A digital marketing agency is a company that drives traffic to their client’s websites and optimizes the website so valuable actions will be taken. Let’s dig in a little deeper.
What is Digital Marketing?
Almost every business has a website. Some websites have thousands of pages (e.g., Amazon) while other websites only have one (i.e., a brochure site).
In the broadest sense, the point of a website is to generate traffic and promote action. Ideally, the traffic will be relevant and the action will generate value. There are many potential actions that might generate value for the website owner. These include:
- purchases
- form fills
- phone calls
- newsletter subscriptions
- watched videos
- time on site
- and ad clicks
These actions are also called conversions. They are the main value-driving actions, but there are likely many more.
Digital marketing is any effort to drive traffic to a website or webpage and promote that traffic to take action.
What is the “agency” part?
Many large businesses have employees in their marketing department who only focus on digital marketing. Often, they even have a digital marketing department. Hiring digital marketing experts, however, can be very costly, and for a lot of businesses, the rewards don’t justify the price.
Marketing skills, while helpful, don’t necessarily translate to digital marketing skills. There are a lot of digital marketing tools and practices that are not taught in marketing programs. Many programs don’t require any digital marketing classes. While most businesses have a marketing director, many need extra help with their digital marketing efforts. That’s where an agency comes in.
A digital marketing agency provides businesses with expertise. They are more affordable than hiring one or more digital marketing employees. As an agency, it is our job to drive traffic to our client’s website and promote valuable actions. It’s all about generating value from the website.
Agency Specialization
As I stated before, digital marketing refers to any action taken online to increase the value of a business’s online presence. That broad definition comes with a lot of potential marketing efforts. While many agencies attempt to do it all, some specialize in a specific area of digital marketing.
Google is the largest search engine in the world. As of 2019, it is estimated that Google processes approximately 5.8 billion searches per day. The average person searches on Google three or four times a day. See more facts about Google. With these many searches, making sure your website is optimized for Google is incredibly important.
There are two broad categories of digital marketing on Google: paid and unpaid.
Whenever you search on Google you are shown two types of results, paid and unpaid. Unpaid results are also called organic search results. These are the results that Googe shows based on their algorithm. Learn more about how Google ranks websites. To put it simply, Google’s organic rankings of websites are based on how well that website meets the searcher’s needs. No one can pay Google to improve their organic rankings. The efforts a digital marketing agency take to improve these rankings are called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
The other aspect of digital marketing through Google is paid advertising. Another term for this is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Paid advertising on Google is broken down into four categories: search, display, shopping, and video.
Search paid advertising is the targeting of specific keywords with an ad. As a marketer, you are able to choose the keyword and write the ads that you want to target. The ads themselves appear above the search results. The image below shows the ads in the red box. Below the ads is the first organic result.
Display paid advertising is generally best for building brand awareness. It can drive actions to your site, but the cost per action is usually higher than with search advertising. Display ads show on websites that Google has partnered with. These websites show the ads and get paid a small amount when someone clicks on an ad. The group of websites that show Google’s ads is called the Display Network. The Display Network contains than two million websites, videos, and apps. Below is an example of two display ads on a single page.
Shopping paid advertising involves uploading product information and paying Google to show those products on their search results page. It works similarly to Search advertising. You tell Google how much you’re willing to pay for your ad to show, and Google determines the rank.
Video paid advertising through Google gives you the ability to promote your products on YouTube. Video ads can play before an ad, or be a clickable ad to the side of a video. Google provides a tool that allows you to create simple videos to advertise on YouTube.
Google is at the center of most digital marketing strategies. It is where most searches happen. It has tools that allow marketers to target highly relevant audiences. At Sebo Marketing, this is our specialty. We are a Premier Google Partner and are experts in promoting business through Google.
Social Media
Social media marketing focusses on increasing brand awareness and driving traffic through social sites. There are five platforms that are most common when focused on social media. They are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
In general, marketing on LinkedIn is best for business-to-business efforts. If your company sells car tires, it likely doesn’t make sense for you to advertise on LinkedIn. Your efforts would be much better spent driving traffic from Google or building awareness through Facebook.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, are best for targeting consumers. If you have a Facebook account, then you’ve seen ads on that account. You may have even clicked on one of those ads. Facebook allows advertisers to target people based on their likes, dislikes, pages they follow, and a lot of other factors. Marketing on the other platforms is different, but can also target specific audiences.
Because of the huge platform variety with social media digital marketing, there are companies that focus on one platform. Most agencies that work on social media, however, have the capability to help their clients on any social media platform. Click here if you are looking for an agency that can help with your social media.
MoreDigital Marketing Methods
Google and Social Media marketing are the two biggest facets of digital marketing. However, there are still many ways to market online. Those include email marketing, online PR, sponsored content, affiliate marketing, and more. Many agencies focus on one or more of these other methods of marketing. The Who, What, Why, & How of Digital Marketing provides more information on these methods.
So What Now?
You now have a better understanding of what a digital marketing agency is. It’s time for you to decide whether or not to hire one for your business. There is one important question you need to ask: Does your ideal customer spend time online?
If you answer yes, then it’s important for you to start digital marketing. That means hiring a fulltime employee or a digital marketing agency.
There are people looking for and needing your product, and those people are spending time online. Make sure you aren’t missing out on valuable marketing options. Fill out the form below to learn how Sebo Marketing can help you market to your ideal customers. Go to Utah Marketing Group to find other agencies with different specializations.