With businesses, brands and consumers constantly online, one often gets to hear that digital marketing is the only way to stay ahead. When you’re a small business owner the online world and its jargon can seem intimidating.
My attempt is to demystify ‘Digital marketing’ step-by-step in a series of 5 blogs.
1. Build
2. Optimise
3. Advertise
4. Analyse
5. Engage
Step #1 Build a strong digital foundation
Some businesses and brands embraced social media early and these early adopters are quite there in terms of doing things right. On the other hand, some others are still waiting for the ‘right time’. You may not be online but more than a billion businesses and consumers are! They are conversing online all the time. What stops them from talking about you?
Let me drive this by way of an example. Imagine that you have a positive bank balance of Rs.10,00,000. And you withdraw 10,000. You will be still be left with a positive balance. Let’s reverse the case. Assume that you have a credit balance of 10,000. And there is a debit transaction of Rs.10,00,000. In this case, what you are left with is a negative balance.
Extending this example to the online world – imagine what happens when your business or brand is searched for. What is it that comes up on top of search results? If negative conversations are more than positive ones, it’s likely that the negative conversations top the search results. Shouldn’t you then be worried about it? Is there something you can do about it?
The time to start is NOW! Build your digital strategy. Build your responsive website. Build your social media channels. Build customer databases. Build a strong base and make sure that there is a positive balance. A few debits will not matter then!
Next in the series “Optimise your digital strategy”.