How to Earn Digital Marketing Expertise

Yes indeed, most people always want to earn some measure of expertise in whatsoever they do. That includes digital marketing. Daily, since the advent of the internet, more and more people are turning to the internet to do business. Of course, every online business requires extensive promotion to get some traction out there in the very vast virtual world of the internet. That is where digital marketing becomes very relevant. Aside its huge effectiveness to spread the word about your business, digital marketing can become a career business opportunity if you can earn some respectable expertise in it. Here are a few things you can do to earn that much needed expertise.

Be Open to Unlimited Learning

The internet habitually changes very rapidly. These changes inevitably affect all businesses done on the internet, most of all digital Marketing. It evolves continuously and you must be open to continuous learning to cope with the changes coming forth from the internet and digital marketing itself. Digital marketing field is now so vast that to become an expert in it, you must learn the core. A vast amalgam of what you must continuously learn about digital marketing include but not limited to content marketing, SEO, search engine optimization, social media marketing and email marketing. You must be able to keep up with new updates and to follow experts on social media to gain some more knowledge. Learning and doing are two great ways to earn some expertise in digital marketing and there is neither limit nor end to this learning.

Firmly Commit to the Purpose

Digital marketing is one huge field of online business that requires total commitment to its purpose before you can earn some expertise in it. Be clear about why you want the business and with firm commitment to that reason, it becomes easy to learn, to try your hands on it and to stick with that purpose until you get to master what you are doing. That’s one more way to earn some expertise in digital marketing.

Learn Other Complementary Strategies

You can do very many activities in digital marketing. That depends on what your business is and what you want to achieve with it. As you master one skill, you can move on to another until you are expert enough to do many complementary digital marketing activities at the same time. Aside from mastering the technicalities of SEO and Search Engines, you can learn about SERPs, PPC, PPV, backlinks, click-through-rates and so on. These are add-ons complementary to the easier to learn skills like content marketing, social media marketing, MLM, affiliate marketing, e-mail marketing and lots more. If you learn a new skill and repeat the process of earning expertise in it, it will add more to the skills you’ve already learned. That is how ultimate expertise is earned in digital marketing.

Practice! Practice!! Practice!!!

Some digital marketers believe that practice makes perfect. Not exactly so. Only perfect practice makes perfect. With perfect practice, you earn expertise in the business. You can practice perfectly from your own website which must be fully hosted and visible to search engines. That’s the ideal place to launch your practicing activities. From your website, you can start with content marketing, video marketing, email marketing, social media marketing and others. With the help of free Google analytics tools online, you can have great insights into your traffic volume, sources, and other business intelligence insights to guide you in making corrections on your messages and making other adjustments for better results. These insights will help you to learn about the ways to drive traffic to your website and other ancillary skills of enticing web visitors to your website. Doing these things helps to add to your credibility as a digital marketer. That earns you some expertise as you get better at these digital marketing skills.  

 

8 Tips to Promote Your Physical Store in Digital Space

Traditional business locations were small stores until the internet came on stream. The internet has made many businesses to shift focus from real-world addresses to online URLs. Some businesses even shifted online as a survival strategy amidst the real-time vicissitudes of physical addresses. To avoid being forced to close down because of patronage difficulties, these traditional stores selling physical products to remain afloat now need very smart marketing to promote themselves as a survival strategy. This involves alternative business promotion focus on digital space to complement the physical.

Here are tips from business experts pointing out viable ways to help physical stores stay in business when things become difficult in the physical space.

1. Optimize Your Brand for Local Searches

Physical stores hugely depend on local patronage for most of their products. These days, it has become routine for most shoppers to do local searches to source their needs online. This makes it imperative for these small business owners not only to take their businesses online but also to optimize such businesses for local searches. Since about half of all searches on Google are local, it makes smart business sense therefore for these businesses to optimize their brands for local SEO. They tend to get better patronage as a result.

2. Have a Strong Social Media Presence

Yeah, nearly everyone is now on social media for one reason or another. Taking your physical business on social media is a good thing to do. It means taking your business where your customers are. Having a strong social media presence for your store helps to easily increase patronage for the business. With a strong presence on social media, you can easily promote your products by way of SMS marketing, emails and social media interactive activities.

3. Always Remember Your Loyal Customers

Yes indeed! Repeat customers are always the best customers. Remembering to reward their loyalty is good for business. Discount coupons, thank you notes and other loyalty benefits can always be of help in your rewards program. The more a customer feels appreciated, the better the chances of repeat business from him.

4. Showcase Your Safety Policies

As our world becomes increasingly dangerous, safety has become a main consumer concern. Store layout, physical location, product types and ease of shopping now play major roles in where customers decide to shop in physical stores. It helps to highlight the safety policies of your physical store as a way of addressing customer safety concerns.

5. Use Video-Based Content Marketing

Studies have shown that video-based content marketing is hugely effective for getting leads, customers and sales. Studies also show that a huge percentage of new customers are acquired when businesses merely post marketing videos on social media. The is one very good reason physical stores need to embrace video-based content marketing strategies. By creating mobile-friendly video content that strategically differentiates your physical store business from businesses that only exist online, you can easily develop meaningful and mutually beneficial interactions with your customers.

6. Promote Your Products Online

Promoting your products online is in addition to the physical promotion of your store. The target of this promotion is mostly local customers searching online. This is because more and more people are increasingly using digital channels for shopping in their local environments. Even if initial contact is made online, a physical store remains the ideal place to view products before buying, to pick up products ordered online, for more inquiries/consultations, for product returns and or additional services as needed.
 
7. Showcase the People Behind the Store

Every customer always wants to know the people he/she is dealing with. Every business is built around trust. The real human touch and personal approaches are unique features of physical stores. They display the real human angle of doing business. Most people always crave human interaction because it allows them to know whom they are dealing with and to build trust fairly quickly. This is the reason why physical stores with a long history of family tradition of doing good business tend to do better than others.

8. Leverage Multi-Channel Communications

The internet makes this possible with very huge advantages. When physical stores engage customers via a multi-channel personalization approach, they tend to influence customer behavior better. When these stores crave expansion into digital commerce, they can use a mix of multi-channels to get good results. These are channels like personalized social media, marketing videos, emails and website communications that help to create seamless interactions with customers and potential customers.