Learning and Embracing Digital Marketing
Learning Digital Marketing is a key skill and aspiration for any marketing professional.
Whether you own an established business or you are embarking on a new adventure with a new company, digital marketing is something you are going need to know.
Look around at many Linkedin brand/marketing roles, all want digital marketing /Amazon marketing experience.
As a business, you are going to want to attract the right audience and improve brand awareness and so, you will need a digital marketing strategy.
In order to increase sales, businesses rely on digital marketing campaigns that drive success.
The traditional methods of marketing might still have some elements of success, if you want to remain ahead of your competitors then you will need to engage with your online customers by building relationships with them.
You might be of the belief that digital marketing is something that you don’t have to think about but in a highly competitive world you do!
Whether it’s posting on Twitter or sharing a video on Facebook, it all contributes to your marketing strategy and enhances your online image and branding.
Whether it’s something as small as changing your banner campaign or changing the wording of an email campaign, it is all considered digital marketing.
If you want to send the right message to your target audience and give your marketing agency business a personal yet professional image, then becoming an effective digital marketer should be your goal.
When you enhance your skills, you will also be able to get a greater understanding of the efforts your employees are putting into your business.
Furthermore, you will gain a greater understanding of what drives the success of each campaign while also understanding what needs improving.
Digital Marketing Success - What Skills Do You Need?
Digital marketing is made up of many different elements and giving yourself a general understanding of these areas will help you to understand the drivers behind success.
Digital Marketing skills involve experience across:
- technical and on page SEO
- content marketing,
- authoritative link building
- email marketing,
- basic web design UX insights,
- consumer marketing funnels
- social media management
- lead generation
- budgeting
When it comes to taking on digital marketing experts, you should look for those who have a clear understanding of the entire digital marketing world.
These individuals can become valuable to your business because they have an understanding of the many different digital marketing disciplines.
These employees eventually become assets to a business and can help you to cut through the noise and get noticed in new ways.
But how do you make a start to learning the above?
Learning Digital Marketing For Free - How to Do It
There are many different online marketing technologies that you will need to become skilled at in order to become, maybe, the owner of a successful digital marketing agency in Surrey UK. As a result, you will need to obtain all of the required knowledge so you can bring them all together and achieve what you set out to achieve.
It’s a process that requires patience, effort, and perseverance but the good thing about this is that you can do it for free without the need to sign up for a course.
There are many different resources available out there and that makes it possible to fine-tune your digital marketing knowledge and expertise.
YouTube contains the best of the basics. You will find many masters of each digital skill who want to sell you their story, either because they want to give back or they want you to buy into their subscription-based learning services. Start off with a fun way to capture all the week’s SEO news from Erin Sparks.
Instagram will also hold many players who provide fantastic advice, they constantly post 3 days a week to maintain their algorithm popularity. Try Dan the IG Growth Coach, he’s a lively personality.
For a real serious introduction and a final professional LinkedIn account (with lead generation tactics) give Lea Turner a chance to change your perception. That link above is her website but it is a paid-for training course with easy to follow video.
Learning Search Engine Digital Marketing
When you consider Search Engine Marketing, it’s important to recognise just how pivotal it can be when it comes to digital marketing.
In our view this is lead generation, what use is a website if it can not attract leads. Using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to attract different search engines through over 200 SEO protocols will take you years to perfect.
Search Engine Optimisation involves optimising your website so it ranks as high as possible when people search for terms using search engines.
It is vital because it makes it possible to drive targeted traffic directly to your website.
It is a process that does take more time than Paid Ads but in the long term, it can deliver better results.
If you’re starting out in SEO, then it is important to understand that it is a constantly evolving landscape. Even our Surrey SEO agency will strive to keep up with changes.
Google constantly makes changes to its algorithm with more than 255 changes being made each year, which means you cannot remain still or static.
So, if you want to take SEO forward as a career, then you have to monitor the industry and identify changes before amending your digital marketing campaign to fit this.
As far as Paid Per Click marketing goes or Paid Search Advertising, then this is another aspect of search engine marketing you’ll need to consider.
By learning the techniques of planning Paid Search Advertising such as Google Ads, you can artificially boost your business to rank higher with search engines.
This element of search engine marketing makes it easier for you to target customers at a faster pace than SEO although it will cost each time someone clicks your ads.
Please realise a quality UX website design with a strong investment in SEO will also achieve cheaper google ad costs.
Google is a great place for Learning Digital
Google Ads is the largest PPC network and it makes it possible for you to have ads that are displayed in Google Search Results and on Google Suites such as YouTube and Gmail.
It’s not challenging to learn PPC as there are a number of Google Ads online courses you can follow that will enable you to become a PPC Certified expert in a short period of time.
Try the Google Ads Training Course in their SkillShop for an authentic overview.
However, the certification on its own doesn’t mean that you’ll become a digital marketing specialist overnight.
This is because it’s crucial that you have experience working with PPC campaign management and obtain the required experience.
There are annual Google Ad certificates to sleep you in check, but these are mainly for you when you are a business.
As a digital marketing professional, your job is to bring together the results that come with PPC with the other channels such as Social Media Marketing and SEO in order to achieve
Learning Effective Digital Content Marketing
Content is the cornerstone of every digital marketing campaign and that stands the same whether it’s social media marketing, email marketing or SEO marketing content.
The aim is to use the right content (Copy, Video, Infographic) to engage with your audience across multiple channels to build relationships with consumers.
Therefore, content marketing is about identifying the right content, creating it, and then promoting it accordingly to the right audience.
To get content marketing right, you’ll need to be able to curate great content with expert writing skills, SEO keyword copywriting skills as well as the ability to analyse what your target market requires.
We recommend this CIM Content Marketing Course but expect to pay £475 for a virtual course. The Chartered Institute of Marketing is a very respected course provider for your CV.
Research Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing involves is the ability to manage and coordinate the activities associated with other digital marketing campaigns in order to create a unique user experience.
The main goal is to ensure that you have the right process for attracting new customers, improving engagement, building trust and then ensuring they are satisfied with what you offer.
When companies take this approach, they are more likely to increase their customer base at a faster rate than those businesses that take the approach of using isolated campaigns.
As a result, all of your digital marketing campaigns should have the same targets. Try this inbound marketing course to attract, engage and delight your future customers.
Social Media Is Part Mix of Digital Marketing
Social media marketing is integral when it comes to how we live our lives and this is particularly true for businesses and digital marketing.
The aim of a digital marketing agency is to build relationships with potential customers across different platforms and this is where Influencer marketing becomes highly influential. As the name suggests, social media marketing involves marketing your brand and product across social media channels where you engage with customers.
The biggest social media channel is Facebook which has billions of users and the platform offers online courses that show you all you need to know about Facebook Paid Campaigns.
You will soon understand how social media platforms really drive increases in website traffic, which is critical for e-commerce sales or simply brand awareness.
For a good course with tests to prove your understanding try Future Learn’s social media marketing course. This is an 8-week course, based on approx 4hrs per week, costs £36 per month and comes with tests! Loads more courses available.
Email Marketing
Email marketing might have been one of the original forms of digital marketing but it still has a role to play. It is still a highly effective lead generation exercise when it comes to turning visitors into existing customers and seeing them return time and time again.
Understanding your audience is crucial to email marketing campaigns otherwise, the emails will only end up in the spam folder. Essentially, an email marketing course could be considered the final piece of the jigsaw as you can use other marketing methods to hone in on discovering new customers which is why email marketing can be used to close the deal.
Tools For Revising Digital Marketing Analysis
Analytical skills are crucial and every digital marketing professional should have them.
SEO or social media campaigns are not just about running them but it is about understanding how to bring all of the processes together so that they achieve the same goal.
In order to achieve this, you will need to understand data and how to analyse it using tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console.
If running Facebook/Instagram campaigns you need to understand how to plan campaign funds and how they are performing. Try this Reporting & Analytics Course from Facebook.
With this information, you will be able to fine-tune your campaigns and drive better results.
7 Tips For Learning Online Marketing
Digital marketing is detailed and complex, so you have probably recognsied that it is not an easy task. You have to spend lots of time reading and putting what you learn into practice across all of the techniques in order to learn how they work individually and collectively.
The good news is that there are many different resources available out there to help you learn about digital marketing for free. All that is required from you is the time and patience.
We have put together some useful tips that you can use to make the process easier:
- Begin with SEO as this underpins many different concepts that are used by content marketing, PPC and social media marketing. When you enhance your SEO skills, everything else becomes easier to understand. It’s like having basic skills in Maths and English!
- You have to spend time being practical because marketing online is mainly practical. Once you understand the theory behind a strategy, you can then practice executing it and then monitor the results while learning from any mistakes.
- Make sure you become certified and as you begin learning, start to show how you are an expert. Using free online courses, you can achieve certification that gives you credibility.
- Working with digital marketers who have experience will give you the insight and guidance you require. They will enable you to move from theory to practice more efficiently and you will be able to learn on the job from them and their experience.
- Work from a remote digital workspace with other similar SEO or digital marketing businesses. You will find the best networking experience and you may find your future business partner.
- Start a blog of your own and use it to put what you have learned into practice. Furthermore, as you write about it, you will find out just how much you know and what you need to improve on.
- Continue learning as digital marketing is not an industry that stops as it is constantly evolving, so you need to move with it. So, it is important that you monitor the latest developments and ensure that your clients are informed.
Practice Digital Marketing - How You Can Do It
There are many different video tutorials and resources readily available for you to take advantage of. You will learn about the different strategies and explain what to do while also providing training that you can fit into your own time.
This will give you the scope to learn at your own pace and from any device. There are plenty of guides to discover too, all of which come from experts that you can trust.
Ask your colleagues for help or embrace the team-building days to ask about new trends.
Create a Personal Brand for Practical Insight
For anyone who is looking to grow their business, personal branding has become a requirement.
This is also true for anyone who wants to get a better job, progress in their career or even meet new people, it all counts.
A strong online presence is crucial for any business owner or CEO and a strong personal brand that showcases achievement and accreditations, can help them to cut through the crowd.
The online marketplace is highly competitive but the reality is that customers don’t just purchase from businesses any longer as they buy from people.
Take a look at Twitter and you will see how people like Elon Musk have more followers than the three businesses he owns and this is why they place a focus on their social media profiles.
Many of the LinkedIn and Instagram influencers we mentioned have built personal brands around them from nothing. It can be done again.
Staying Ahead in the Digital Marketing World
The digital marketing industry is fast-paced and your role as a digital marketer is to make sure that you stay up to speed and even ahead of this.
To do this, you can keep yourself informed with the latest digital news.
And stories that come from digital marketing sites that are highly regarded like our Surrey UK Marketing Agency Blog!
If you are serious about digital marketing then now is a good time to invest time in learning all about it as algorithms and platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter are always making changes to provide more value for users.
Therefore, this means that any content that is ranking high is also changing and that is why it is really important to keep your finger on the pulse. Content is the perfect measure to stop website rankings freezing up.
So, spend time using online resources and learning and you’ll soon begin to determine whether you want to specialise in SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, or something else in order to become a success.
Hey, if all this is a struggle then give our bubbly team a call!
