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Digital content is any content (think social media posts, infographics, and visual brand and promotional assets) that are intended to be consumed by your audience through a digital medium such as their phone, tablet, or desktop. This content should tie into any traditional content groups being used - like television, radio, and out of home.
The content is utilized in two ways: paid media like Google ads and Facebook advertising and organic which utilizes company-owned channels such as their Twitter account and email lists.
From a marketing standpoint, we tend to break digital into 7 distinct groups: Pay Per Click (PPC) Display, Paid Social, Website, Google My Business, Email, App, and Organic content.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these categories:
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Most of the time we find our clients associate PPC with search engine results but more recently social platforms like LinkedIn are offering this. Simply put a fee is paid each time an ad is clicked on and search engines display these ads based on keywords that someone who uses the search engine may search for. So, the advertisers of a local snowboard shop in Edmonton might bid on keywords like snowboarding, bindings, and snowboard repairs. This means their ad might show up in the top spots on a SERP (search engine results page) if one of those keywords is used.
Since more than one person can bid on a keyword, more popular keywords have a higher price than less popular ones meaning that this form of advertising can be expensive to maintain a top position if you have a lot of competitors who are using the same keywords. Note you only pay when the ad is clicked through to your website.
Display
Display ads consist of Smart Display, Animated Display, Static Display, and remarketing. These are run through platforms like Google Ads and can be refined to match your defined audience (who you would like to target), how long the ads will be up, and what budget you have allocated to each.
Paid Social
From more familiar advertising options like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to Tik Tok, Snap Chat, and YouTube there are plenty of options to reach your audience. These tend to be a less expensive option and can be used in conjunction with your organic social content. The drawback is that your audience is limited to users of the particular Social platform or platforms in the family – advertising through Facebook gives you access to their other companies, like Instagram’s audiences.
Website
We touched a little in our last post (click here to check it out) on the importance of good SEO and ensuring your website pages have the proper metadata (we have a post on that too!). Beyond this, digital content on websites takes the form of landing pages, blogs/ articles, and banners. This content can be used to create a personalized experience for visitors based on their past behaviours and how they got to your site (acquisition). Additionally, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – buying ads through search engines - can be used to drive traffic to your site. Forms on webpages are a great way to convert traffic to your site from visitors to leads that can be contacted and nurtured to drive business interactions.
Google My business
In our opinion, this is one of the most under-utilized digital content tools out there for most small businesses. First, Google My Business is FREE and provides an opportunity to show up in local search results with easy ways for potential customers to connect with you – directions to your locations, click through to your website or call you. Google uses this information to produce relevant information to searches conducted by their users.
To enhance your Google My Business listing we recommend updating your hours regularly and asking for reviews from customers. This information is used by Google to determine how active your business is and keep the listing higher in relevant search results.
An additional consideration here is posting which some businesses do but it can be time-consuming to post on your social channels and this platform so not as many small businesses post on here. Consider posting promotions you are running but be sure to include the end date of your promotions.
Email is a great tool to reach both existing customers and leads in the works. These can be done from a rep level, office level, or corporate level depending on the messaging being conveyed and the size of your business.
A few more common ways marketing messages reach customers and leads through email are:
through a drip campaign (check out our post on this!) designed to drive leads down the funnel or to nurture past customers to continue to be active customers. This is especially relevant for retail business
traditional monthly and promotional emails with company-curated content that is destined for a particular client group and set to show the email address of the person the customer is used to dealing with. This can be automated, or a template can be created for the employee to copy and paste into emails with their clients
App
A growing number of small businesses, like coffee shops with their reward programs, are using Apps to enhance their relationship with their customers. Companies with a more robust app are able to include content for specials, new products, upsell and add-on opportunities, and reminders of abandoned carts (purchases not completed)
Organic Content
This type of content is generally used on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snap Chat, YouTube, and other social channels accounts of the business. This is a great way to reach your current followers but is subject to the display algorithms of the channel being used.
As you can see, there is a multitude of advertising groups to configure depending on what you are trying to achieve. Our experienced team works with you to define your audience and goals, select which of the 7 groups will be most beneficial in reaching your audience and goals, and determining how much of your budget should be allocated to each group selected and the individual channels in each group.
We’d love to chat with you and find out how we can assist you in deciding which tools best match your goals. Give us a call or fill out our form to get started!
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