Digital Marketing: SEO linked to profitability.

Digital marketing is important to me in my sole proprietorship business ventures to increase brand awareness and site traffic to create a buzz around a new small business with limited resources. With that being said digital marketing is more cost effective than putting an ad in the newspaper, having your information broadcasted on the radio, designing and purchasing billboards in precise locations, or getting aired on your local network.

According to Mail Chimp Digital Marketing is “the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication.” With digital marketing, and social media in general, you are able to communicate in real time – with little to no lag, outside of people being busy with their personal lives.

As of April 2022, 5 billion people are internet users. Digital communication is relatively affordable, considering the various phone companies and plans available to any and all in practically any situation – as contactless phone plans and services exist. At a basic level, once you’ve obtained your phone, bought the plan, and activated the service – you are able to go to the app store and download one of the many free social media platforms: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Then, after you’ve created your account you can add or follow people, and can begin engaging, creating, and posting content to build your following and audience organically.

In digital marketing you have quick and easy access to any and all information regarding your businesses metrics and demographics from an audience and engagement standpoint. The SEO is a tool that connects individuals with your page organically via basic search results on platforms like Google. Understanding the SEO will allow the company to create targeted packages to groups and subgroups alike. Understanding your companies niche, or where you fit in society in general, is a crucial tool in maximizing effectiveness and efficiency.

There is a “art and science” of maximizing the SEO optimization because there are many contributing factors to achieve such a high ranking within the search optimization pages like: quality of engagement, level of engagement, mobile friendliness, and number and quality of inbound links.

In content marketing, or the distribution of relevant and valuable information: blog post, e-book. newsletter. video and audio transcripts, white graph, info graphs. Consumers want entertaining and helpful content and experience. Content marketing is a very valuable skill to have – as it takes a lot of brain power paired with creatively addressing social norms.

There are a few different marketing styles or techniques that are very popular these days. Including: pay-per-click marketing, affiliate marketing, native advertising, influencer marketing, marketing automation, email marketing, and mobile marketing. Pay-per-click marketing refers to when the company pays fees for consumers clicking on their ads. Affiliate marketing allows the independent promoter to make money off of promoting a companies goods or services. Native advertising is when your company blends it’s message, product, or service into it’s surroundings – as an easter egg for its consumers. Influencer marketing is a tactic that focuses more on exposure opposed to monetary gain from promoting a business products or services. Marketing automation uses software to improve efficiency and relevancy of marketing tactics. With email marketing, you are essentially taking a shot in the dark as you are sending out promotional content or materials with the hope that it makes it to their inbox opposed to spam and that they read and interact with the email received by your company. Lastly, mobile marketing allows for direct communication on their consumers laptops or tablets via SMS – data rates may apply.

With SEO you are also able to track your campaigns performance. So when you are toggling between different campaign styles to see which fits your business and audiences profitability and engagement. Profitability, according to On Digital Marketing, is “a set of financial metrics that are applied to a business’s capability to make money, after all expenses and other costs have been subtracted over a specific period of time.”

When the profitability of a business is in review specialists are looking at the amount you made for a sale while subtracting all costs associated with producing said product. Businesses tend to struggle a bit with determining profitability. This is a hinderance when it comes time to forming a strategy to increase the profitability of a business. Although, there are a few questions or things to note to help guide you along the way of understanding what, where, and how profitability fits into your business.

For instance, “core metrics like customer acquisition (how much does it cost us to get a customer?), customer lifetime value (how much do we make over the lifetime of that customer?) tend to get ignored or quite frankly, the company can be too lazy to really dig in and find good answers to these questions. The bigger the company and its offerings, the more challenging it can be to identify such objectives.”

In conclusion, when looking at Digital Marketing you are taking into consideration a wide variety of information to consolidate and condense in the most effective and efficient manner. Utilizing tools like SEO paired with various marketing tactics or ploys to understand and increase profitability.