Digital Marketing: It's Not As Difficult As You Think

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A lot of people are scared of digital marketing. In a sense, I get it. There’s a lot to do, a lot to keep in mind, and everything that you thought you knew tends to change.

This is why digital marketing has an aura of fear surrounding it. Big. Scary. Ominous.
But digital marketing is essential if you want to succeed in business. Digital marketing is marketing. Digital marketing is now standard practice for any business that wants to get its product in front of a targeted audience.

I’d like to eliminate the fear factor of digital marketing by giving you a clear-eyed perspective of why digital marketing is not difficult, and what you need to do to succeed in 2016.

First, make sure you understand what digital marketing is.
And I’m talking about super simple definitions here. I don’t want to lose you with some dry and wordy mumbo jumbo.

Here it is: “Digital marketing is any form of marketing products or services, which involves electronic devices.”
Even simpler? Marketing electronically.
Essentially, this does away with mailers, trade shows, sales events, billboards, and the guys who dress up as the Statue of Liberty and stand on the sidewalk during tax season.

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Second, make sure you understand why digital marketing is so important.
Again, it’s simple. People use electronic devices to access information.
Assuming you are marketing in an industrialized or developing area, your target audience has access to electronic information — i.e., the Internet. As of the time of writing, more than 3.3 billion people on the planet are “Internet users.”
Even more people are connected via phone, with total mobile phone users worldwide exceeding 4.4 billion. 

Basically, you have to be doing digital marketing to reach your audience.
So far, so good? Digital marketing is electronic. And you need to do it to survive.
So…what is it, exactly? 


Digital marketing has seven main categories.
Just seven. That’s as many digits as the standard local phone number, right?
There’s no quiz at the end of this article, so you don’t have to repeat these. Just be aware of them.

1. Social media marketing
2. Email marketing
3. Lead generation/Affiliate marketing
4. Search engine marketing (often abbreviated SEO or SEM)
5. Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
6. Content marketing
7. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

Another sorta-kinda category is analytics. It’s not a digital marketing method as much as it is a way of making sense of all the other methods. I’ll explain a little bit more towards the end of the article. 


Now, let’s make the process of doing digital marketing really simple.
1. Develop a digital marketing strategy.
This is, admittedly, the hardest part of digital marketing — the strategy. Why is it so difficult?
Here’s why. Digital marketing is so complex that marketers struggle with where to begin. Most begin their discussion of “strategy” with a hodge-podge of tactics.
In reality, a digital marketing strategy begins with customers — knowing who they are, where they are, and how to reach them.

2. Hire digital marketing specialists.
Get this in your head: You can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t do digital marketing on your own.
I mean, you can try, but you’ll get frustrated. You can do some of it, but you won’t be able to do all of it well.
If you’re a solopreneur, however, don’t despair. You don’t have to do every single one of the seven methods I outlined above. You can pick one or two, develop some skills, and use those as your primary marketing methods. No problem.
If you want to branch out and use all of the methods above, hire some help.
Digital marketing is the realm of specialists. Sure, you may find some incredibly talented people who can do social media and SEO and PPC, but one person who’s a whiz at every aspect of every method? They’re hard to find.

Choosing a select number of t-shaped marketers is your best approach.

3. Execute confidently.
It’s time to put your fears behind you. Do what you plan to do, and do it boldly!
The Internet does not have room for timid marketers. Everything you do on the Internet is immediately available to anyone who has Internet access.
Once you release that tweet, that post, that ad, or that landing page, it’s public. And that’s a good thing! You’re forced into a position of confidence.

4. Analyze regularly.
Do you want a crystal-clear roadmap that will tell you exactly what to do, where to go, how to implement, and what the results are?
Such a roadmap exists. 

It’s called analytics. The great thing about digital marketing is that you possess the ability to understand your marketing approach inside and out. The information is all there, in the form of traffic, demographics, bounce rates, conversion rates, cost-per-clicks, impressions, and page speed (and about a billion other metrics).

The challenge? Interpretation.
What you need is either a person or software that will tell you what these numbers mean. There are a variety of free and paid SaaS platforms that will present your analytics in an easy-to-interpret and understandable way. 

Conclusion

Did that simplify it at all?

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