Walk down any street in a city, and you’ll likely see majority of people glued to their cellphones. Books and conversations have disappeared from coffee shops, traded in for laptop users.

It’s a digital world and traditional marketing tactics are no longer enough to reach your audience effectively and set you apart from your competitors. Digital marketing is the rage, and it’s time to buy in.

So what exactly is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is the newish marketing kid on the block that features everything from stunning websites and mobile marketing to highly engaged social media account and digital advertising.

Digital avenues are everywhere and keeping up with them all can be more than a little panic inducing. If that’s not enough to keep your head spinning, changes arise almost weekly that continually affect and mix up the process. Staying updated is more prevalent now than ever.

The first place you want to start to ensure successful digital marketing is website creation. All your ads, mobile presence and social accounts eventually link users back to your site and if it’s feeling bland or superficial, users will drop off quickly.

Make sure your site design breathes your brand through creative and user-friendly functionality. A pretty site isn’t enough — it needs to translate into an unforgettable user experience that’s easy to navigate. Learn more about creative, functional site design.

Next, you’ll need to establish a social media presence. But take it slowly.

Many people overwhelm themselves by creating accounts on every single available platform, only to end up neglecting them.

Here’s the key: figure out which platforms are relevant to you and your organization. If you don’t need a Twitter account right now, don’t set one up. Unnecessary platform presence not only wastes your resources, but can even damage your image if the account is not maintained. So start small. Learn one platform and add others as you gain resources and knowledge. Give yourself time to test audiences and learn from analytics.

After a stunning website and brilliant social media presence, dive into mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing includes text message communications, application ads, and mobile/responsive sites. We already know that people spend hours glued to their phones and mobile marketing may be your only chance to impact the phone addicts.

Most importantly, your website should be optimized for mobile viewing. Beyond that, figure out what mobile apps your audience is using for profitable advertising purposes. It’s also beneficial to identify your audience demographics to see if text communications are a good investment.

Only after you have established yourself in all other areas of digital marketing should you start digging around in ad work. All of your ads will either be viewed on social media or link back to your site so make sure that those places are an accurate and unforgettable representation before you start paying to point people to them.

You can run ads on almost any social media platform as well as through Google Ads. LinkedIn and Facebook give you the option of doing either sponsored content or sidebar ads promoting your page with a specific call to action. You can also do sponsored content on Twitter and Instagram as well as promoted pins on Pinterest. Figure out what outcome you want from your ads and then identify which platform contains the ideal audience for that desired results.

You can also check back in several weeks and we’ll walk through each social media platform step by step to give you deeper insights into how you can position yourself effectively in each space.

An audience waits to be discovered in the digital world and right now is the prime time to reach them! 

What is your organization’s digital marketing plan? Share your most helpful digital marketing tip below and let’s keep learning together!