What Is Digital Marketing? A Guide to Marketing in Today’s Digital World

Digidaze is a digital marketing agency in Maryland that offers digital marketing services to small to medium sized Maryland businesses. We are a full-service digital marketing agency in MD providing a host of in-house digital marketing agency services. In this article – What Is Digital Marketing? A Guide to Marketing in Today’s Digital World – we’ll explain digital marketing mediums and how businesses can take advantage of today’s digital technologies to move business forward.

In the world of business development and branding today, digital marketing and digital advertising rule. So just what is digital marketing and how can we use it to grow our business?

Digital Marketing Defined

Digital marketing is the advertising and promotion of businesses and their brands through digital media channels. Digital media, at the moment, includes websites, social media, radio, television, mobile and even forms of traditionally non-digital media such as billboards and transit signs. Essentially any marketing media that is delivered electronically is considered digital marketing.

This leaves only various forms of person-to-person (P2P) marketing, print advertising and direct marketing outside of the digital marketing umbrella. Even then, print ads, direct mail, print directories, billboards and posters are all starting to connect to their digital counterparts. With items like URL landing pages, QR codes, web banner advertising, online directories and text codes, traditional marketing and advertising almost always has a digital marketing connection.

Why Focus on Digital Marketing?

The shift to all digital marketing is being driven by marketing agencies, business owners and consumers alike. The ever-increasing demand to show quantifiable results makes digital marketing a dream for the digital marketing agency. Most digital media, including websites, social media and mobile advertising is much easier to track than traditional marketing media such as print advertising.

For business owners, many forms of digital advertising are very low cost. Having a web presence, engaging customers in conversations through social media and e-mail marketing are low cost alternatives to print advertising and direct mail. These digital marketing channels are available to businesses of any size, and help to even the playing field for start-ups, small businesses and independent consultants seeking new business.
For consumers, the fast pace of life makes digital advertising a must. When consumers are in need of goods and services, gone are the days of thumbing through a phonebook to find them. Now, we whip out our mobile devices or head to our computers for answers – and we find them fast.

Using Digital Marketing to Build Your Business and Brand

No matter what size your business is – large or small to medium sized business / enterprise (SMB or SME) – you can effectively market your business through low-cost digital channels.

Website

The foundation of your digital marketing efforts will be your website. Invest wisely in your website, and be sure that it does the following:
- Adequately represents your business and brand (look and feel, messaging)
- Adequately speaks to your target audience
- Can be found by searchers on top search engines
- Is up-to-date and easily navigable
- Provides multiple channels for customer communication
- Connects to other marketing efforts

It is recommended that you work with a professional web design firm that is skilled in web development and search engine optimization. Because your website is the foundation to and from which all other digital marketing channels will lead, it should be considered one of your top business investments. The good news is, a good website doesn’t need to cost tens of thousands of dollars. See our previous post:‘What a Good Website Should Cost’.

E-mail and Social Media Marketing

Once you have your website complete, the next steps would be to launch regular monthly or bi-monthly e-mail campaigns, and connect with customers via social media. If you are truly on a shoestring budget, these are efforts that can be done in-house (by someone with the proper knowledge) or for a low cost by an outside digital marketing agency. Be sure that all of your efforts lead customers back to your website where they can fully engage with your business, products and services, and choose they channel through which they contact you.

Search Engine Marketing

If you’re interested in getting aggressive with search marketing, you can set aside some digital marketing dollars for search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. Many businesses today rely heavily on being found online to gain new customers. A common misconception among business owners is that simply having a website means that customers will find it. Not so. Your site must be built with specific key words and phrases, meta data, page content and linking strategies that will help it reach top search rankings.

Because many key words and phrases have stiff competition for top search rankings, you will need to supplement your organic search engine optimization efforts with pay-per-click advertising. Getting established with pay-per-click advertising campaigns can be a little daunting, but with a little time, effort and instruction, that too can be accomplished in-house, or for a reasonable cost through an outside digital marketing agency.

Beyond e-mail, social media marketing and search engine marketing, you can venture into a host of other digital marketing efforts. Mobile advertising, radio, television, electronic billboards and much more are available as digital marketing outlets. Whatever digital marketing efforts you choose, they should all connect and tie into your foundation – your company website.

If you have the means, a wise investment would be to engage the services of a digital marketing agency to assist in your digital marketing efforts. Today, many digital marketing agencies offer multiple levels of service to accommodate businesses large and small.

Digidaze is a digital marketing agency in Maryland that offers digital marketing services to small to medium sized Maryland businesses. As a full-service digital marketing agency in MD we provide a host of in-house digital marketing agency services.
Connect with Digidaze – Your Maryland Digital Marketing Agency – on Facebook at www.facebook.com/digidaze, on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/digidaze, on Twitter at www.twitter.com/digidazenow and blogging right here.

What Should a Website Cost? What Small to Mid-Size Businesses Can Expect to Pay for a Good Website

One thing you find when you’re an Internet marketing professional is that there is a huge discrepancy in what business owners think a website should cost. I am often astounded to discover that business owners think they can get a decent website built for a few hundred dollars. Maybe it’s the ‘big box’ Internet service providers of the world advertising that they can get your business up and running with a ‘quality website’ for just a few bucks a month. Or maybe you heard that a friend of a friend got his done for less than $500, and that price is stuck in your head. Whatever it is, I am here to say that it’s not realistic to budget just a few hundred dollars for one of the most important parts of your business. Or wise.

Back in the day, you’d pay thousands – even tens of thousands – of dollars on phone book ads for your business, wouldn’t you? I’ve seen SMALL businesses that were paying upwards of $30K per year or more on phone book advertising. Insane! But that was your primary source of new business, so at the time it made sense. I guess. The good news is, your website has now replaced that medium for gaining new business, and is a hell of a lot less expensive. No printing, no delivery, no ad sales reps to pay – yeah, that’ll save a few bucks. But although we are living in a virtual world, a good website doesn’t come for free.

Having your website built is just like anything else in life. You get what you pay for. The bottom line is that websites – done right – take time. And time is money. Can you go out and get a website for a few hundred bucks? Maybe. But you’d better believe that it will be little more than an online brochure. And probably not a very nice one at that. Or one that works very well to bring in new business. If you own a business that doesn’t rely much on customers viewing your website, that might be OK. But if you’re like most business, your website needs to be your first impression to new customers, a useful tool for existing customers, and it needs to be found when people are searching for what you provide.

So just how much should you expect to pay for a website?

The answer to that depends on your line of work, and the level of technology that you want and need built into your site. I deal with primarily small to medium sized businesses which rely a great deal on their websites for new customer inquiries. These businesses are looking for ways to stand apart from their competitors, and their websites are their primary vehicles for doing so. Most of them don’t require a tremendous amount of deep technology, but they are looking for ways to make the customer experience streamlined and somewhat sophisticated. So let’s take a look at what a small to mid-sized business should expect from their website, and how much they should expect to pay.

3 Items No Website Should Be Without

1. An Attractive Façade. If you own a brick and mortar retail location, the front of your building will make or break foot traffic. A run down building with difficult to read signage in a bad part of town is not likely to get a lot of walk-in traffic. The same rule of thumb applies to your businesses online façade. When customers find you online, they formulate an opinion about your business within the first few seconds of being there. It is therefore imperative that your website represent your business in whatever way necessary to speak to your target audience.

2. Customer Attraction. Having a great façade is imperative, but if nobody can find your site, it’s nothing more than a great façade. Your site should be built with customer attraction in mind, and that comes in the form of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO takes on many forms within a website – page titles, meta data, image tagging, page content, back links, and more – all play their part in helping to ensure that your site will gain high rankings for the key words and phrases that your customers are using to find businesses like yours.

3. Ease of Communication. So you’ve attracted a potential client and your business looks interesting to them. Now what? That customer should quickly and easily be able to get in touch with you in whatever way THEY prefer. Knowing your customers and the ways in which they communicate best is key. Also key is offering several alternative communication methods. Most often this comes in the form of an easy to find phone number and e-mail address, an inquiry or information/estimate request form, and perhaps even an e-mail sign-up form for those customers who are interested, but not quite ready to inquire.

Show Me the Money

Because your website is such an important part of your business, the investment in making it a business-builder is well worth it. Not just from a monetary standpoint, but from a time and energy standpoint as well. When going through the exercise of creating your website (or recreating it), you should expect to spend time with your web designer or design team. They should take the time to get to know you and your customer so that the end result meets your expectations and your customers’.

Having gone through many website builds, I can tell you that for a small to mid-sized business with a website that contains between 10 and 50 pages, your web design and programming team will spend between 40 and 60 hours on your site. Broken down hourly, you can expect to pay the following hourly rates:

Project Management – meetings, coordinating copy writing, design and programming - $25 - $45

Copy Writing – writing specific to web clients, including search-friendly content - $25 - $50

Graphic Design – overall look and feel of your site, including colors, fonts and imaging - $75 - $100

HTML Programming – template creation, style sheets, website build - $100 - $125

Programming – Flash, database programming, inquiry form creation - $100 - $150

To simplify our equation, let’s take an average hourly rate of $85 and apply the 40 – 60 hours. This brings our expected cost to somewhere between $3400 and $5100. Keep in mind that this is for a solid, business-building site, but not necessarily one that contains more in-depth forms or database-driven content. It also will not include hard costs such as photography, domain name registration, hosting and other related costs.

After your site is up and running, to keep it working for you, you should also consider hiring a webmaster or SEO firm to perform regular updates and maintenance. Prices vary greatly for these services depending on the scope of work and should be worked on a customized basis.

Digidaze helps small to medium sized businesses in Maryland and the eastern region of the US create and maintain high quality websites that generate real business results. For more information, visit www.digidaze.com or call 1-855-digidaze.

Is Inconsistency Killing Your Brand?

If there is one marketing problem that plagues small businesses it’s developing brand awareness on a shoestring budget. The bigger your budget, the easier it is to create brand awareness in a short amount of time. Hitting the airwaves with TV and radio spots, saturating local media with print ads, and dominating the search engines with top-spot pay-per-click ads and web banner advertising can quickly get your brand in front of your target audience. But when trying to build your brand with a small business budget, and a ‘slow and steady wins the race’ approach, you’d better be sure of one thing - consistency.

The Problem

Small business owners trying to save money on marketing often piece out their marketing activities to multiple sources. Some trade out services with friends, or they rely on friends and family members to help out. All fine, if those resources are good at what they do, but all too often, these different activities done by different people result in brand inconsistency. Bob, who does the website, is doing it as a favor, so you kind of let him do what he wants, and you’re afraid to give him much direction - he is doing it for free, sooo… Then there’s the coupon mailer that you were convinced to do by that pesky sales person who offered to handle all of the artwork and creative for you at no charge. And finally there is your client who agreed to do your company brochure as a trade for services. As far as saving money on your stuff, you’re doing great. But here’s what can happen…

Without proper direction on messaging, proper logo usage, standard colors, standard fonts, and a guide to using URLs and phone numbers in your advertising, each of these nice people re likely create your materials in their style and their voice. And none of them will look or sound like the next.

From your customers and potential customers’ perspectives, you may actually end up looking like several different companies. And if that happens, you’re missing the boat on brand awareness altogether.

The Solution

Invest some time and a little money in having your brand sharply defined, and have a formal Marketing Style Guide created. Settle firmly on a logo and your colors. Your Marketing Style Guide will be the branding bible from which each of your vendors (friends, family members, or whoever is doing marketing for you) will live by. Consider it the roots of your brand from which each of your brand activities will grow! Your Style Guide should be available to your providers in a PDF format with links to art files whenever possible. If that is not feasible, create the PDF of the guide, and include it on a flash drive or CD that includes your approved art files.

Your Marketing Style Guide PDF and files/links should include:

Logo - Include vector (EPS), and high resolution jpeg (RGB) and tiff (CMYK) versions that can easily be used for signage, print, and the web. Include the proper PMS, CMYK and RBG colors in the art files so that when your logo is printed, the colors are the same everywhere. Don’t worry if you don’t understand these acronyms - your Marketing Style Guide creator will. (If not…find someone else to do your Style Guide!) Include color, black and white, and reversed versions of your logo also.

Tag Line - If your business uses a consistent tag line, be sure to include this in your Marketing Style Guide. This is generally used in conjunction with your logo, and should be used consistently. Limit yourself to just one tagline. Other messages about your brand or business can be used as Key Marketing Messages, which we will get to in a moment.

Approved Fonts - Outside of proper logo and color usage, one of the most important elements in making sure your marketing materials look similar is choosing one or two approved fonts that can be used for ad/website headlines, sub-headlines and body copy. These fonts should go well with your logo.

Your ‘Who Is’ Statement - Every business owner should be able, in one or two sentences, to quickly and accurately describe his or her business. Sometimes called the ‘30-second elevator speech’, we’re calling this your ‘who is’ statement. For example: Who is Joe’s Landscaping? Joe’s Landscaping provides residential landscape design, water feature design and lawn mowing services to homeowners in Buck’s County. Your ‘who is’ statement sound simple, but you’d be surprised at how difficult it can be for a business own to define his or her business in such a short and concise way. But that’s exactly how it must be defined for marketing purposes. In marketing, we have just a few seconds to tell your story. When used consistently, your ‘who is’ statement can help potential customers get to know you.

Mission / Vision / Philosophy - Most companies have their company mission statement laid out. Whether it’s called your Mission, Vision, or Philosophy, it is helpful for your marketing materials providers to know what’s at the heart of your company. Knowing what you do, why you do it, and who you do it for are all items that should be included in your mission statement and in your Marketing Style Guide. While it may not be used verbatim (or at all) in ad copy, it can help flavor the overall direction.

Key Marketing Messages - Key marketing messages are similar to tag lines, and can be used to define certain segments of your business for individually-targeted marketing items. For instance, if Joe’s Landscaping does an e-mail focused on water features, they may choose a key marketing message such as ‘From small, relaxing Koi ponds to quarter-acre duck ponds and waterfalls, let the experts at Joe’s Landscaping create the water feature of your dreams.’ Key marketing messages are great ways to provide direction to your marketing materials provider, and can be used as the starting point for developing ad or web content.

Contact Information - Each of your marketing items should contain multiple ways for customers to contact us. Your marketing materials providers should be given your website ULR, phone number and an e-mail address to include on all materials.

Licenses, Awards & Certifications - Often businesses are required by law to include license numbers in their advertising. Be sure that your Marketing Style Guide includes any required license numbers. Additionally, many businesses find it useful to promote awards, ratings and certifications. If beneficial to your business, make sure your Marketing Style Guide includes the art files for any logos that should be included in your advertising. A good example of this is the Better Business Bureau logo - many companies who have received an A+ BBB Rating like to use that logo in their advertising.

Images or Image Direction - Your business should have a distinct look and feel. Along with the items above, brand consistency can be achieved through the use of approved photos. If you do not have photos that are used regularly on your materials, be sure that your marketing materials providers have some direction on what types of photos to use. For example, if Joe’s Landscaping targets homeowners with larger homes, it is beneficial for their marketing material provider to know not to use small homes on their materials.

A lack of brand consistency can dramatically slow brand awareness, and even confuse customers and prospects. But with a little bit of leg work, your Marketing Style Guide can save you and your marketing providers time and headaches, and help your business grow.