How does Google AdWords work?
- Are You Losing Money in PPC? Use the Google Ads Grader to get a free, instant Google Ads account audit.
- Free Guide: Hacking Google Ads:Learn how to get a (near) perfect Quality Score
This Infographic is Property of WordStream, Inc.
WordStream is a provider of PPC management software, PPC tools, and a FREE keyword research tool.
What is Google Ads (Formerly Known as Google AdWords)?
What is Google Ads? Google Ads, AKA Google AdWords, is Google's advertising system in which advertisers bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google's search results. Since advertisers have to pay for these clicks, this is how Google makes money from search. This infographic will help you understand how Google Ads works, detailing the Google Ads auction, bidding process and explaining important factors like Quality Score and cost-per-click. If you're asking "How does AdWords Work?" this page is for you.
Does AdWords (Google Ads) work?
Does Google AdWords work? Depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you're bidding for and the relevancy of that keyword to real conversions for your company, AdWords may or may not work for your business. For the most part, we've found that Google AdWords is extremely effective for many kinds of businesses, as long as they don't waste their money on the wrong keywords, or write weak, low CTR ads.
How much does Google AdWords cost?
Many factors can affect the costs of AdWords advertising for your business. Learn all about these costs, how bidding works, and the average cost per click for advertisers in our guide to "How Much Does AdWords Cost?"
How to advertise with Google Ads
Businesses can advertise on Google by opening a Google AdWords account. Learn more about how to make the most of Google AdWords here. Or follow the proven path to AdWords success in our "How to Use Google AdWords" infographic.
How does Google Ads or AdWords bidding work?
The actual position of your ad is determined by your ad rank (Maximum Bid times Quality Score). The highest ad rank gets the 1st ad position. Your actual CPC will be determined by the ad rank of the next highest ad below you divided by your Quality Score. The only exception of this rule is when you are the only bidder or the lowest bid in the Google Ads auction; then you pay your maximum bid per click! AdWords bidding heavily penalizes advertisers who bid with low quality scores. Conversely, those with high Quality Scores get higher ad ranks and lower CPC.
How many times does a Google auction run?
The auction gets run billions of times each month. The results are such that users find ads that are relevant to what they're looking for, advertisers connect with potential customers at the lowest possible prices and Google rakes in billions of dollars in revenue.
How does the Google auction work?
Once a query is made on Google, the search engine processes the request and runs the auction which will then determine the ad positions and each advertiser's CPC.
How do you enter a Google auction?
Your Google ads are eligible to be entered into an auction whenever you're bidding on keywords relevant to the user's search query. Your bids, Quality Score, and relevance will come into play in determining whether your ad qualifies to display on the SERP.
What gets entered into a Google auction?
Once advertisers identity keywords they want to bid on, Google then enters the keyword from your account that it deems most relevant into the auction with the maximum bid you've specified as well as the associated ad.
What is CPC?
CPC, or cost per click, is the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks on their AdWords ad.
How does CPC work?
Your CPC is determined by the competitiveness of your keywords, your maximum bids, and your Quality Scores. Learn the most expensive keywords in Google AdWords.
What is the average cost per click for Google Ads?
The average cost per click on AdWords varies by keyword and industry, but is roughly $2.32 on the search network and $0.58 on the display network. Get more average AdWords metrics here.
What is Google Quality Score?
This is a metric Google uses to determine how relevant and useful your ad is to the user, based primarily on your ad's CTR, keyword relevance, and the quality of your landing page. The higher your Quality Score, the better: high Quality Score keywords will save you money and earn you better ad rankings.
How does Google determine what you pay?
Costs are determined by your maximum bid, your Quality Score, and the competitiveness of your keyword.
What is Google ad rank?
Google ad rank is the position of the company's advertisement on the search engine page based on a combination of the company's maximum bid and quality score.
Ad rank vs. Quality Score
The ad rank is how high on the page the advertisement will be displayed. Quality Score on the other hand is determined by the relevance and usefulness to the searcher and is only a portion of the advertisement positioning process. As of 2013, Google's Quality score has become more and more valuable as the average quality score has changed from a 7 to 5.
What is ad position in AdWords?
Ad position is the position on the search engine page results where the advertisement appears in relation to all of the other advertisements.
What is Actual CPC?
Actual CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time a searcher clicks on their advertisement; this number varies depending on the other advertisers in the auction and is always lower than the maximum bidding price.
How does Google calculate Actual CPC?
Actual CPC is determined by dividing the ad rank of the competitor below them (ad rank to hit) by quality score plus $.01.
What are alternative bidding methods?
What is CPM bidding?
CPM bidding is based on impressions and can be used alongside CPC bidding.
CPC vs. CPM
CPC is the cost for an advertisement based on how many clicks it receives whereas CPM is the cost for an advertisement based on how many impressions it picks up. Both methods can be used simultaneously.
What are Google Ads keywords?
Keywords in AdWords are the words and phrases that advertisers bid on, in hopes that their advertisements will appear on the search engine results page (SERP) when people are searching for those products or services. For example, if you sell shoes online, you might bid on keywords like "Nike sneakers" and "penny loafers." Keyword research is the process of using tools and data to determine which keywords are most likely to drive relevant traffic to your ads and your site.
What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is the act of improving the visibility of your site or page within a search engine results page through organic methods. This can be done by using search keywords within your content so that a search engine can find and display your site faster and with more accuracy. Site authority and your link profile also play a role in your search engine rankings.
How does the Google display network work?
The Google Display Network or GDN is a very large network of sites that allow Google to place display advertisements, which reach over 90% of all Internet users! Advertisers generally find that Display Network clicks are less costly than those on the search network. And depending on your targeting methods, the CTR's can be high and the CPA's low. Try our entirely free, easy to use Smart Ads Creator if you're looking to get up and running on the display network in a hurry.
What is an ad group in Google AdWords? How do ad groups work?
An ad group is a container for your AdWords advertisements, keywords, and landing pages. Google tends to reward advertisers who create AdWords campaigns with tightly structured ad groups. It's important not to dump all your keywords into the same ad group, but to organize your keywords into themes.
What is ad relevance in AdWords?
Ad relevance is a measure of how related the keyword you're bidding on is to your advertisements as well as how much your keywords match the message of your ads and landing pages. Higher ad and keyword relevance can improve your click-through rates and Quality Scores.
How does Conversion Optimizer work?
Conversion Optimizer in Google AdWords is a bid manipulation tool that manages bids at the keyword-level with the goal of trying to drive as many conversions at or below an advertiser-specified cost per conversion (also known as Cost per Action, or CPA).
I advertise on Google. How am I doing?
At WordStream, we've analyzed tens of thousands of Google AdWords accounts from all over the world, in all sorts of industries. The easiest way to see how you're doing at Google PPC is to benchmark your PPC performance against similar advertisers in your industry and spend range. Thankfully, WordStream's got a free tool for that. Click below to give our Google AdWords Grader a free run!
HOW TO INVEST IN STOCKS
Investing in stocks is an excellent way to grow wealth. But how do you actually start? Follow the steps below to learn how to invest in the stock market.
1. Decide how you want to invest in stocks
There are several ways to approach stock investing. Choose the option below that best represents how you want to invest, and how hands-on you’d like to be in picking and choosing the stocks you invest in.
- “I’m the DIY type and am interested in choosing stocks and stock funds for myself.” Keep reading; this article breaks down things hands-on investors need to know. Or, if you already know the stock-buying game and just need a brokerage, see our roundup of the best online stock brokers.
- “I know stocks can be a great investment, but I’d like someone to manage the process for me.” You may be a good candidate for a robo-advisor, a service that offers low-cost investment management. Virtually all of the major brokerage firms offer these services, which invest your money for you based on your specific goals. See our top picks for robo-advisors.
Once you have a preference in mind, you’re ready to shop for an account.
2. Open an investing account
Generally speaking, to invest in stocks, you need an investment account. For the hands-on types, this usually means a brokerage account. For those who would like a little help, opening an account through a robo-advisor is a sensible option. We break down both processes below.
Worth noting: A 401(k) is a type of investment account, and if you’re participating in one, you may already be investing in stocks, likely through mutual funds. However, a 401(k) won’t offer you access to individual stocks, and your choice in mutual funds will likely be quite limited. Employer matching dollars make it worth contributing despite a limited investment selection, but once you’re contributing enough to earn that match, you can consider investing through other accounts.
THE DIY OPTION: OPENING A BROKERAGE ACCOUNT
An online brokerage account likely offers your quickest and least expensive path to buying stocks, funds and a variety of other investments. With a broker, you can open an individual retirement account, also known as an IRA — here are our top picks for IRA accounts — or you can open a taxable brokerage account if you’re already saving adequately for retirement elsewhere.
We have a guide to opening a brokerage account if you need a deep dive. You’ll want to evaluate brokers based on factors like costs (any trading commissions, account fees), investment selection (look for a good selection of commission-free ETFs if you favor funds) and investor research and tools.
- Below are four strong options from our analysis of the best online stock brokers for beginners: TD Ameritrade, Merrill Edge, E-Trade and Interactive Brokers.
DIGITAL MARKETING
With how accessible the internet is today, would you believe me if I told you the number of people who go online every day is still increasing?
It is. In fact, "constant" internet usage among adults increased by 5% in just the last three years, according to Pew Research. And although we say it a lot, the way people shop and buy really has changed along with it -- meaning offline marketing isn't as effective as it used to be.
Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. Today, that means you need to meet them where they are already spending time: on the internet.
Enter digital marketing -- in other words, any form of marketing that exists online
At HubSpot, we talk a lot about inbound marketing as a really effective way to attract, engage, and delight customers online. But we still get a lot of questions from people all around the world about digital marketing. So, we decided to answer them. Click the links below to jump to each question, or keep reading to see how digital marketing is carries out today.
- What is digital marketing?
- Why digital marketing?
- Digital Marketing Examples
- What does a digital marketer do?
- Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Which is it?
- Does digital marketing work for all businesses?
- What is the role of digital marketing to a company?
- What types of digital content should I create?
- How long will it take to see results from my content?
- Do I need a big budget for digital marketing?
- How does mobile marketing fit into my digital marketing strategy?
- I'm ready to try digital marketing. Now what?
So, how do you define digital marketing today?
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.
A seasoned inbound marketer might say inbound marketing and digital marketing are virtually the same thing, but there are some minor differences. And conversations with marketers and business owners in the U.S., U.K., Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, I've learned a lot about how those small differences are being observed across the world.
Why digital marketing?
While traditional marketing might exist in print ads, phone communication, or phsycial marketing, digital marketing can occur electronically and online. This means that there are a number of endless possibilities for brands including email, video, social media, or website-based marketing opportunities.
Because digital marketing has so many options and strategies associated with it, you can get creative and experiment with a variety of marketing tactics on a budget. With digital marketing, you can also use tools like analytics dashboards to monitor the success and ROI of your campaigns more than you could with a traditional promotional content -- such as a billboard or print ad.
FEATURED RESOURCE
Free Marketing Plan Template
Fill out this form to access the template.
How does a business define digital marketing?
Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online. From the website itself to a business's online branding assets -- digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond -- there's a spectrum of tactics that fall under the umbrella of "digital marketing."
The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal.
A content marketer, for example, can create a series of blog posts that serve to generate leads from a new ebook the business recently created. The company's social media marketer might then help promote these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business's social media accounts. Perhaps the email marketer creates an email campaign to send those who download the ebook more information on the company. We'll talk more about these specific digital marketers in a minute.
Digital Marketing Examples
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Native Advertising
- Marketing Automation
- Email Marketing
- Online PR
- Inbound Marketing
Here's a quick rundown of some of the most common digital marketing tactics and the channels involved in each one.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the process of optimizing your website to "rank" higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website receives. The channels that benefit from SEO include websites, blogs, and infographics.
There are a number of ways to approach SEO in order to generate qualified traffic to your website. These include:
- On page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on all of the content that exists "on the page" when looking at a website. By researching keywords for their search volume and intent (or meaning), you can answer questions for readers and rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) those questions produce.
- Off page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on all of the activity that takes place "off the page" when looking to optimize your website. "What activity not on my own website could affect my ranking?" You might ask. The answer is inbound links, also known as backlinks. The number of publishers that link to you, and the relative "authority" of those publishers, affect how highly you rank for the keywords you care about. By networking with other publishers, writing guest posts on these websites (and linking back to your website), and generating external attention, you can earn the backlinks you need to move your website up on all the right SERPs.
- Technical SEO: This type of SEO focuses on the backend of your website, and how your pages are coded. Image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization are all forms of technical SEO that can increase your website's loading speed -- an important ranking factor in the eyes of search engines like Google.
Content Marketing
This term denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers. The channels that can play a part in your content marketing strategy include:
- Blog posts: Writing and publishing articles on a company blog helps you demonstrate your industry expertise and generates organic search traffic for your business. This ultimately gives you more opportunities to convert website visitors into leads for your sales team.
- Ebooks and whitepapers: Ebooks, whitepapers, and similar long-form content helps further educate website visitors. It also allows you to exchange content for a reader's contact information, generating leads for your company and moving people through the buyer's journey.
- Infographics: Sometimes, readers want you to show, not tell. Infographics are a form of visual content that helps website visitors visualize a concept you want to help them learn.
Want to learn and apply content marketing to your business? .
Social Media Marketing
This practice promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business. The channels you can use in social media marketing include:
- Facebook.
- Twitter.
- LinkedIn.
- Instagram.
- Snapchat.
- Pinterest.
If you're new to social platforms, you can use tools like HubSpot to connect channels like LinkedIn and Facebook in one place. This way, you can easily schedule content for multiple channels at once, and monitor analytics from the platform as well.
On top of connecting social accounts for posting purposes, you can also integrate your social media inboxes into HubSpot, so you can get your direct messages in one place.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is a method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is Google Ads, which allows you to pay for top slots on Google's search engine results pages at a price "per click" of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC include:
- Paid ads on Facebook: Here, users can pay to customize a video, image post, or slideshow, which Facebook will publish to the newsfeeds of people who match your business's audience.
- Twitter Ads campaigns: Here, users can pay to place a series of posts or profile badges to the news feeds of a specific audience, all dedicated to accomplish a specific goal for your business. This goal can be website traffic, more Twitter followers, tweet engagement, or even app downloads.
- Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Here, users can pay to send messages directly to specific LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.
Affiliate Marketing
This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else's products or services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include:
- Hosting video ads through the YouTube Partner Program.
- Posting affiliate links from your social media accounts.
Native Advertising
Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid content. BuzzFeed-sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also consider social media advertising to be "native" -- Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising, for example.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to the software that serves to automate your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as:
- Email newsletters: Email automation doesn't just allow you to automatically send emails to your subscribers. It can also help you shrink and expand your contact list as needed so your newsletters are only going to the people who want to see them in their inboxes.
- Social media post scheduling: If you want to grow your organization's presence on a social network, you need to post frequently. This makes manual posting a bit of an unruly process. Social media scheduling tools push your content to your social media channels for you, so you can spend more time focusing on content strategy.
- Lead-nurturing workflows: Generating leads, and converting those leads into customers, can be a long process. You can automate that process by sending leads specific emails and content once they fit certain criteria, such as when they download and open an ebook.
- Campaign tracking and reporting: Marketing campaigns can include a ton of different people, emails, content, webpages, phone calls, and more. Marketing automation can help you sort everything you work on by the campaign it's serving, and then track the performance of that campaign based on the progress all of these components make over time.
Email Marketing
Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people toward the business's website. The types of emails you might send in an email marketing campaign include:
- Blog subscription newsletters.
- Follow-up emails to website visitors who downloaded something.
- Customer welcome emails.
- Holiday promotions to loyalty program members.
- Tips or similar series emails for customer nurturing.
Online PR
Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It's much like traditional PR, but in the online space. The channels you can use to maximize your PR efforts include:
- Reporter outreach via social media: Talking to journalists on Twitter, for example, is a great way to develop a relationship with the press that produces earned media opportunities for your company.
- Engaging online reviews of your company: When someone reviews your company online, whether that review is good or bad, your instinct might be not to touch it. On the contrary, engaging company reviews helps you humanize your brand and deliver powerful messaging that protects your reputation.
- Engaging comments on your personal website or blog: Similar to the way you'd respond to reviews of your company, responding to the people who are reading your content is the best way to generate productive conversation around your industry.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing refers to a marketing methodology wherein you attract, engage, and delight customers at every stage of the buyer's journey. You can use every digital marketing tactic listed above, throughout an inbound marketing strategy, to create a customer experience that works with the customer, not against them. Here are some classic examples of inbound marketing versus traditional marketing:
- Blogging vs. pop-up ads
- Video marketing vs. commercial advertising
- Email contact lists vs. email spam
What does a digital marketer do?
Digital marketers are in charge of driving brand awareness and lead generation through all the digital channels -- both free and paid -- that are at a company's disposal. These channels include social media, the company's own website, search engine rankings, email, display advertising, and the company's blog.
The digital marketer usually focuses on a different key performance indicator (KPI) for each channel so they can properly measure the company's performance across each one. A digital marketer who's in charge of SEO, for example, measures their website's "organic traffic" -- of that traffic coming from website visitors who found a page of the business's website via a Google search.
Digital marketing is carried out across many marketing roles today. In small companies, one generalist might own many of the digital marketing tactics described above at the same time. In larger companies, these tactics have multiple specialists that each focus on just one or two of the brand's digital channels.
Here are some examples of these specialists:
SEO Manager
Main KPIs: Organic traffic
In short, SEO managers get the business to rank on Google. Using a variety of approaches to search engine optimization, this person might work directly with content creators to ensure the content they produce performs well on Google -- even if the company also posts this content on social media.
Content Marketing Specialist
Main KPIs: Time on page, overall blog traffic, YouTube channel subscribers
Content marketing specialists are the digital content creators. They frequently keep track of the company's blogging calendar, and come up with a content strategy that includes video as well. These professionals often work with people in other departments to ensure the products and campaigns the business launches are supported with promotional content on each digital channel.
Social Media Manager
Main KPIs: Follows, Impressions, Shares
The role of a social media manager is easy to infer from the title, but which social networks they manage for the company depends on the industry. Above all, social media managers establish a posting schedule for the company's written and visual content. This employee might also work with the content marketing specialist to develop a strategy for which content to post on which social network.
(Note: Per the KPIs above, "impressions" refers to the number of times a business's posts appear on the newsfeed of a user.)
Marketing Automation Coordinator
Main KPIs: Email open rate, campaign click-through rate, lead-generation (conversion) rate
The marketing automation coordinator helps choose and manage the software that allows the whole marketing team to understand their customers' behavior and measure the growth of their business. Because many of the marketing operations described above might be executed separately from one another, it's important for there to be someone who can group these digital activities into individual campaigns and track each campaign's performance.
Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Which Is It?
On the surface, the two seem similar: Both occur primarily online, and both focus on creating digital content for people to consume. So what's the difference?
The term "digital marketing" doesn't differentiate between push and pull marketing tactics (or what we might now refer to as ‘inbound' and ‘outbound' methods). Both can still fall under the umbrella of digital marketing.
Digital outbound tactics aim to put a marketing message directly in front of as many people as possible in the online space -- regardless of whether it's relevant or welcomed. For example, the garish banner ads you see at the top of many websites try to push a product or promotion onto people who aren't necessarily ready to receive it.
On the other hand, marketers who employ digital inbound tactics use online content to attract their target customers onto their websites by providing assets that are helpful to them. One of the simplest yet most powerful inbound digital marketing assets is a blog, which allows your website to capitalize on the terms which your ideal customers are searching for.
Ultimately, inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, engage, and delight customers online. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is simply an umbrella term to describe online marketing tactics of any kind, regardless of whether they're considered inbound or outbound.
Does digital marketing work for all businesses?
Digital marketing can work for any business in any industry. Regardless of what your company sells, digital marketing still involves building out buyer personas to identify your audience's needs, and creating valuable online content. However, that's not to say all businesses should implement a digital marketing strategy in the same way.
B2B Digital Marketing
If your company is business-to-business (B2B), your digital marketing efforts are likely to be centered around online lead generation, with the end goal being for someone to speak to a salesperson. For that reason, the role of your marketing strategy is to attract and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website and supporting digital channels.
Beyond your website, you'll probably choose to focus your efforts on business-focused channels like LinkedIn where your demographic is spending their time online.
B2C Digital Marketing
If your company is business-to-consumer (B2C), depending on the price point of your products, it's likely that the goal of your digital marketing efforts is to attract people to your website and have them become customers without ever needing to speak to a salesperson.
For that reason, you're probably less likely to focus on ‘leads' in their traditional sense, and more likely to focus on building an accelerated buyer's journey, from the moment someone lands on your website, to the moment that they make a purchase. This will often mean your product features in your content higher up in the marketing funnel than it might for a B2B business, and you might need to use stronger calls-to-action (CTAs).
For B2C companies, channels like Instagram and Pinterest can often be more valuable than business-focused platforms LinkedIn.
What is the role of digital marketing to a company?
Unlike most offline marketing efforts, digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in real time. If you've ever put an advert in a newspaper, you'll know how difficult it is to estimate how many people actually flipped to that page and paid attention to your ad. There's no surefire way to know if that ad was responsible for any sales at all.
On the other hand, with digital marketing, you can measure the ROI of pretty much any aspect of your marketing efforts.
Here are some examples:
Website Traffic
With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who have viewed your website's homepage in real time by using digital analytics software, available in marketing platforms like HubSpot.
You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they were using, and where they came from, amongst other digital analytics data.
This intelligence helps you to prioritize which marketing channels to spend more or less time on, based on the number of people those channels are driving to your website. For example, if only 10% of your traffic is coming from organic search, you know that you probably need to spend some time on SEO to increase that percentage.
With offline marketing, it's very difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand before they have an interaction with a salesperson or make a purchase. With digital marketing, you can identify trends and patterns in people's behavior before they've reached the final stage in their buyer's journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel.
Content Performance and Lead Generation
Imagine you've created a product brochure and posted it through people's letterboxes -- that brochure is a form of content, albeit offline. The problem is that you have no idea how many people opened your brochure or how many people threw it straight into the trash.
Now imagine you had that brochure on your website instead. You can measure exactly how many people viewed the page where it's hosted, and you can collect the contact details of those who download it by using forms. Not only can you measure how many people are engaging with your content, but you're also generating qualified leads when people download it.
Attribution Modeling
An effective digital marketing strategy combined with the right tools and technologies allows you to trace all of your sales back to a customer's first digital touchpoint with your business.
We call this attribution modeling, and it allows you to identify trends in the way people research and buy your product, helping you to make more informed decisions about what parts of your marketing strategy deserve more attention, and what parts of your sales cycle need refining.
Connecting the dots between marketing and sales is hugely important -- according to Aberdeen Group, companies with strong sales and marketing alignment achieve a 20% annual growth rate, compared to a 4% decline in revenue for companies with poor alignment. If you can improve your customer's' journey through the buying cycle by using digital technologies, then it's likely to reflect positively on your business's bottom line.
What types of digital content should I create?
The kind of content you create depends on your audience's needs at different stages in the buyer's journey. You should start by creating buyer personas (use these free templates, or try makemypersona.com) to identify what your audience's goals and challenges are in relation to your business. On a basic level, your online content should aim to help them meet these goals, and overcome their challenges.
Then, you'll need to think about when they're most likely to be ready to consume this content in relation to what stage they're at in their buyer's journey. We call this content mapping.
With content mapping, the goal is to target content according to:
- The characteristics of the person who will be consuming it (that's where buyer personas come in).
- How close that person is to making a purchase (i.e., their lifecycle stage).
In terms of the format of your content, there are a lot of different things to try. Here are some options we'd recommend using at each stage of the buyer's journey:
Awareness Stage
- Blog posts. Great for increasing your organic traffic when paired with a strong SEO and keyword strategy.
- Infographics. Very shareable, meaning they increase your chances of being found via social media when others share your content. (Check out these free infographic templates to get you started.)
- Short videos. Again, these are very shareable and can help your brand get found by new audiences by hosting them on platforms like YouTube.
Consideration Stage
- Ebooks. Great for lead generation as they're generally more comprehensive than a blog post or infographic, meaning someone is more likely to exchange their contact information to receive it.
- Research reports. Again, this is a high value content piece which is great for lead generation. Research reports and new data for your industry can also work for the awareness stage though, as they're often picked-up by the media or industry press.
- Webinars. As they're a more detailed, interactive form of video content, webinars are an effective consideration stage content format as they offer more comprehensive content than a blog post or short video.
Decision Stage
- Case studies. Having detailed case studies on your website can be an effective form of content for those who are ready to make a purchasing decision, as it helps you positively influence their decision.
- Testimonials. If case studies aren't a good fit for your business, having short testimonials around your website is a good alternative. For B2C brands, think of testimonials a little more loosely. If you're a clothing brand, these might take the form of photos of how other people styled a shirt or dress, pulled from a branded hashtag where people can contribute.
How long will it take to see results from my content?
With digital marketing, it can often feel like you're able to see results much faster than you might with offline marketing due to the fact it's easier to measure ROI. However, it ultimately depends on the scale and effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy.
If you spend time building comprehensive buyer personas to identify the needs of your audience, and you focus on creating quality online content to attract and convert them, then you're likely to see strong results within the first six months.
If paid advertising is part of your digital strategy, then the results come even quicker -- but it's recommended to focus on building your organic (or ‘free') reach using content, SEO, and social media for long-term, sustainable success.
Do I need a big budget for digital marketing?
As with anything, it really depends on what elements of digital marketing you're looking to add to your strategy.
If you're focusing on inbound techniques like SEO, social media, and content creation for a preexisting website, the good news is you don't need very much budget at all. With inbound marketing, the main focus is on creating high quality content that your audience will want to consume, which unless you're planning to outsource the work, the only investment you'll need is your time.
You can get started by hosting a website and creating content using HubSpot's CMS. For those on a tight budget, you can get started using WordPress hosted on WP Engine and using a simple them from StudioPress.
With outbound techniques like online advertising and purchasing email lists, there is undoubtedly some expense. What it costs comes down to what kind of visibility you want to receive as a result of the advertising.
For example, to implement PPC using Google AdWords, you'll bid against other companies in your industry to appear at the top of Google's search results for keywords associated with your business. Depending on the competitiveness of the keyword, this can be reasonably affordable, or extremely expensive, which is why it's a good idea to focus building your organic reach, too.
How does mobile marketing fit into my digital marketing strategy?
Another key component of digital marketing is mobile marketing. In fact, smartphone usage as a whole accounts for 69% of time spent consuming digital media in the U.S., while desktop-based digital media consumption makes up less than half -- and the U.S. still isn't mobile's biggest fan compared to other countries.
This means it's essential to optimize your digital ads, web pages, social media images, and other digital assets for mobile devices. If your company has a mobile app that enables users to engage with your brand or shop your products, your app falls under the digital marketing umbrella, too.
Those engaging with your company online via mobile devices need to have the same positive experience as they would on desktop. This means implementing a mobile-friendly or responsive website design to make browsing user-friendly for those on mobile devices. It might also mean reducing the length of your lead generation forms to create a hassle-free experience for people downloading your content on-the-go. As for your social media images, it's important to always have a mobile user in mind when creating them as image dimensions are smaller on mobile devices, meaning text can be cut-off.
There are lots of ways you can optimize your digital marketing assets for mobile users, and when implementing any digital marketing strategy, it's hugely important to consider how the experience will translate on mobile devices. By ensuring this is always front-of-mind, you'll be creating digital experiences that work for your audience, and consequently achieve the results you're hoping for.
I'm ready to try digital marketing. Now what?
If you're already doing digital marketing, it's likely that you're at least reaching some segments of your audience online. No doubt you can think of some areas of your strategy that could use a little improvement, though.
That's why we created Why Digital Marketing? The Essential Guide to Marketing Your Brand Online -- a step-by-step guide to help you build a digital marketing strategy that's truly effective, whether you're a complete beginner or have a little more experience. You can download it for free here.
EMAIL: learntomakem@gmail.com
WhatsApp: +254743321882
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)