Digital Marketing - What is it and what jobs are there?

However, what digital marketing means more precisely can vary depending on which platforms and channels you use for your business.In this text I will go through what digital marketing is and who benefits from digital marketing and why.

I will also describe what SEO and SEM are and how it works.

Finally, I will also give you an overview of the important areas of responsibility in digital marketing so that you know how to build a team that is responsible for this.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing refers, just as the name suggests, to marketing that takes place digitally. More precisely, it is about marketing via various digital platforms and digital channels.

It is therefore the marketing you do to reach your customers via the computer, mobile phone or tablet. You can use these devices to place your ads via social media or build them into various websites and the website's services.

Online presence

If you're into internet marketing, you're probably familiar with or have heard of terms like web ads, search engine optimization and positioning, affiliate websites, and email marketing.

It is of course also possible to see your e-marketing as a complement to your more traditional advertising campaigns, as your digital marketing operates in fields apart from the traditional marketing channels, such as newspapers, TV and the public space.

For example, see here how Nike uses a large pool ball as part of their marketing.

Using digital marketing channels to reach your customers thus enables you to reach more and/or different types of audiences than those who would otherwise have come into contact with your more traditional campaigns.

How social media interacts with your digital marketingWhen using social media for your digital marketing, some of the most common networks to use are Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and blogs. See here an example of how ads are placed on Facebook.The biggest advantage for you to use social channels for your digital marketing is that you can reach out to your potential customers and also create a relationship with them.

This has its explanation in the nature of social media – that they are interactive platforms. The interactive contact you create with your potential customers gives them an experience of closeness, as you can communicate with them in a very fast and efficient way.

You can also give individuals an opportunity to closely follow all the news regarding your company by sharing it in all your social platforms. See here how we at Viseo use our LinkedIn profile to communicate about our webinars.

Digital marketing with influencers

In recent years, you have also had the opportunity to use influencers to market your goods and services.

An influencer is a person who is active on social media and who has the opportunity to reach out to - and above all influence - a number of other people who follow this influencer in various digital channels.

As influencers have often built up a network around their channels, their name can also be seen as a brand in itself. A company that has succeeded well with this is the Swedish brand Daniel Wellington.

If you and your company want to work with an influencer who is followed by many people who could be your potential customers, it means that together you create a specific perception about your products and services.

When this performance is then communicated by the influencer, it is perceived as credible and genuine by those who follow and have a close relationship with the influencer in question.

This becomes a way to put your products or services in a context that your potential customers can then see in, and hopefully want, in their own lives.

Who benefits from digital marketing and why?

In some cases, you may need to differentiate between traditional marketing, also called outbound marketing, and digital marketing, also called inbound marketing.This is important as both the platforms and strategies you will use in the two options differ.

Simply described, you use traditional marketing to actively spread information via advertising and advertisements via, for example, regular mail to your potential customers.

There, no special selection is made for who is defined as potential customers, but it covers pretty much everyone.

Traditional marketing can lead to you getting new customers, and thus increased sales. However, it is important that you pay attention not to make anyone angry with you and your brand as you can also send offers to people who are not interested in your business.

Let me summarize: when you use digital marketing, it's not about getting as many people as possible to find your channels - on the contrary, it's about getting the right people there.

By the right people, I mean the people who are actively searching and looking for what your company offers.It is then these people you can build a relationship with and ultimately sell your goods or services to.

The four important stages of digital marketing

1. Attract your potential customers to visit your website or other digital platforms

Make sure the right people find your website and your other digital platforms. This usually happens because a person has found your business after searching for information on a search engine.

The people who end up on your website from a search engine have used a specific keyword to find what they are looking for. It is therefore important that your website contains the information that the person in question wants to see.

If your page does not have that information, the person will leave your page and look further. In the worst case, they may instead find one of your competitors who is better at answering the question.

2. Create a strong bond between your visitors and your company

Once one of your potential customers has found your website, the next step is to create a bond and relationship with your business and what you offer.

One way could be, for example, that your visitors can leave their email address so that you can send them newsletters.

You can encourage visitors to give you their email addresses by, for example, offering a discount.

3. Convert your visitors and potential customers into actual customers

After you've established an initial relationship with your visitors, it's time to convert them into customers. There are a number of different strategies you can use to achieve this.

Some examples are CRM, marketing automation and closed-loop reporting.

The visitors you manage to convert into customers, you can then try to continue selling to so that they become so-called repeat customers.

A good tip is to send them offers on products that you know they have bought before.

4. Use your customers as a marketing channel

If you succeed in converting visitors to customers and eventually to repeat customers, while building a close relationship with them, there is a high chance that your customers will recommend your company to their friends.

This is an important marketing channel for you as it costs you little and probably brings in many new customers to your business.

What is SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization, which means search engine optimization. It is a collective name for the strategy you use to ensure that your website ends up high among the thousands of search results that appear in the search engines.

If we use the example again to “Build a Porch” you will see that over 90,000 results appear.

Search engines work by ranking web pages using different algorithms, with results that are thought to be most relevant coming to the top in descending order.

By search engine optimizing the content on your website, in line with the existing algorithms, you can thus influence the position your website receives in search engines.

There are different ways in which you can apply search engine optimization, and it can be done both on your own page but also through other pages. This is called On Page methods and Off Page methods respectively.

On Page methods

On Page aims, among other things, to create content on your pages that is relevant and that makes it easy for people who have searched for an exact phrase to find your page.

It can also be about using keywords and placing them in well-chosen places in your texts, for example early in your text, in headings or early in a sentence.

Here you see one of the articles that ranks highest for "Building a porch". You see there how that keyword recurs several times already at the beginning of the text.

If you use images on the page, it is beneficial to always write a relevant image caption to it so that people can search for your page with words, even if they only remember what the image showed.

It can also be good to link to other parts of your website internally in your texts so that several keywords in your text can match those that your potential customers are looking for in the search engines.

Off Page methods

Off Page is about having your website linked from similar pages, where the person who finds the website may think that both websites contain relevant information.

You can do this both through links in text, direct links but also by including a link to your website in the signature on, for example, various forums.

In some cases, you can also link your page via other platforms in order to increase your page's indexing.

What is SEM?

SEM means search engine marketing and the abbreviation comes from the English Search Engine Marketing. If you use SEM to market your products or services, you use paid activities to increase your exposure in search engines.

Det kan till exempel handla om annonser av olika slag, vilket gör att din sida syns överst i sökmotorn och kan göra så att personer klickar sig in på din hemsidan på grund av den anledningen.

Syftet med SEM är att dina kunder ska hitta till dina sida och köpa de varor eller tjänster som du erbjuder. SEM påverkar inte den organiska relevansen som din sida anses ha enligt sökmotorernas algoritmer.

Therefore, you can of course also use SEO to influence this. Below you will see both paid and organic search results.

Different jobs and roles within digital marketing

Because of how complex digital marketing is, it can be beneficial to have a dedicated person in charge. You can hire digital marketers as a freelancer, as a consultant or employ them in your company.

One reason to have someone in charge of your digital marketing is that search engine algorithms change from time to time, so it's important to keep yourself up-to-date if you want to continue to be successful with your digital marketing

Some examples of jobs within a digital marketing agency are SEO and SEM specialist and SEO and SEM manager. Below is a brief description of what these jobs entail.

SEO Specialist

An SEO specialist is a person who works with digital marketing that is focused on search engine optimization, text content, web development, internet marketing and search engine advertising.If you work at a larger company, it is common for an SEO specialist to be part of a work team that may also include marketing coordinators and web developers.

However, you can also hire an SEO Specialist as a consultant.