Digital Marketing Tips for Online Marketing Success

 The 20 digital marketing tips outlined below will dramatically increase your chances of succeeding online.

The list is by no means complete but it’s a good starting point for beginners to digital marketing.

What is Digital Marketing?

Before digging right into the online marketing tips, let me first explain what is digital marketing for those that are new to this term.

Digital marketing is a broad term that includes all marketing channels and methods you can use to promote products or services on the Internet but also on electronic devices such as TVs, mobile phones, and electronic billboards.

Online marketing has a number of pillars but the most important are:

• Website marketing
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Mobile marketing
• Banner advertising

Digital Marketing Tips

20 highly practical digital marketing tips for small businesses.

• Use your own domain
• Use VPS hosting
• Create a professional website
• Make your website load as fast as possible
• Spend time on SEO
• Spend money on PPC
• Don’t forget about Bing Ads
• Start with a low advertising budget and grow profitable
• Build your presence social networks related to your business
• Don’t over-promote your business and services
• Use paid advertising
• Publish good and original content
• Create a content calendar
• Promote your content
• Use email marketing
• Build an email list from the beginning
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
• Don’t forget mobile apps
• Buy advertising space
• Keep improving your digital marketing campaigns

As you can see from the image above, each component of digital marketing is a huge chapter on its own.

Nevertheless, I will try below to summarize the most important digital marketing tips for each component so that you increase your chances of successful online marketing.

Website Marketing Tips

1. Use your own domain

Buy a domain name that is relevant for your business and use it to build your brand. The recommended extension is a .com or .net. Keep the domain name short (max 3 words) and avoid having spaces.

Before you register a domain name, search for the name on Google and make sure that no other business exists with a similar domain. If there is, try to find something unique because otherwise, it will be very difficult to promote your brand and rank high for related searches.

2. Use VPS hosting

Website hosting plays an important role in the success of your website. Your website should be hosted on a fast and secure server. Avoid using shared hosting solutions. They may be cheaper but having your website hosted with a bunch of other websites is dangerous.

On a shared hosting environment, you share the same IP address with other sites and if they are involved in spammy actions, it will have a negative impact on your website as well.

Spending $20-$40 a month for your own virtual private server is not that much compared to the benefits you get. Choose an SEO friendly web hosting company and make sure that your website is secure with a valid SSL certificate and the software is up-to-date.

3. Create a professional website

When you start a website, spend some time thinking about your site structure and functionality. A professional website is not characterized by its ‘looks’ but with how easy it is to use on all devices.

Identify the purpose of having a website and make sure that this is reflected in the design. Don’t forget that a website represents your brand and it should be something you’re proud of.

4. Make your website load as fast as possible

Page Speed is an important usability and ranking factor. Try to make your website as fast as possible by avoiding unnecessary graphics or other cosmetic elements. Test your website speed using the Google PageSpeed Insights tool and follow their recommendations.

Resources to Learn More about Website Marketing

• Website Marketing – The Complete Strategy Guide.

Search Engine Marketing Tips

5. Spend time on SEO

SEO is not a once-off process but something that you have to do as an ongoing process. If you are not sure how to do it, go through an SEO certification. It’s the best way to learn SEO and optimize your website.

SEO will help your website get found on Google for related searches. Online businesses that can do SEO successfully, are more likely to grow and withstand the pressure from other online competitors.

Resources to Learn More About SEO

• How to become an SEO Expert – The steps to follow to learn SEO and become an expert.
• SEO Checklist – A comprehensive SEO checklist that covers all areas of SEO.

6. Spend money on PPC

Pay per click platforms (think Google Ads) are great because they can generate targeted traffic to your website fast.

If you are serious about your digital marketing, PPC should be part of your monthly budget.

7. Don’t forget Bing Ads

Google Ads is the most popular platform for PPC advertising but there are also other platforms like Bing ads that can get you good results with less budget.

Bing is the second most popular search engine and something worth testing as part of your overall online marketing strategy.

8. Start with a low advertising budget and grow profitable

Once you start with PPC, don’t put all your money from the beginning but start slow, optimize your campaigns, and make them profitable and then increase your budgets.

A common mistake made by many digital marketing specialists is to spend all their budget on campaigns without first testing the waters with one or more pilot campaigns.

Social Media Marketing Tips

9. Build your presence in social networks related to your business

There are a lot of social networks available and you don’t have to use them all. Select the ones that are related to your business and potential customers and concentrate on those.

The table below shows the demographics of each network and you can use this as your guide.

Social Media Platforms Demographics.

10. Don’t over-promote your business and services

Social media networks are not about business but it’s about people, so make sure that you don’t over-promote your business or services but instead try to make your pages useful with content that may interest your readers.

11. Use paid advertising

Getting social media followers for your business it’s harder than you think. People like to follow other people and interesting pages and not ‘business’ pages that try to sell them something.

So, the easiest way for you to get your business page in front of a lot of people and increase your chances of getting new followers is to use advertising.

Facebook has an advertising platform for businesses that allows you to run different types of campaigns and target a specific audience based on their Facebook activity, location, device, and demographic information.

Content Marketing Tips

12. Publish good and original content

Digital marketing is about content, whether this is text, images, videos, or audio you need good and original content for your website and social media pages. Without a content marketing plan is like walking with your eyes and ears closed.

What is good content for a digital marketing campaign?

• It’s content that users want to read either because it satisfies their intent or because they find it interesting.
• It’s content that is unique, thorough, and well-researched.

13. Create a content calendar

There is a huge competition on anything you plan to do online so you have to be ready to perform better than the competition by publishing better and more content than they do.

It’s not exactly a quantities came (quality is still more important) but it does play an important role.

14. Promote your content

Publishing good content is very important but it’s also important to promote your content and bring it in front of the eyes of the right people (these are the people that are likely to become your potential customers and also more likely to re-share your content).

Resources to Learn More About Content Marketing

• Content Ideas – How to find topic ideas for your content marketing campaigns
• Content Marketing Courses – a list of courses dedicated to content marketing techniques and strategies.

Email Marketing Tips

15. Use email marketing

Email still converts better than other sources – Despite the dominance of social networks, email still performs better than most of the digital marketing channels. A targeted email list is likely to generate more profit than a targeted social media campaign.

16. Build an email list from the beginning

If you are starting now make sure that an email list is part of your plans. Give incentives to people to give you their emails and make sure that you don’t spam them but send them information that is useful to them.

Resources to Learn More About Email Marketing

• What is email marketing? An introduction to email marketing for beginners. Explains in a simple language how email marketing works.

Mobile Marketing Tips

17. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Although you don’t have to make your website responsive, a responsive website has more advantages than having a mobile and a desktop version. It is actually recommended by Google as the best approach to mobile websites and it is also a hot trend in the digital marketing industry.

The first step is to test your website using the mobile-friendly tool and fix any issues.

18. Don’t forget mobile apps

Besides having a mobile-friendly website, do not forget that your users and potential customers are searching and downloading apps (like crazy) from Google Play, Apple Store, and Amazon. If you want to be found in those stores, you need to develop and submit your own native apps.

Banner Advertising Tips

19. Buy advertising space

While PPC is the easiest and most effective way to reach customers, sometimes it is just better to find a website that has the traffic you want and contact them to buy advertising space. This way you keep the middle man out and this makes both you and the publisher happy.

20. Keep improving your digital marketing campaigns

Digital Marketing does not have a start and end date. Your efforts should be continuous and the opportunities are endless.

A PPC or social media campaign may have a start and end date but your digital marketing efforts don’t. The opportunities for promoting your business online are endless and the above 20 digital marketing tips are just a very quick summary of what you can do in each area.

The best way to get a complete picture of how to use digital marketing to the fullest is to enroll in a digital marketing course. Good courses will guide you step-by-step on how to take advantage of all online marketing techniques and practices to grow your business.

What else can you add to the list? What do you think are the most important digital marketing tips that a beginner should know about?