Introduction
Digital marketing has become a necessity for businesses (both small and large) to connect with customers online. I’m particularly interested in several key digital marketing channels that help brands grow their presence and reach their target audiences. In this article, I’ll go into inbound marketing strategies like content creation, SEO, and social media. I will also discuss paid advertising tactics such as pay-per-click (PPC) on search engines and social media platforms. Finally, I will go into detail about how my web development skills complement digital marketing efforts to create effective campaigns that drive real results. There is one rule that is constant in digital marketing when using different channels, and that is “to measure is to know”. What makes digital marketing so effective is that we can track web analytics to determine which campaigns in our channels are performing well, and optimize our content and marketing strategies using data-driven decisions. We are not randomly placing our content into TV commercials and magazines where we THINK our audience will be; we can place our content where we KNOW our audience actually is!
Inbound Marketing
Knowing how to create and optimize inbound marketing is important for digital marketers because it focuses on attracting customers naturally and organically. The foundation of inbound marketing is split up into three different channels: content marketing, SEO, and social media content. Digital marketers create valuable, relevant, and consistent content so that businesses can draw in their audience and keep them engaged. Content marketing works because people actively search for solutions to their problems through search engines, so we should create content to help consumers solve their problems. If you’re targeting B2B customers, your content should address business challenges like increasing revenue or cutting costs. For B2C audiences, we should focus on helping people stay healthy and be more productive. The key to inbound marketing is understanding exactly who you’re targeting and making content for them that is worth their time. Consistency is key; digital marketers create a unique brand voice that reflects your target market to ensure customers recognize you across all platforms. When your content is valuable, relevant, and consistent, people will naturally share it with their networks, which will expand your reach and signal to search engines that your content deserves higher rankings on search result pages.
PPC Marketing
Paid Social Media
This channel is interesting to me as a digital marketer because I can expand our top-of-the-funnel marketing reach through paid social media campaigns on platforms like Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Unlike organic social media, which mainly reaches people who already follow your brand and know who you are, paid social media posts deliver targeted messages to people who do not know who we are and what our brand is about. Paid social media posts are also run through a “pay-per-click” model, which means we only pay when social media users actually click on our posts, so everyone who doesn’t click on our post but gets exposed to our brand is considered a free impression (great for brand awareness)! The great thing about paid social media is that these platforms have massive amounts of data and analytical tools that help digital marketers reach their brand’s target market through specific audiences, demographics, and interests. The most effective approach involves creating different content for three segments of the buyer’s journey: prospecting campaigns for people who have never heard of this, retargeting consumers who have engaged with our content but haven’t purchased/converted, and remarketing to past customers. While paid social media advertisements are great for reaching new audiences, they are also great for reaching consumers in the consideration and conversion stage.
Paid Search Engine
I am interested in PPC search engine marketing because the positioning of our content at the top of the search engine results page is valuable since consumers trust and click on these top results, including sponsored results. As a digital marketer, paid search gives me a reliable way to ensure a brand appears at the top when people search for solutions we offer. Many users, especially older demographics, click on spots that are results, and we do not want to miss out on those potential customers or hand them over to our competitors. While organic search results algorithms/SEO are constantly changing and difficult to optimize, paid search is a guaranteed way to gain the top position for search engine results. Having a brand appear at the top builds legitimacy and trust between our consumers and our brand. Paid search also works at every stage of the buyer’s journey because people use search engines whether they’re just becoming aware of their problem, considering different options, or ready to make a purchase decision. We want to make sure that we are positioning ourselves to capture all these consumers at different stages.
Web Development. CMS and Landing Pages
My knowledge in web development comes from pursuing a Content Development Certificate at Western Washington University, where I’ve learned computer languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to edit website code directly. I’m also experienced with content management systems or “CMS platforms” like WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix, which allow me to build and update websites without constantly coding from scratch. To practice these skills, I built my personal website “maxduenhoelter.com” using WordPress, and I regularly update and edit its content to stay current. One of the more important skills I have learned and want to apply in my work is using CMS platforms to create specific landing pages for digital marketing campaigns. The main goal of digital marketing is getting visitors to your website through email, PPC, and social media campaigns, then optimizing their experience on your website once they arrive. Landing pages are website pages specifically designed for individual campaigns to convert visitors into leads. Instead of sending everyone to a generic homepage, which would NOT lead to many conversions, I can create targeted landing pages that match whatever promise we made in our ads. Our visitors do not want to have to search through our website to find what they are looking for; we should take them directly to the content they are expecting to find that we promised in the campaign! For example, if our paid search ad promotes great winter jackets for skiing, the landing page should curate those specific jackets, so visitors find exactly what they’re looking for. This approach is key to optimizing our digital campaigns because different campaigns attract people at different stages of the buyer’s journey, and each group needs customized content. Using CMS platforms makes creating and updating these landing pages much easier since I can modify content quickly without diving into code every time, helping me design the complete visitor journey from clicking our campaign to converting on our website.
Wrapping Up & Putting My Skills into Practice.
I’ve been fortunate to apply many of these digital marketing skills through my internship at Sweet As Waffles. Working as the Marketing Intern has given me hands-on experience creating content marketing strategies using organic social media, where we produce reels and gallery posts on Instagram that target customers at all stages of the buyer’s journey. I’ve also gained practical experience updating and editing website content through Squarespace, their CMS platform, to optimize our SEO strategies. One of my favorite projects was drafting and creating an FAQs page and a digital menu page for their website, which allowed me to practice and apply the skills I’ve been learning about. These real-world experiences have shown me how powerful digital marketing can be when you combine strategic content creation with effective web development, and I hope to apply these skills in my career in the future!