Digital marketing agencies are trained in the many techniques to bypass the digital barriers separating a business from its customer. An agency is commonly a third-party entity comprised of two or more persons with a professional knowledge of various digital: landscapes, technologies, mediums, influencers, and algorithms. The combined knowledge of its members is what gives strength to an agency and to businesses seeking these services. The expansive and ever competitive world of internet marketing is no longer responsive to a part-time investment from do-it-yourself business owners, so hiring an agency would help these businesses grow faster and further.

How Hard Could It Be?

Marketing requires a considerable amount of time, resources, and understanding. It has never been something to half-ass. The same should be said for digital marketing, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case. A common misconception of digital marketing is its level of difficulty compared to traditional marketing. If someone can post to Facebook themselves, why would they pay someone else to do it? But of course, marketing is not that simple.  

Companies savvy enough to recognize the potential of the online marketplace are not waiting for others to catch on. They understand the importance of a responsive and engaging online community and dedicate the resources to cultivate one. Today, the line separating a business’ physical and digital presence is blurred more than ever. There are very few reasons not to be online and even fewer reasons to not present yourself properly online. Fortune writes that “190 million U.S. consumers—more than half the population—will shop online”, according to Forrester Research. And that’s not all: more data reveals how the internet is quickly becoming the best way to reach your audience. Don’t take our word for it: 87% of U.S. adults and over 3.77 billion people worldwide use the internet.

Email Marketing: Keeping Your Audience Informed and More

Writing emails to your friends and colleagues is not the same as developing email campaigns that bring in more sales. Even though some people proclaim that “email is dead”, businesses have found success through their email mailing list because subscribers are captive audiences.

On the surface, email marketing is about informing your audience, but there are many ways to use email marketing to your advantage, such as:

• Creating a free offer to get more subscribers onto your list: this is often referred to as an “opt-in”. These free offers can be as simple as a discount for new customers or a free downloadable guide for your website visitors to learn more about your subject matter expertise.
• Drip campaigns: ever notice how, when you subscribe to some email lists, you start to receive some introductory emails a few days (or once a week) from the email list? These emails are often referred to as a “drip” campaign, where email series are sent out automatically based on subscriber’s actions, e.g., abandoning carts on e-commerce or new subscribers.

There are many different types of email campaigns your business can use, but not all of them are applicable to all businesses. Working with an agency can help you decide which email platform to use, which are the best drip campaigns to implement for your business, and what kind of emails have the best opportunity for conversions.

Search Engine Marketing: Getting Your Business Found

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) may seem simple to implement for your website–most website platforms give you an “easy” tool to work on your SEO–but there are nuances involved that may not be obvious for the everyday business owner. For example: did you know that each of your website pages and blog posts should have different focus keywords? Blanketing your website with nonsensical keywords will not help your website rank better on search engines; in fact, this may damage your website’s reputation.

An agency can help businesses with SEO and paid search campaigns by performing keyword audits, discovering related long-tail keyword phrases to use in blog posts and website content, and creating persuasive Google AdWords campaigns with an optimal cost-per-click and conversion rate.

Social Media Marketing: Growing Your Community

We touched on this earlier but not nearly enough. The bane of social media marketing is its incredible accessibility. The popularity of social media has created an undeserving sense of understanding among most people; not having a proper plan to cultivate a community through social media could easily hurt a business.

The true value in social media marketing is providing that two-way conversation between consumers and businesses: these days, consumers expect for businesses to respond to their comments and concerns in less than 24 hours. Businesses can mine great insights from customer feedback and interact with customers to improve upon their products or services.

An agency can help a business build its community on social media by being the business’s community manager: redirecting questions and concerns to the proper decision makers, participating in light banter with customers and fans, and more.

Content Marketing: Creating Content to Build Value

Content marketing is the tedious tasks of creating and sharing online material to increase interest in a product or service. This is specific content cantered to a specific audience. Creating original content is particularly time-consuming avenue of marketing. Content marketing is way more expansive that typing a few words and hitting the publish button. Content strives when there is a comprehensive understanding of both SEO and organic content. Someone unfamiliar with the intricacies of google’s multiple pagerank algorithms, as well as SEO and organic content, will be up Chit Creek without a paddle.

The biggest disadvantage most people run into with content marketing are time-constraints. Time is money and we don’t want you wasting either. When it comes to a digital marketing agency, employees have a working knowledge of things like content curation, link building, keyword planning, split testing, graphic design, and social media and search engine algorithms.

Don’t waste two hours racking your brain with content marketing ideas. Better yet, don’t slop together 30 minutes worth of work to pass off as content marketing. Both of those avenues are short sided and will not yield a good ROI.  Also, content that require a lot of time and diligence usually produce the best results. Great ideas for content include blogs, videos, info-graphics, and photography.

Ready for the next step?

Working with a digital marketing agency can be a highly rewarding experience for a small business owner who is ready for growth and focusing internal resources on other aspects of their business. Schedule a 15-minute consultation with us today to learn more about how we can help you with your online presence.