Beginner's Guide: How to Start Digital Marketing Right Now

Email marketing is much more common than many people think, with Business Dasher reporting that 64% of small businesses use it to get ahead. However, people can use many other methods to enter the online marketing world. So, what if you want to learn how to start digital marketing today?

Below, we discuss some of the beginner marketing strategies you should use to get involved in this arena, addressing challenges you might meet, including:

• Limited budget
• Lack of expertise and experience
• How to set objectives
• The best ways to track success

Follow these digital marketing basics to empower you to drive your online visibility and generate leads long into the future.

How to Start Digital Marketing

One of the first things you must do when starting online marketing is understand the key terms and concepts involved. One of the most critical steps, reading up about the subject, you are doing by simply reading this sentence, so you are on the right track.

Some of the concepts you need to investigate include:

SEO: Optimizing your website for search engines to easily understand them and be more likely to rank you higher.

PPC: Paying for each click on your ad.

Content marketing: Building content to drive engagement for a specific audience.

These are only a few concepts you will need to understand, and knowing more about each one ensures a more holistic comprehension of what you need to do in the sphere. For example, learning how SEO works can help you avoid overspending your budget by appealing to specific search engine keywords and allowing you to focus your content on website changes that have the biggest bang for your buck.

You should also start learning how to engage in multichannel campaigns. These involve creating marketing strategies that focus on more than a single channel and instead might use areas of communication such as:

• Email
• Social media
• Direct mail
• Digital ads

An example would be combining a digital ad with a follow-up direct mail to help re-engage the person who may have originally seen you via email but thought they would return later.

Broadening your outreach like this is twofold. First of all, it has the possibility of reaching many more people. It also reinforces your message among those who already might see it, ensuring your brand appears as much like an authority in your industry as possible. 

Define Your Objectives and Pinpoint Your Market

You should start your process by establishing clear objectives that define what you can aim at in the coming days.Examples of this would be:

• Generating a set number of leads
• Boosting sales by a specific amount
• Tracking a specific number of website visitors per day
• Reaching a target of social media post likes or views

In general, try to use SMART criteria to structure these goals. These are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant

Doing this ensures that you are performing practical steps to drive yourself towards specific goals and can focus your budget constraints on these quantifiable actions and nothing more. You can then also use this data to pivot later on to try to improve during your next iteration. 

Don't underestimate the data you collect, either, as West Virginia University states that 87% of marketers believe data is an underutilized resource. Knowing more about your business and market will help you to grow.

Targeting Your Marketing for Focused Efforts

Make sure to gather as much demographic detail about your customers as possible, including their:

• Age
• Income
• Job roles
• Hobbies and interests
• Social media preferences

You can then use this information to help you avoid wasting your effort by trying to target audiences in the wrong place.

So, create "buyer personas" that detail each segment's needs and challenges. If they have unique pain points that you can leverage to get a sale, do so. These enable you to create tailored messages that resonate more deeply with the people they aim for.

Over time, you can then refine these audience segments through analysis to ensure that your messaging remains both relevant and effective.

Create a Powerful Online Presence

Developing an SEO-optimized website that is more likely to convert people into users. Choose a platform that you can scale and is easy to update, such as WordPress or Shopify. Then, use SEO best practices by researching and incorporating relevant keywords into your website that match what users search for when looking for a product or service like yours.

For this reason, it's also essential to build up valuable content on your website. You want people to visit and stay there to learn something important you can teach them. You can then finish any piece of content with a clear call-to-action that drives them to your website in such a way as to make them more likely to buy what you offer.

Then, regularly audit your website and perform performance tests to ensure the site remains fully optimized and effective for users. Change up the content you make, too, based on what you learn about your audience and their needs.

Bring it Home with Multiple Methods of Reaching Customers

Leverage social media and email to create and share engaging content that users find entertaining or valuable.Doing this can help you complement your business image by appearing like an industry leader that is truly helpful. By developing deeply engaging content, you create a real connection with an audience that will start to rely on you as a valuable source of information who offers useful products.

You can automate much of your outreach effort. Entrepreneur even reports that 90% of businesses recognize how much automation can help them, but using it well may require self-teaching to ensure it matches your specific needs. 

Start Your Digital Marketing Journey Today

Do you still need to know more about how to start digital marketing? Start by setting clear objectives and building a stronger online presence, then integrate multichannel efforts, and you will be much more likely to drive success than ever. Then, focus your efforts on those most likely to push you towards more conversions.

If you want more digital marketing tips, contact us at Taradel and discover how we can drive your customer growth with direct mail connections alongside many other marketing efforts. With our decades of experience, we can help you ensure long-term growth.