Editor’s Note: Here at Dispatches, we are always looking for ways to help our readers do things. For some of our readers, that means helping navigate the working world, for others, it means assisting in the ever challenging question, “what’s for dinner?” For still others, it means figuring out how to balance family life with everything else. In an effort to aid in all of these endeavors, we have collaborated on this article written specifically for our readers.
People often simplify certain aspects of digital marketing to the point that when they incorporate these concepts into a campaign, they no longer work. An example of this would be the basic understanding of SEO. You might think SEO is just a matter of adding the right keywords and links to your site. But before you even consider the SEO tactics you could use you should consider the type of SEO you need.
If you’re marketing to a local consumer base, you will need local SEO. That involves using tools like Google Business and has very little to do this with the design of the website. Or, you might prefer to pay for SEO directly using a service such as Adwords. Again, this is vastly different when compared with organic SEO tactics such as adding backlinks or using keywords carefully. Let’s examine some of the other marketing tactics that may get muddled.
Social Media Marketing
A lot of new business owners think that social media marketing is just about joining as many social networks as possible, posting on them as often as they can. Interestingly though, if you use social media in this way, you won’t find much success with your marketing campaign. Not all business customers use every type of social media, and even if they do, you won’t catch their interest with a basic post. Instead, you need to make sure you are using sharable content on your networks. You need to produce and publish information and graphics that are going to excite or intrigue customers and clients.
To do this, you need to understand how to produce targeted content. This will directly appeal to clients who will be interested in your services and the products sold by your company. Or, you can think about using UGC. UGC or user generated content simply means that you get your clients and customers to create if for you. These are just two of the ways that you can use social marketing to be more effective in promoting your company.
Link Building
As soon as you read the word ‘link,’ you probably thought of something like this. Since that link is connected to a different area on the web, that is a backlink and backlinking can be a key part of an SEO linking strategy. Link building, on the other hand, is something completely different. Link building is a more general term to describe connecting with other websites and companies online to boost your business reach or expand your brand. It can evolve tactics like backlinking, but it might also use other strategies such as guest posts. By guest posting on another site, you can attract the users of that web page to your website, potentially increasing traffic and hopefully boosting customer numbers. If you simplify link building down to just using links within site content, you won’t make an impression on the market.
Growth Hacking
This term is fairly new and the first documented use was in 2010. What do people think it refers to? Usually, if you ask a new marketer what growth hacking is they suggest it’s a blackhat form of SEO or something that is ethically dubious. Of course, that’s not even remotely close to describing growth hacking. It’s actually just a term to describe ways to grow your company while keeping costs low. One possible growth hacking tactic would be using a free form of marketing like building a blog to connect with a customer base. Growth hacking tactics are particularly useful for SMEs with limited budgets.
One thought on “Are You Guilty Of Misunderstanding These Marketing Terms?”