TOP 10 Digital Marketers of 2018

SETH GODIN

Seth Godin is a bestselling author and entrepreneur. He is author of ten books that have been best sellers around the globe, and he is also a prominent speaker. Recently he was chosen as one of 21 Speakers.

Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. He was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.

NEIL PATEL

Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Hello Bar.He created his first website at the age of 13 and paid a few marketing firms to help him out, but unfortunately they provided no results and took all of his money.

His writing mainly includes topics such as SEO, marketing, and branding. Additionally, you will be surprised to know that Neil Patel has built two multimillion online businesses when he was just 30 years old.

GUY KAWASAKI

Guy Takeo Kawasaki is an American digital marketer specialist and author. Previously, he was an Apple employee who was responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He brought the word evangelist into vogue in marketing the Macintosh and the concepts related to evangelism marketing and technology evangelism.

Larry Kim

Larry Kim is a well known PPC expert and the founder of WordStream. He is also a writer of four award-winning books and regular contributor to Search Engine Land and Forbes. As a founder of wordstream, he has start up an organization from nothing to a successful software company. He does a huge amount of content marketing and PR stuff. His content has produced a vast figure of press pickups in the recent years.

Joost De Valk

Mr. Joost De Valk is the Founder and CEO of yoast.com and WordPress. He is also SEO, a Blogger and a successful web developer with more than 1.5 million monthly readers on his blog.

In 1994, he launched his first website. Later on, SEO turned to be his profession. For mean time, he started working in digital marketing and gathered information for companies like eBay. Later, he developed the plugin, Yoast SEO, which is considered as the simplest and the best WordPress plugin.

Douglas Kar

Douglas Karr is the CEO of DK New Media and founder of Marketing Technology Blog. Beside all, he is also a famous writer and digital marketers who helped businesses like Mindjet, GoDaddy and many more with his skill in online media, PRs, SEO, blogging and pay-per-click

As digital marketing continued to rise, he conveyed his ideas with experience in marketing technology to help others grow their business.

Qadir AK

With passion in digital marketing, Qadir Ak is best known to his innovative strategies while running th online branding company Ultimez Technology. He has been in IT industry since 10+ years. Mr.Qadir from India walks with trends in technology and applies it to every project his company undertakes. Beside India, he is now expanding his Digital marketing & online branding services across wider market of Dubai, UAE.

Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark is an well known digital marketer, speaker, and a regular writer to TIME,Harvard Business Review and the World Economic Forum blog. She is expert in branding and also writer of many famous books like Reinventing You and many more.

Jitendra Vaswani

Jitendra is a Digital Marketing SEO Consultant from India and the founder of

Digi Exe, a Digital Marketing Agency. He is an Blogger and author of WordPress Plugin-SchemaNinja. With 5 years of experience in digital marketing field, he has a strong knowledge of Internet Marketing terms like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Blogging, Social Media Optimization (SMO), Mobile, Ecommerce and WordPress.

Secret Strategies To Generate Money From Amazon To Become Digital Entrepreneur

You may check, if we are trying for making money on online, almost 98% of our efforts or actions will be scammed by well skilled scammer in the name of Online Digital Marketing. Since online money-maker is not a money-maker they are just online money dreamer, unfortunately they are money looser. Even if we earn 0.50$ means someone earned 5$ through us. Over the Internet there are hundreds of online money earning opportunities exist, like Freelancer, Affiliate marketing, paid surveys, ad clicking and ad posting, ad clicking websites, Mobile app Tasks, Daily login and paid online tasks etc. If we consider Time, cost & effort factors, those hundreds of opportunities may fail to bring Passive online Income constantly for us.

For example, if we consider online tasks like “5$ per one survey” just think, is it possible to get daily basis? If yes. Definitely you are the well skilled digital scammer.

One of the well-recognized online money-making technique is Affiliate Marketing. Yes, of course. It is the greatest way to earn money online. Here the problem is you need a well traffic generating Website or Blog to become affiliate earner. Here I have a product to promote and new website. But I don’t have Traffic. For this you may get free traffic sources, but it requires continuous effort over the year without a single penny. In case of paid traffic, it’s so expensive, need certain skills to optimize keyword for your promotion. And those paid traffic may be or may not be generates sales for you. That’s why it’s a good and passive income generator for you, if you are well familiar with Affiliate Marketing Strategic and Skill-set Training otherwise it’s too expensive and like a Gambling.

As a freelancer, I had subscribed membership plan on one of the famous freelance website by paying certain membership fee, and after that I started to search for work. Wow! there are number projects available in my selected category in these websites. But those projects were already bide by hundreds of freelancer like me. I thought that event I bid low price on these projects there is no Guaranteed for availing these projects, why I need to waste my Time, energy and Money on these kinds of Unprofessional things?

Making money online isn’t a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. If you want to become a successful online earner, you need to adopt a long-term mindset. Whatever you want to do online, do it through Professionally Le-Earn strategy. For example, if you want to become successful you-tuber having 5 million channel subscriber within a year. As an individual person it’s difficult to achieve this goal card. But it was proven by successful YouTube earner through their back-end strategic training and implementation. Therefore this goal is achievable by strategic learning & obtaining well training from digital experts for free of cost or paid training services also. Definitely this strategy help you to achieve online earning goal will successful on internet.

5 Must-Haves While Looking For A Digital Marketing Agency For Your Startup

Every startup or small scale business holds the potential to grow if it has the right ingredients. The ingredients are the right idea, funding & a professional digital marketing agency to hoist the digital campaigns & plans for such business.

To expand any business’s horizons it has become important for them to be a part of such a digital era. Digital marketing over conventional marketing is becoming one approach that is no doubt output-oriented, steadfast resulting and most of all cost-effective.

A brick & mortar business in today’s time requires a website, social media presence & some key strategies & actionable tasks to evolve as a recognized brand in the market. But before starting with the process, the key is to understand what your startup must look for in a digital marketing agency before partnering with their services – apart from their digital marketing startup package.

Here are the 5 must-haves to look for in a digital marketing firm of today other than digital marketing startup package:

1. Hard to miss – their website

The first thing you need to approach is their website, their website will help you decide how well they can plan for your website’s marketing. Check if their website is up to date and has all the capabilities that any website should host. Their website will speak volumes about their agency, their achievements, competency and the efforts they may be willing to put in your startup’s website to make it trending & best-selling.

2. Referrals for the credibility

It is the most crucial thing to do – to check the company’s profile & market image before extending a contract with them for their service. You can contact their ex-clients or customers to get the preview of their work pattern & check how well they have managed to publicize certain brands in the search engines. The best way could be testimonials & the portfolio embedded on the website.

3. Veteran of the current technology, software & marketing methods

Digital marketing is effortless if it doesn’t house the latest technologies, software, tools & the methodologies. Look for the veterans or experts that are familiar with the latest social media performance monitoring & analytics tools, knows the search engine’s guidelines and can come up with customized strategies suitable to the brand/company profile.

4. Complies well with your startup’s goals & ideas

A well-reputed online marketing agency knows how to come in terms with any startup’s shared goals, nature & idea behind it. An agency must comprehend the nature of business & must revert the strategies or plans that work in their demeanour.

5. Flexible in terms of making communication with the client

Such marketing firm should be easy in terms of bringing right communication on the tables. They should not lapse in terms of communicating the core messages like the process, progress or the suggested actions for the certain project.

It takes the right digital marketing firm to flourish any startup to with creativity, innovation, insightfulness in their coming process.

The Secrets for Successful Revenue in Digital Marketing – Benchmarking Process

According to the British Quality Association (1989) characterized TQM as follows:

“TQM is a corporate business the board reasoning which perceives that the client needs and business objectives are equivalent”.

The accomplishment of significant worth is in this manner achieved by near and dear incorporation and duty, given to a relentless improvement measure, with quantifiable level of execution by totally concerned.

The Basic Stages in Problem Solving are:

– Identify the issue, alongside progress objectives:

– Develop a System Orientations as follows:

A bit of the General Tools to Benchmark are:

(I) Cause and Effect Diagram (Ishikawa Sketch Diagram)

Conditions and sensible outcomes diagram helps with reviewing the assorted anticipated explanations behind an issue or situation. With this quality control instrument, one can assess the contributing components as arrangements and subcategories. You could fuse and find the hidden driver of an issue; uncover the bottlenecks in your cycles and perceive where and why a cycle isn’t working.

(ii) PERT

PERT speaks to Program Evaluation Review Technique. High-spirited charts are gadgets used to plan tasks inside an endeavor – making it less difficult to schedule and sort out partners accomplishing the work as a TEAMWORK.

Proactive diagrams were made during the 1950s to assist manage the creation of weapons and assurance envisions for the US Navy.

(iii) TAGUCHI Methods

The Taguchi procedure for quality control is an approach to manage planning that underlines the pieces of creative work (Research &Development), thing plan and headway in reducing the occasion of defects and disillusionments in made items.

(iv) KANBAN

Kanban is a system for managing the creation of things with a weight on consistent conveyance while not overburdening the improvement gathering. Like Scrum, Kanban is a cycle or cycle expected to gatherings to chip away at groups viably and with the standards of collaboration for non-stop achievement.

(v) JIT (Just in Time Principle)

These are the 5 essential principles of JIT Management:

Total Quality Management, Production Management, Supplier Management, Inventory Management, and Human Resource Management.

JIT won’t suffer if there is definitely not a strong emphasis on TQM (Total Quality Management).

(vi) BATNA

Is the ability to perceive an arbitrator most ideal choice as opposed to a Negotiated-Agreement, is among one of the various bits of information mediators search for when characterizing bargain making and trade systems.

If your current game-plan shows up at a gridlock, what’s your another Best Alternative.

I immovably suggest you read the book ‘Getting to Yes’ by William Ury.

Or on the other hand simultaneously, I recommend you read ‘Moving beyond NO ‘ by William Ury if your values and principles don’t agree to the customers / clients with a win-win deal.

(vii) Poka – Yoke

Poka-Yoke is a Japanese articulation that means “bungle fixing”, “botch sealing” or “coincidental bumble expectation”.

A Poka-Yoke is any instrument in any cycle that empowers a stuff executive to keep a Strategic Distance from Mismanagement or Miscalculating.

Its inspiration is to dispense with by Preventing, Adjusting, or Causing to Notice Human Mistakes as they occur.

(viii) Kaizen

Kaizen is a thought symbolic business practices that tirelessly improve all limits and incorporate all agents from the CEO to the consecutive development framework workers.

Kaizen is the Sino-Japanese word for “advancement and ceaseless improvement”.

(ix) Mission Statement – Have a convincing Statement of Purpose, with Brand Esteem, your Moral Methodology Systems and Standard centered organization in all times of your Digital Marketing approaches and prepares.

(x) CIT – (Continuous Improvement Team):

Nonstop Improvement Team a deliberate group from a comparable work fragment sitting reliably to improve a particular cycle, cycle or action

(xi) CAT (Corrective Action Taken): A work pack or Team under the activity of the local manager outlined to deal with a particular issue.

A segment of the Specific 7 Quality Control Tools are according to the accompanying:

STAGE (1) – STRATIFICATION: is portrayed as the show of organizing data, people, and articles into specific social affairs or layers… This data grouping and examination methodology confines the data with the goal that models can be seen and is seen as one of the seven basic quality instruments.

STAGE (2) – TALLY SHEET or Check Sheet is a structure (record) used to assemble data continuously at the region where the data is delivered. The data it gets can be quantitative or emotional. Exactly when the information is quantitative, the check sheet is sometimes called a tally sheet.

STAGE (3) – HISTOGRAM: It resembles a Bar Chart, anyway a Histogram bundles numbers into ranges.The height of each bar shows the quantity of fall into each span. Likewise, you pick what scopes to use! Model: Height of Olive Trees

STAGE (4) – PARETO ANALYSIS: is a regular strategy supportive where various potential diagrams are weighing for thought. Essentially, the issue solver assesses the favorable position passed on by every action, by then picks probably the best exercises that pass on a total bit of leeway reasonably close to the maximal possible one.

STAGE (5) – Cause and Effect Diagram: Ishikawa diagrams are causal graphs made by Kaoru Ishikawa that show the possible explanations behind a specific event. Typical occupations of the Ishikawa plot are thing plan and quality flaw expectation to recognize potential factors causing an overall effect.

STAGE (6) – Scatter Diagram: A disperse plot is such a plot or mathematical framework using Cartesian bearings to show regards for regularly two elements for a lot of data. If the centers are coded, one additional factor can be appeared.

STAGE (7) – Control Chart: A Control Chart shows how a cycle varies after some time, while perceiving uncommon explanations behind assortment and changes in execution. Like a run diagram, it fuses quantifiably made Upper and Lower Control Limits.

Watch the Benchmarking by Robert C Camp on YouTube for more details.

[Source / Reference: Dr. D. D. Sharma (Total Quality Management – Principle, Practices & Cases)

How to Write an Online Digital Internet Marketing Business Plan

It’s common for businesses embarking in internet marketing and social media to think they need to build their strategies around technology and not look at audience needs first. Every business needs an integrated marketing plan. Sometimes businesses see digital planning as a separate thing but ideally your online marketing plan should be integrated with wider business objectives so it is part of an overall marketing plan.

There are two models that provide a framework for writing an integrated digital marketing plan. The first is called SOSTAC® planning model developed by PR Smith. In plain English this approach means breaking your plan down into six parts: –

  • S stands for Situation Analysis – which means where are we now?
  • O stands for Objectives which means where do we want to go?
  • S stands for Strategy which summarises how we are going to get there
  • T stands for Tactics which are the details of strategy
  • A is for Action or implementation – putting the plan to work.
  • C is for Control which means measurement, monitoring, reviewing, updating and modifying.

You can use the SOSTAC® planning model to build a digital marketing template to fit your business needs and customer profiles.

The second model that’s useful for mapping out a social media marketing plan is Forrester’s POST method. The POST method helps define your social media goals, plan and prioritise your actions. By thinking this through you can create a clear purpose and vision, as well as implementing goals, strategies and tools that will help you to reach the people you are looking to connect with online. The POST method in a nutshell looks at:

  • People – Start by looking at your customer’s social behaviours and attitudes. Who do you want to attract on sites like Facebook and Twitter?
  • Objectives – Next decide on your social technology goals. Do you want to build relationships or, create brand awareness or improve customer service?
  • Strategy – What strategies do you plan to carry out and what is your priority? Determine how your goals will change the way you interact with customers through twitter, a blog, LinkedIn or Facebook page
  • Technologies – which ones will you use? Pick the most right technologies that will meet your goals you don’t have to use them all!

These methods will ensure your integrated digital marketing plan put audiences and customers first, identifying their needs and developing a plan with the right mix of online and offline channels to build strong relationships,drive leads and generate traffic to your website.

How To Do Digital Marketing For My Business

When launching a new business, making yourself known within the business sector is key to getting off to a good start. If before the digital age there were not many methods of dissemination and the few that did have a high cost and an impact that is difficult to measure or of doubtful success, the arrival of digital has democratized these practices and has incorporated a world of possibilities to promote a deal. Digital marketing and its different actions allow each entrepreneur to make their business known and thus boost their activity.

A common question toward all the new business owner: “how to do digital marketing for my business”, let me share you,

5 digital ways to publicize your business

Among all the actions that can exist, what is the best to start with? What are the almost obligated actions? Do you need to use all actions from the beginning to get results? These are some of the thousands of questions that arise when starting a digital communication strategy. The first answer that is here that it is not necessary to do everything at once, you will have to choose the first actions based on your strategy.

1. Create a company website

A topic so talked about that it is still surprising that many companies do not take it as a priority. Web agencies have tried for years to highlight the need for any company, whatever the sector of activity, to have a website. Actually, this page happens to be the first platform for your business. Before going to the store, the consumer looks for information on the internet. From the moment a company creates a web page, this page becomes the store’s first showcase.

2. Create content to boost your page’s ranking on Google

Once your website is available with all the “static” content ready, it will be time to work on the natural positioning or SEO of your business. To have a better position in Google, it is necessary to keep your website “alive” and the best way is to add content regularly. The best way to create content for your page quickly and easily is through a blog. Thanks to this you can tell everything related to your business to your community and your customers.

3. Communicate with your clients with emailing campaigns

Email marketing continues to be the first means of communication: Newsletter, promotional offers, private sales, invitations to events, thanks, birthdays there are many opportunities to communicate with your client, especially taking good advantage of the data you have since you can reach to high customization.

4. Keep in direct contact thanks to SMS marketing

To complete email communications, it may be interesting to use a more direct channel. Digital Marketing Agency Malaysia is the ideal one to assist you out in this situation so that you don’t be lacked behind. The goal is to communicate with your customers quickly and have the guarantee that they will have your information. With an almost total insertion of mobile phones, a method as direct as SMS, 98% of these are read within 5 minutes after sending. This means that bulk SMS constitutes a very useful channel to send relevant information.

5. Find and encourage your community on social media.

Last method of this article: encourage communities on social media. It is the ideal channel to group your customers and exchange information with them. Facebook, about to reach almost 2 billion users, constitutes an advantage to be known, acquire and retain. It is an immediate method of feedback with your followers.

Well, if any business owner found difficulties to start their business using digital marketing, or no idea how to do digital marketing for your business? You have a great choice by attending best digital marketing course. Checkout resources below.

How to Do Digital Marketing for Local Business

Local marketing can work for any online business whether you really are only local to the place you want to market to or whether you’re a global business.

Start a Local Niche Group on Facebook

The remarkable thing about Facebook is that you can create as many groups as you want to. You can create them for different locations so that you can learn more about your audience in those local areas. Doing this will give you an inside into their thoughts and problems that you can use everywhere.

Add Your Business to Local Directories

One thing you must be careful about is that many directories don’t let you have more than one listing per phone number. You can get more numbers via some of the online services like Google Voice and others.

Contribute Content to Local News Outlets

Locally there are magazines, newspapers, TV shows, radio shows and more that you can be interviewed on, submit content to, and more. Give them a reason to want to feature your story, and you’ll soon become a local celebrity.

Host a Local Contest

You can kick things off by hosting an online contest for your audience who live in specific locations only. Choose a contest that causes buzz. For example, get participants to make a video that can be easily shared.

Optimize Your Site for Local Search

This won’t cost you much at all. Set up your site, or at least a page on your site with local search terms. Don’t keyword stuff, think about the words and the content you put on that page before doing it. You want visitors to feel special when they visit.

Be Easily Accessible

If you want to be trusted by local people, you need to communicate with them. You need to allow them to email you and contact you easily. Don’t hide any of your contact information and make sure they can do it easily.

Get More Reviews

Set up a system that enables you to get more reviews. Set up your autoresponder to automatically ask for reviews after your customer has had enough time to experience results.

Create More Locally Focused Content

When you are focusing on a location consider creating more locally focused content. You may have to get creative doing it, but adding local events, and other related information to your content will help.

Create an Influencer Marketing Campaign

One fast way to break into any local market is to find local influencers to mention your name or product. You can often work with multiple influencers at the same time too.

Digital Marketing Planning Process For Beginners

This article centres around formulating a digital marketing strategy and implementing a digital marketing plan for a business.

In this digital age, businesses cannot afford not to have a digital marketing plan has technology is increasingly influencing our business and social lives. As a matter of fact, a business without a digital marketing plan is a business planning to fail.

Quite frankly, some business owners are still struggling to understand the need to have a digital marketing plan for their business. Though, the case is quite different for other business owners who already have a digital marketing strategy, but are unhappy and frustrated with the results, of which fall far short of their expectations.

Digital Marketing Planning Process

Whether you have developed a digital marketing plan that is currently active or you have developed a digital marketing plan that is not yet active or you are in the process of developing a digital marketing plan for your business, Follow the process outlined below to help your business grow and succeed online. This process has proven very successful for so many businesses. Having said that, it is very important that the process is followed judiciously in other to get positive results.

You are just a sentence away from growing your business successfully online.

Establish A Web presence

Having a website, a blog or social media page, or listing your business on local business directory websites are some of the ways you can establish a web presence. These days businesses take advantage of these channels to boost their web presence. Without a doubt, it is highly recommended having these digital marketing assets in your arsenal to increase your search visibility. You want to make sure that you utilise every channel possible to boost your online presence. The more your business is established online, the better.

Domain name registration

When choosing a domain name for your business, you want to make sure that your domain name contains keywords relevant to your niche and city, not just your business name. For example, you offer plumbing services in Toronto, the ideal domain name should be abcplumbingservicestoronto.com.

Content Creation

After choosing your domain name, the next step is to develop great contents for your website, contents that would attract qualified leads (prospects that would end up converting), the ideal thing to do in other to develop great contents is to first conduct a research on niche keywords and include these keywords throughout your text, especially in the headings/subheadings, title and meta description on your web pages. Also, it’s a good practice to add the location of your business in the areas mentioned above. Bear in mind, it takes quite some time to rank for your niche keywords – It not as simple as ABC. It’s a clever idea to hire a content developer if you don’t have the technical expertise to create engaging contents –

Content is king!

Optimising your Website

As soon as you have your content ready, the next thing you want to do is hire a professional website developer who is also skilled in (on-page and off-page search engine optimisation SEO), to develop a user and mobile friendly high converting website for your business. Notice how I laid emphasis on “user” and mobile friendly” – You want to make sure that your website has a good user experience, it is said that humans have a short attention span of about seven seconds, in other words you have seven seconds to grab the attention of your website visitors. That being said, It is cheaper to hire a professional website developer with SEO skills than separately hiring a website developer and SEO specialist. If you want to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs), then ensure that your website is fully optimised (on-page and off-page) for search engines A fully optimised website has a 90% possibility of showing up on SERPs.

What is on page and off page SEO? In a lay man’s terminology, on-page SEO is when a website understands and speaks the language of search algorithm and off page SEO Is when other websites send signals (by a way of votes) to search engines that your website has credibility. As soon as your other websites starts sending positive signals to search engines about your website, Chances are your website will show up on SERPs.

Check the performance of your website online and your website SEO when your website is ready to go live, there are free tools online you can use to check the performance of your website as well as SEO. Ensure that you follow up and resolve any issues with your website, especially issues like: loading time of your landing pages, browser caching issues, heading, alt-tags etc. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of having your website fully optimised for search engines.

Link Building

You have chosen a proper domain, created a highly converting website with great contents and your website is fully optimised, at this point, you should start building links. Link building is a technique used in (off page SEO). It is a process whereby you get external web pages with authority, link to your webpages. The following are some of the ways you can build links: submit your website to business directory websites (citations), create social media accounts and distributing content across social media platforms and other across other websites with high authority, optimise press releases, social bookmarking etc. These efforts are geared towards acquiring “link juice”, which increases your website authority (assuming the links are quality backlinks). Outreach (link building) is quite a daunting task. You are better off assigning the task to your website developer, except you are comfortable doing it yourself. Furthermore, list your business on Google my business and Bing places for business and ensure it is optimised.

Search Engine and Social Media Marketing

At this stage, creating a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign on Google AdWords and Facebook is certainly a clever way to strengthen your online marketing campaigns. It is essential to explore means to drive quality traffic to your website, this would help to improve your ranking on search engines (if done properly). You can start with as little as $50 advertising budget per month if you are on a tight budget. Trust me, it worth your every penny, because as you drive quality traffic to your website for your “focus keywords”, your keywords quality score improves, and if done consistently, chances are your webpages will rank high on search engines. Anyway, creating an ad is one aspect of it, optimising the ad copy is another aspect which is very crucial. You want to make sure that your focus keywords are relevant to their target webpages. If your focus keywords are not relevant to the target webpages, search engines i.e. Google would dock your website as a result. Simply put, avoid attracting visitors that would end up bouncing from your website, hence why it is necessary to create relevant ads. I can’t stress enough the importance of creating relevant ads. Furthermore, utilise social media platforms to promote your business. Create an ad on Facebook to promote your business webpages. The amount of time people spend on social media platforms these days is overwhelming, hence why you need to utilise this medium as an opportunity to grow your business.

Google Search Console

Sign in to Google search console and get familiar with the basics. Follow the instruction on how to improve your search presence. If this is too technical for you, ask your website developer or digital marketing specialist to assist you in setting it up. This tool will not only give you insights in regards to your site’s performance, but will also guide you through on how to resolve any issue that would affect the performance of your website.

Google Analytics

Sign in to Google analytics and follow the set-up process. This tool would help you track important metrics such as conversion, customer engagement, page views etc. You can monitor the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns, contents on your websites and user experience with this tool. Basically, you want to know which areas you need to improve on, once you identify the areas, you can apply a solution.

Closing Thoughts

Don’t be overwhelmed by the process outlined above, remember Rome was not built in a day. Begin now, apply this result-driven digital marketing plan to your business, be consistent and follow the process judiciously – I guarantee your business will grow and succeed online.

All the best!

How to Find the Best Digital Marketing Agency

In order to find the best digital marketing agency, first, we need to understand “what is digital marketing”, “will digital marketing benefit your business” and answer the question “how do I get more leads for my business?” – which should be the purpose of any marketing.

What is a Digital Marketing Agency?

The dictionary definition of Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. So simple to summarise in one sentence, yet it can be a complicated process to get right and to ensure that all of your digital marketing is working together, not as silo activities. This is where the expertise and experience of the best digital marketing agencies can be hugely beneficial.

Traditional advertising, newspapers and paper directories, such as Yellow Pages, are increasingly less effective for businesses. Whilst a few years ago people would go to a computer to search for a product or service, nowadays people are connected to the internet all day, every day and “live online”. Looking for information, a product or service is as quick and simple as searching on a laptop or computer at work or picking up their mobile telephone or tablet. Digital marketing focuses on getting your information, products and services in front of people when they are looking online. The best digital agencies understand the buying process of your products and services and ensure that your information is prominent to the potential customer at the appropriate time. In the digital marketing world, the various stages of the buying process i.e. research, consideration and purchase are called “micro-moments” and the very best digital marketing agency will present the relevant information, service or product at the targeted time in the buying process.

Whilst some digital marketing agencies will also create and manage traditional advertising or business marketing, such as newspaper advertising, specialist digital marketing agencies will concentrate on online marketing as opposed to “marketing companies” who commonly concentrate on TV, radio and print marketing.

Regardless if your business is business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), digital marketing can be a fast, often instant, and reliable way of getting leads into your business and driving up revenue. The very best digital marketing agencies will manage all of the digital advertising based on return on investment (ROI) ensuring the leads generated are at a cost that makes business sense and increases profit levels. Digital marketing will benefit your business and answers the question “how do I get more leads for my business”?

Digital marketing, sometimes referred to as website marketing, can be broken down into a number of important features and services:

SEO Services

Search engine optimisation, most commonly abbreviated to “SEO”, is the process of getting your website found on search engines like Google when people make a search relevant to your business, services or products.

Regardless if your website is e-Commerce or selling services it will drive leads and sales into your business if it is found for the search terms people use (often referred to as “keywords”) to look for them in Google.

SEO requires experience and understanding of how Google reads your website. What messages and information you want Google to read for a webpage or website and knowing where to place that information so search engines can find it. A good SEO company will have a proven track record of ranking websites high in the search results.

SEO works best when the proven methods of obtaining rankings are applied in conjunction with latest trends that are driving traffic. An example of this is the “near me” phenomenon, which has seen a 150% growth in the last 12 months, where mobile phone users are adding “near me” to their search query i.e. “SEO Company near me”. These customers are looking to buy and buy from a local service or product supplier.

Although SEO can be a stand-alone service, it is most effective when combined with PPC, social media and reputation marketing. SEO is also the cornerstone of effective PPC, social media and reputation management campaigns.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click (PPC) often referred to as “Google Advertising” or “online advertising” is where you position adverts at the top of the search results for specific search terms. These search terms can be the words people use when in the “research” phase of making a purchase or targeted at the “buying keywords” when potential customers are looking to buy.

Although your advert, depending on your budget, can be shown every time a search is made, you only pay when an internet user clicks on your advert and is taken to your website or calls you direct from the search results page meaning you only pay when you get a click from a potential customer hence the name for this form of marketing of Pay Per Click (often abbreviated to PPC).

How much you pay for each click is determined by a few factors. The “cost per click” (abbreviated to CPC) is determined by the quality and relevancy of the advert to the search term being used and the relevancy of the page on your website that the potential customer land on. These factors contribute to your overall “quality score”. The higher your quality score, the less you pay per click and less you pay per lead into your business.

In the UK, Google has the vast majority of search traffic and most of your budget should be placed their, however, you will not want to miss the smaller, yet still considerable potential for customers from search engines like Microsoft’s Bing platform, and a small part of the budget should be allocated to other search engines. Also, the very best PPC management companies will also discuss spreading your PPC budget over a number of campaigns aimed at different parts of the customer journey. A small part of the budget should be allocated to the research stage of the buying process when people are using broad search terms to find information, a small part of the budget when people are searching for yours, your competitors or market leaders company name. The majority of the budget when potential customers are using search terms directly related to making a purchase and lastly, a small part of the budget to re-market (show your advertising to people who have shown an interest in your services or products by visiting your website) to capture and drive up conversions from the customers previously advertised too.

The best PPC Agency will be a Google Premier Partner. A Google Premier Partner status indicates that the company has a proven track record in delivering high-quality campaigns, which generate good competitive/low CPC’s and deliver high and positive ROI’s. The very best PPC agency will have a robust PPC management process in place to quickly react and capitalise on changes in the PPC campaigns of your competitors.

Unlike SEO, that can take some time to be fully effective, Pay Per Click is instant in the fact that as soon as your campaigns are live they can be generating leads for your business.

PPC is highly effective when carried out in unison with SEO. A well-optimised website will improve the quality score of your Google advertising campaigns resulting in a reduced “cost per click” meaning you get more leads for your budget.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are now legitimate places for a business to attract leads. Facebook has over 38 MILLION active and regular users in the UK and the number is anticipated to rise to over 42 MILLION by 2020. Regardless if your business sells to consumers or other businesses, your potential customers are on Facebook and using it often.

Facebook is excellent at raising awareness during the customers “research” stage, reminding them of your services or products during the “consideration” stage and putting your specific products in front of potential customers at the “buying” stage. With such a large audience and the flexibility to target customers throughout the buying process, Facebook can be a good avenue to generate leads and sales and to deliver a great return on investment.

A good digital marketing agency will have a proven track record in delivering highly effective Facebook advertising campaigns. The very best digital marketing agencies will be able to demonstrate the conversion rate and cost per lead of your social media marketing.

Again, social media marketing and specifically Facebook marketing can be carried out as a stand-alone activity however it works so much better when combined with SEO and/or PPC. When a potential customer visits your website their computer is marked as having visited. This then allows you to target the user of that computer, who has shown an interest in your products or services.

Reputation Management

When considering making a purchase, a potential customer will scour the internet to find feedback and reviews from previous customers. Your online marketing and sales can live or die by the reviews for your business, services or products. Ensuring that positive reviews are easy to find and that any negative feedback is managed well, can be a huge benefit to your conversion rate.

Digital marketing companies call this “reputation management” or “online reputation management” however, in reality, it is creating systems to generate customer reviews and customer feedback ensuing positive customer satisfaction is captured and easy to find for potential customers.

Many businesses are concerned with allowing the public the ability to openly provide feedback. You cannot please all of the people all of the time, and companies worry that a bad review will have a negative impact on their business. Firstly, if someone is determined to leave a bad review for your business they will find a platform to do so and there are 1000’s of platforms to choose from. It is better to have control of where customers are encouraged to leave a review. Secondly, a poor or bad review, if managed well, can be a positive for your business. Engaging with a bad review highlights that you care about feedback and subsequently, you care about your customers. One well managed bad review can be as good for your business ten good reviews.

A good digital marketing company will use one of the handful of recognised review platform and provide the tools and means of allowing you to capture, manage and respond to customer reviews.

3 Things You Should Do To Be Successful In Digital Marketing

According to the latest research report, businesses will spend over $77.4 billion on digital marketing. As a small company, you don’t have much money to hire a high-flying digital marketing company to market your business-you have to do the work yourself. To stay ahead in the game you need to do a number of things:

Focus on both social media and search engines

The easiest way of advertising your business online is using Google Ads. Most of the people go for search engine advertising but you shouldn’t limit yourself to it. You should also try and take advantage of social media. When creating a social media advertising campaign, target customers within your city or community where your store is located. This is to avoid spending unnecessary amounts of money. Doing so also increases the conversion rates. To do this, you should include keywords that are specific to your business. It’s also highly recommended that you include your business address.

Pump up the ranking of your site

While Google Ads provide you with almost instant results as once you use the right keywords and ad text you start driving traffic to your site instantly, you shouldn’t forget about your site. Daily, you should focus on improving the ranking of your site. In addition to adding high-quality content, you should also aim at getting as many high-quality links as possible.

The easiest way of building high-quality links is creating high quality, shareable content. The most effective form of content that has been used for years is infographics. Once people share the infographics on their site, you get high quality backlinks that pump up your ranking.

Focus on mobile

Studies show that 80% of internet users use their mobile phones. Since you will be advertising your business over the internet, you should pay a lot of emphasis on mobile phones. The first thing that you should do is ensure that the design of your website is mobile friendly. In addition to this ensuring that your users have a great experience, it also aids in increasing the ranking of your site. You should also create apps, features, and functions that will help your users to have a great experience.

Conclusion

These are the things that you need to do to be successful in digital marketing. To give your customers what they want you should first take your time to research and understand them. Understand what they like and how they like the Adverts delivered.

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