How to Use Digital Marketing

What is Digital Marketing & How can I Use it?

When I did some initial research for this post, several sites I landed on immediately offered me a free eBook on “What is Digital Marketing” or a very similar title. Why do you think that works?  It  exchanges a valuable resource, the eBook, for my details – my email address. More on that, later…

Although marketing relies on the same principles as it has in the past, digital marketing is far more quantifiable and targetable. Where in the past, before the web, a manufacturer would advertise on a Billboard, in the local paper or offer a coupon in a magazine, today they have many more options.

Unlike the speculative ad in the paper, costing say $100 an issue, a Google ad only charges if someone clicks on it. Newspaper Ads might run for many weeks before you had any sort of feedback on results. It’s obvious within days if a Google ad is getting clicks. The locality and range is infinitely variable and can be changed instantly to use only high-traffic areas. One area that is just as highly prized today as it ever was, is copywriting. A good copywriter can earn more than ever today, because there are so many outlets requiring their work.

What are the main Digital Marketing Methods?

My advice is to go for the long-term and most passive method, which is ‘Content’ or  ‘Information-based Content’ to be more accurate. Your web pages will earn income for you, without the need for much maintenance, leaving you the time to create more pages and more sites to diversify your income and protect it from changes that may occur.

The recent Amazon shock reduction of commission is a good case in favor of diversifying your methods, I have friends and acquaintances who lost huge proportions of their income overnight from the Amazon update.

Content Marketing

This is the type of marketing I recommend to bloggers, it is a long term strategy but can be effective for years, bringing in revenue long after the article has been written. Write to help people with a problem. People search for solutions to a problem, not initially for a product.

 

Content can be blog posts, but also eBooks given away or sold on your site, a YouTube video channel or a podcast. Blogs need to be search engine optimised (SEO) which is a big topic on its own, but simply put – makes it easy for people to find your content when they ask Google.

Display Ads

On many, probably the majority, of websites, including this one, you will see display Ads, both in the copy (content) and in sidebars. Display Ads are particularly great for content (non-affiliate) based sites. 

The networks ( Google, Ezoic, Mediavine etc. ) can show their ads in predefined space – under your control, or automatically with their own algorithms. 

It takes less work than Affiliate marketing, it changes automatically as the Advertisers change their products, so you don’t need so much hands-on monitoring of your pages.

Product Reviews

Reviewing products is a great way to get visitors. Nikon XYM3 versus Canon 500s is a title guaranteed to get the attention of readers thinking about buying either camera.

This type of post has become harder to do well. One recent Google update (Jun 2021) has made it less likely to rank if you are simply doing product reviews.

There is a lot of competition for this sort of content, so if you want to succeed, answer questions on the product instead of just giving specifications, you can get those on Amazon. People want your personal opinion and your personal experience with a product.

PPC Ads

PPC ads are immediate. If you shut an Ad off, the sales revenue stops. It is short-term in that you can change it quickly to take advantage of new products coming onto the market. 

You have to be sure there is a big enough audience, to do well. PPC is scalable, if you find a combination of demographic and location that works, you just increase the ad spend.

For beginners to blogging and affiliate marketing, this is best left to small general and cheap Brand awareness campaigns to get some initial traffic on your site. PPC can be a minefield for the inexperienced newcomer.

Social Media

If you are going to use SM, then you should go all in. It will require a lot of attention and on a daily basis. SM is immediate and up to date, yesterday is quickly forgotten.

It is best done with a figurehead, so be prepared to be in the spotlight. A half-hearted approach will not be well received. SM posts should be scrutinized to see what is working.

Brands can be built on SM. and posts can be syndicated across many platforms easily, in fact, tools exist to do just that. Make posts, manage and respond to engagement and you will succeed.

Mobile

The most recent and clever developments are on our smartphones. We spend anything up to 5 hours a day on them. Messaging each other, ordering take-out, Googling for information, using a Sat Nav and so many apps I don’t know where to start – even those that detect your location is near a shop with a current promotion and advertising a special offer to you.

Mobile search in 2021 in most categories has overtaken desktop search, so when composing your web pages double-check them on your phone, as that is how the majority of people now see them.

Affiliate Marketing

This is the way most newbies monetize ( or try to monetize ) their websites. Affiliate Marketing is a relationship between the Seller, the Affiliate, and the Consumer. The Affiliate promotes the product, the consumer buys from the Seller via a link in the promotional material – a blog post, an eBook, or a YouTube video description, and so on. 

With some channels like Bing Ads, direct links to affiliate offers are allowed and are fine. But certain channels like Facebook and Quora are very polarised about Aff links on their pages and will ban you if you use them to direct-link to a product page.

So if you are on a platform like FB you must use a Bridge page. For example on FB, if you saw an Ad for a beach holiday in the Caribbean, it would have to go to a Bridge Page on your site, this can be used to warm up the visitor from FB and pre-sell him on the idea of the beach holiday, before sending him on to the Sellers Holiday Sales Page, which would do the actual conversion into a sale. 

Copywriting plays a large part in Affiliate marketing, it’s worth having a look into the subject to get some new angles for your promotions

Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the biggest earning types of marketing. Email is used by almost all demographics. The cost of getting a web visitor is the same whether you collect their email details or not. So why not collect emails and send out your marketing message FOR FREE every day or every week. 

It takes we humans several contacts with a product before we to decide to buy, we like to ‘think about it’. Email then is perfect for the job of reminding our potential customers about the offer we have (and any future similar offers we may have) .

One of the most used and true statements is “the money is in the list” , meaning the list of emails you collect. Even with very conservative estimates, each subscriber is on average worth $1 per month, if email marketing is used correctly

Email Optin Page

As in the earlier example, the bridge page could also be an Optin page, with an eBook giveaway, perhaps on all the travel deals you have, after which the email can be used to send all the Holiday  Offers you have on a regular basis.

Conclusion

Today Digital marketing reaches huge numbers of people on a variety of devices. Find out what devices your audience use, find out which platforms they are on. Then learn to use the digital marketing outlined here and on this site, to successfully market to your audience

 

Back to top of this section