions
- HubSpot Academy, which has a free SEO training course
To learn more about the SEO industry, you can attend national conferences like the Search Marketing Expo and Pubcon.
The goal of conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is to maximize user engagement on your website. The number of visitors who complete a desired transaction on the website is more important than just the total number of visitors to the site. This could involve a straightforward transaction, like a customer making an online purchase, or it could involve achieving another objective you've established, like getting site visitors to sign up for a newsletter or a free trial of a subscription service.
The conversion rate of a website is calculated by multiplying the number of times a visitor completes a goal by the total number of visits to your site, then multiplying that result by 100. Your site has a 20% conversion rate if users can complete transactions on each visit and six out of every 30 different site visits resulted in a transaction.
To optimize, you must comprehend how people use your website and ensure that it is set up so they can convert with ease.
What Tools, Software and Other Skills Are Necessary in Web/Conversion Rate Optimization?
You need to be familiar with testing procedures and analytics tools to succeed in CRO. You may evaluate your website and make optimization recommendations using tools like Optimizely and Crazy Egg.
Also, you must learn programming and coding.
Helpful Web/Conversion Rate Optimization Resources and Courses
To learn more about CRO, you can explore resources such as:
- Optimizely’s Conversion Best Practices Toolkit
- The Daily Egg blog by Crazy Egg
- Invesp, which has archived articles for CRO beginners
- CXL's free course on foundations of CRO
- A free GetResponse Landing Page & Conversion Optimization course on Udemy
- Backlinko’s free Conversion Rate Optimization: The Definitive Guide
Conferences for the website/conversion rate optimization industry include Opticon and Click Summit.
Advertisers who use pay-per-click marketing get charged every time a user hits one of their adverts. Search engine marketing, or paying to appear on a search engine results page rather than depending on showing up as an organic result, is a popular type of PPC advertising. In search engine marketing, advertisers place bids on terms that customers might type in to find a specific good or service.
As a result, sponsored content from advertisers may show up next to organic search results as text results or product listing ads that include images. In either case, these listings will be identified as advertising by Google and other search engines to set them apart from organic search results.
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn also offer PPC advertising plans specific to their platforms.
What Tools, Software and Other Skills Are Necessary in PPC?
Effective PPC campaigns necessitate exposure to display advertising, conversion/website optimization, and a working understanding of data tools like Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics, just like many other facets of digital marketing.
Companies can engage with potential clients through search engines by using tools like Google AdWords and Microsoft Advertising.
By researching competitors' websites to discover their keywords and historical spending patterns as well as their own website to locate high-priority keywords, subscription service SpyFu assists customers in developing an advertising strategy. Businesses may research the closest Google AdWords rivals to them using SEMrush, and they can even view keywords across several languages.
WordStream provides a for-profit service that analyses a company's account and makes optimization suggestions to help ads perform better on Google AdWords, Bing, and Facebook. Moreover, WordStream offers free tools that users can utilize to generate display advertising or get feedback on their Google Ads performance.
Helpful PPC Industry Resources and Courses
Some industry blogs you might follow include:
- PPC Hero
- The WordStream Blog
- The official blog of Google Ads
Multiple free online courses teach the basics of pay-per-click advertising, such as:
- SEMrush Academy's PPC fundamentals course
- WordStream’s PPC University PPC 101 class that touches on click-through rate and conversion rate optimization
- A Pay-Per-Click 101: Intro to Google & Facebook Advertising course through Udemy
Conferences for the pay-per-click advertising industry include Search Marketing Expo and Hero Conf.
Using social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat to connect with and engage with your audience is known as social media marketing. People can communicate with their favorite companies on social media in a friendly and open environment. Beyond what traditional advertising strategies may provide, businesses can create a brand image and directly engage an audience that chooses to follow their postings.
Several ways exist for businesses to use social media. An online publication with a blog may share links to content on its social media pages, generating traffic for the publication. To entice customers to visit their establishments or inform them of new products, a restaurant or physical retail store can post pictures of their goods. In order to choose the winner of a prize, such as a pair of concert tickets, a local radio station can use social media for contests and promotions.
The types of social media platforms that businesses utilize and how they use them vary by industry and topic. Your entire marketing objective should be aided by your social media strategy. If you want to engage with customers, ask yourself why you are utilizing social media. To drive visitors to your website? to develop or improve your brand's image?
What Tools, Software and Other Skills Are Necessary in Social Media?
When choosing the photos and language that best represent their brands to their target audiences, social media marketing specialists need to be creative. In order to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns, they must also possess analytical skills and be able to analyze metrics from analytics systems.
CrowdTangle, which enables users to view performance information for their own social media accounts and those of their competitors, is one of the helpful tools for social media marketing. Users can schedule the time that their social media postings go live using websites like Buffer and Hootsuite.
But, it takes more than simply strategies and tools to be a successful social media marketer. The most crucial ability for this position, according to Chili's senior digital marketing manager Justin Runyon, is listening.
Runyon says, "I know it sounds cliche, but the social media moments that people remember the most are the ones where a brand was either cognizant of its audience's cultural expectations of the company or a general cultural moment that the brand was able to insert itself into effectively. "These moments only occur if the brand is paying attention to both the brand's loyal users and the zeitgeist as a whole."
Runyon cites a scene from the television show "The Office" as one of his best memories from his time working for Chilies. Pam, one of the characters, was expelled from the chain of restaurants in a 2005 episode. Should I try to walk in? is what Jenna Fischer, the actress who played Pam, captioned a selfie she posted on Twitter in front of a Chili's restaurant in 2017. In response, Chili's sent a press release removing the ban on "Pam" from their restaurants. This action garnered attention from thousands of Twitter users as well as major news organizations.
“All of this was done because we were paying attention to what was relevant for our brand through listening,” Runyon says.
Helpful Social Media Industry Resources and Courses
Learn more about the latest in social media marketing by following industry publications and blogs like:
- Social Media Examiner
- The Hootsuite blog
- Social Media Today
Free social media marketing courses abound online, including:
- A Social Media Management tutorial on Udemy
- A free certification course from HubSpot Academy
- Classes for all skill levels through Facebook Blueprint
Conferences for the social media marketing industry include Social Media Strategies Summit and Social Media Marketing World.
Through email marketing, you may communicate with your target market directly. Businesses can use newsletters to share information with their subscribers, alerting them to deals and promotions that might be of interest or relevant web content.
An effective email marketing campaign stands out among the various emails that subscribers get on a daily basis.
What Tools, Software and Other Skills Are Necessary in Email Marketing?
Marketing via email involves more than just planning when the material will reach subscribers' inboxes. Determine your audience and interact with them, say, email marketers.
Tools can be used by marketers to create engaging, tailored content, optimize ads for mobile, or look for email campaign strategy suggestions. Enterprise platforms like Salesforce and Adobe Campaign are available as well as more basic platforms like Mailchimp and Constant Contact.
A competent email marketer will be familiar with website/conversion rate optimization and have a working knowledge of data tools like Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics because digital marketing disciplines intersect.
Helpful Email Marketing Resources and Courses
Some email marketing industry publications and blogs include:
- Mailbakery Blog
- Email Marketing Daily
- The Digital and Email Marketing Blog by Campaign Monitor
There are multiple online resources for those looking to learn email marketing, including:
- The HubSpot blog's free topic learning path in email marketing, with content for all levels
- Email Marketing Made Easy for Beginners, a free tutorial through Udemy
- Getting Started with Email Marketing, a video course by Mailchimp, offered through Skillshare
Conferences for the email marketing industry include MailCon and EiQ.
Content marketing involves sharing useful information with your audience, rather than advertising a product or making a particular brand the center of attention.
Examples of content marketing include:
- Newsletters
- Educational articles
- Videos
- Webinars
When an insurance provider posts a blog entry on how to stay safe during a tornado, it's not touting how competitive its rates are; instead, it's providing useful information that can help potential consumers develop a rapport with the provider. Even if a bank isn't promoting its financial services by offering interview preparation advice, the material may encourage student checking account holders to stay loyal to the institution.
What Tools, Software and Other Skills Are Necessary in Content Marketing?
A strong writing foundation is necessary for successful content marketing. If the material you create contains videos, you should be aware of the best practices for shooting and editing videos that your target audience will like and find useful.
To include pertinent keywords and themes in their messages as well as analytics tools, content marketers should be familiar with SEO. Your potential can be maximized by learning how to develop a content marketing plan, just like with other digital marketing specialties.
The HubSpot CMS Hub, which enables marketers to create and edit their own web pages, and BuzzSumo, which offers users real-time views of viral trends and aids in the discovery of influential writers and creators from across social media and the web, are tools that can be used to help with content marketing.
