Digital Marketing 101 (A Beginner’s Guide To Marketing)

hey guys adam here and in this video i'm going to help you become a better digital marketer by showing you some of the most important things you need to know about digital marketing right now you see digital marketing has been made to seem way more complicated than it actually is that's a shame really because it's actually pretty straightforward that said if you do want to get the best results possible from your digital marketing you're going to need to know and understand the strategies that i'm going to be sharing with you in this episode so my

promise to you is this if you watch this entire video you will be a better digital marketer at the end so let's get to it [Music] so the very first thing that i need to share with you are the differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing brace yourself for this one because it's pretty profound actually it's not profound at all and that's what makes it so interesting you see digital marketing is really just marketing done through the use of digital channels that's it so when we're talking about digital marketing while we're talking about marketing through

the use of channels like seo or search engine optimization social media pay-per-click ads or online facebook ads instagram ads or anything like that not to mention email marketing or website optimization or anything that really takes place online or through the use of digital media you can contrast this with traditional marketing using traditional media things like tv or the radio or newspapers or magazines or billboards basically anything not digital now here's the deal traditional marketing and traditional advertising and everything that goes into it well it still works but there are some significant advantages to using digital

marketing and all the digital channels that we now have available first of all digital marketing tends to give you a much larger audience size really you can reach anybody that's online and there's billions and billions of people online next is audience targeting because not only are you able to reach these billions of people well you don't want to reach all of them because all of them are not going to be the perfect fit for your business rather you can be laser focused and selective on only the most ideal and perfect people that you want to

target digital marketing also tends to be significantly more cost effective than running say an ad in the new york times or heaven forbid a super bowl commercial again these are designed to appeal to mass markets and to try to reach everyone probably not your goal rather what you want to do is be laser focused and selective with your marketing and reach again only those people most likely to buy digital marketing also allows you to get immediate feedback and this is probably one of my favorite benefits of the channels after all if you think about running

say a magazine ad where you've got to think of the copy and the creative and what you're going to say and then you've got to get it all written up and sent to the magazine it's got to get published and then distributed well you could be looking at weeks at best months and maybe many many months before you ever figure out if this worked or not digital marketing on the other hand well in theory you can write an ad and have it online in a matter of minutes immediate feedback immediate correction immediate results plus digital

marketing tends to be a whole lot easier to measure and to track because everything's digital which means we've got a digital trail allowing us to measure costs and results and everything in real time so we can make adjustments and tweaks and optimizations on the fly again contrast that with waiting three months for your magazine to come out and figure out if things worked or not and you can't measure clicks on a magazine so the best you can hope to do is well really either have them fill out some kind of a form on the magazine

or visit a digital channel which ties us back into digital marketing anyway there's obviously some serious advantages here to choosing digital channels going with digital marketing but again that's not to say that traditional marketing doesn't still work it does the point here is to take a look at either traditional or digital marketing and then sort of take a few steps back to the strategies and the fundamentals and the principles the consumer psychology the buyer behavior why people do the things they do and then focus on mastering and learning that then you can apply that to

digital channels or traditional channels or any other channels that come out in the future all right the next thing that'll really help you become a better digital marketer is to understand the differences between strategy and tactics and when to use them strategy is all the big picture stuff and this is really where you want to focus your efforts first and foremost because this is the foundation that all of your future marketing efforts and tactics and tools and software and things like that are going to be built on get this part wrong and nothing else matters

because nothing else will work now there are a ton of different strategies and approaches and ways to look at your digital marketing but pretty much no matter how you look at it it always comes back to four basic and really solid principles that have stood the test of time and are going to be just as relevant today as they are a hundred years from now i call these things the core four and they make up the center of my hub and spoke model of marketing the core four are made up of model market message and

media so let's unpack those now the model is essentially your business your offer your package your servicing the pricing that goes with it how you deliver whatever it is that you deliver to the market it's important here to design your model design your business around what is the most enjoyable and profitable and in demand by the market because the worst thing you can do is build a business that you absolutely hate next is the market these are the people that you're going to serve and you don't want to say everyone or anyone with money you

want to be focused laser focused on exactly who is going to get the best results from your product or service and also the market that you're going to most enjoy serving in marketing we call this an ideal customer avatar or an ideal client avatar and it's made up of demographic details like age gender income occupation geographic details like what city or state or province or country they live in and psychographic details like what are their values their attitudes and their lifestyles next is your message and here's where you're going to clarify and connect with your

ideal target market by speaking directly to them about their pains and their problems and their frustrations and how your business is uniquely positioned to help solve that for them telling stories about previous customers and previous client results is an incredibly effective way to do this as are getting testimonials directly from them and running case studies proving that you know what you're talking about and have done what you say you're going to do i think that made sense the point here is that to craft truly effective messages well you've got to understand who your market is

and what really makes them up and what makes them do the things they do so a little bit of market research and having a few chats with your customers never hurts and the fourth part of the core four and again the center of that hub and spoke model of marketing is all about media and this is where you're going to go where you're going to do your marketing which digital channels you're gonna choose most businesses do this completely backwards they start with the media by hearing a great thing about facebook ads or youtube marketing maybe

starting a podcast and then they just rush in there forgetting all about the message and the market and the model so unsurprisingly well they're building their business and they're building their marketing on a pretty sketchy foundation this is why if you go through the steps in the right order starting with the model moving on to the market identifying the message by the time you get to media the choices should be evidently clear like crystal clear you should know exactly where your ideal target market is present and active online and this is going to enable you

to go there and ignore everything else the reality is you don't need to do everything you don't need to be everywhere you just need to be the places where your ideal target market are present and active this is going to save you a ton of time and money and headache and wasted energy by spreading yourself too thin on channels that simply aren't going to deliver results all right so that was the strategy the core 4 the high level stuff that goes into making the right decisions tactics on the other hand are how you're going to

execute everything i've just talked about the tactics are the details and the actionable steps or executable things that you're actually going to go and put into practice so the strategy being the business model you're using the market that you're going to go after the messages you're going to use and the media choices that you're going to deploy your marketing on and then the tactics being things like what frequency are you going to post and what kind of content are you gonna post and what schedule or level of consistency or how many memes are you gonna

throw in a tactical question would be what's the best time to post on social media a strategic question would be which social media platform should we be on that's the difference all right the next thing that you need to know about digital marketing is the difference between organic and paid so let's start with organic organic content and organic digital marketing is essentially anything that you create for free so anytime that you make a post on facebook or an instagram story or a youtube video or anything like that and you're not paying money to have it

promoted you're creating organic content now this doesn't mean that it's free content because odds are good you put time and energy and probably a decent amount of money behind the content that you're creating but by not paying to promote it it's still classified as organic content so if organic marketing is putting out content and not paying to have it promoted well then paid marketing is the opposite of that putting out content and then paying the networks to promote it and distribute it to even more people basically with paid media or paid marketing paid ads you're

running advertising to whatever message or whatever content that you're putting out there now the big players in the space right now are obviously the kingpins like facebook ads instagram ads and youtube ads linkedin ads and google ads essentially the major networks with ads added to the back of their name organic content shows up in the news feeds of people that follow you whereas with paid marketing and paid media it shows up in the news feeds and on the phones and on the devices of the people that you choose through targeting now of course like all

marketing strategies there's pros and cons to both organic is free essentially in nature but it's going to be a little more limited in reach because the way the algorithms work is they kind of favor paid media because they like to make money paid media on the other hand has the obvious downside of costing money bright side it allows you to reach a ton of people very quickly so essentially the choice between organic and paid comes down to time versus money but also the rate at which you want to experience results all right now let's talk

about one of my favorite topics in all of marketing direct response versus brand awareness direct response marketing is unsurprisingly direct in its goal to get a response man marketing sure isn't very creative sometimes basically when you do direct response marketing you're creating an ad or you're creating a piece of content and you're focused on getting an immediate and tangible return something like a lead or a sale or a phone call or a visit or a sign up or something like that direct response marketing would be run a facebook ad expect to generate a lead send

out an email measure the number of conversions promote a video track how many people signed up for a free trial all of these are direct response because you're expecting something ideally immediately and you're going to be able to track and measure it so you can do more of what works and less of what doesn't now contrast all of that with brand awareness marketing which is essentially more focused on longer term and building trust and authority and your brand name in the market with direct response we're measuring things like leads and sales and conversions with brand

awareness we're measuring things like trust and authority and possibly mentions but a lot harder to quantify and to measure because they're a lot more intangible the reality is long term to build a scalable and sustainable and profitable business well you do need a pretty decent mix of both direct response marketing and brand awareness marketing but you have to be wary of the cardinal sin of marketing you see one of the biggest mistakes in all of marketing is running brand awareness marketing campaigns and expecting direct response results this is a recipe for failure and one of

the biggest reasons that many people claim their marketing just isn't working it's because they're using the wrong tool for the job like following a recipe to bake a cake and then getting really frustrated when it comes out like muffins or bread or anything that isn't cake this is why it's incredibly important that you use the right recipe your strategy for the job all right another incredibly important thing you need to know about digital marketing is the difference between search and discovery marketing when it comes to search versus discovery marketing the biggest and most important or

keyword if you will is intent basically what's the intent or what is the reason that someone's using a specific platform when they log on in the morning or at noon or at night so let's start with search and here we're talking about platforms like google and youtube basically any other search engine when someone logs on to google for example well they have intent they're there to find an answer or a solution or a product they're there to do something or buy something or learn something or take some kind of action this is where you as

a marketer want to show up in front of them and basically answer their question or give them the solution to whatever it is that they're looking for some strategies here are using seo or search engine optimization as well as google ads which is pay-per-click advertising discovery marketing on the other hand well this encompasses brands like facebook and instagram and youtube to a certain extent essentially a user on these platforms may have intent but they're probably more casually browsing after all nobody really shows up in the morning logs onto facebook or instagram with a credit card

in hand looking to buy something this is why if you're doing search marketing well you can afford to be direct they're looking for something you have the answer so you can just give it to them with discovery marketing on the other hand you've got to be a little more creative and a little more entertaining you've got to get their attention and then keep it and allow them to become interested in what it is that you're selling or promoting now both search marketing and discovery marketing are incredibly important parts to building an overall successful sustainable business

but just like with direct response marketing and brand awareness marketing you want to make sure that you're using the right tool for the right job at the right time in the right place alright next i've got something very important to share with you and it's something that rarely gets talked about when it comes to marketing advice and that is the difference between marketing products and marketing services here's the deal most of the marketing information out there whether we're talking about textbooks or courses or even trainings they revolve around the marketing of products a product being

something tangible that you can hold that you can see that you can touch and that you can taste a service on the other hand is intangible you can't hold it can't touch it can't see it can't taste it plus with services you often need to pay in advance which requires a whole new level of trust this is why if you're marketing a service based business and you try to market it like a product based business well you're gonna be very disappointed now when it comes to marketing products you have the opportunity and the advantage of

being able to explain and to show and to demonstrate how a product works what it looks like you want to show it in action show the features show the benefits that the features will deliver show the story behind it everything like that here's an example let's say that i'm trying to promote and sell this pen well the fact that this pen has a lid is a feature the fact that it will prevent me from getting ink all over myself that's a benefit but you can take it further and you probably should for example this pen

lid also has a clip which means that i can attach it to my papers or my notebook or even my clothes if i'm trying to sport that nerdy look another feature of the pen lid itself is the fact that the lid has holes in the top maybe surprised to hear that the reason that pen lids have holes in the top is to prevent suffocation in case they accidentally or purposely get swallowed after all chewing on pen lids is an age-old albeit highly unsanitary practice sometimes you just get hungry services on the other hand well they

don't have that advantage so the main thing when you're promoting and marketing services is you want to sell the end essentially the end state or the benefits or the outcome or the results that someone will experience after working with you in fact when it comes to marketing services i'd go so far as to say it's pretty much all about the end state and the benefits and the outcomes and the results someone will experience the key here is to highlight the current pain or dissatisfaction or discomfort of their current state and then of course paint the

picture of how they'll be so much better after having worked with you all right the next thing you really need to be aware of if you want to become a true expert in digital marketing is to understand the differences between b2b and b2c marketing b2b stands for business to business and this is where your main customers your main clients aren't regular everyday people but rather other businesses b2c on the other hand means you're a business that sells to consumers regular everyday people and not businesses b2b business to business b2c business to consumer and just like

everything i've shared with you so far there's some significant differences in the way that you want to market your business market your service market your product market whatever depending on whether you're selling to businesses or people and this is why the next thing you're going to want to do is check out the video i have linked up right here on b2b vs b2c marketing so make sure to check that out now and i'll see in the next episode basically b2b marketing typically focuses on fewer but larger customers and b2c marketing on more but smaller customers

this means for b2b type marketing you're going to have a little more incentive to put a little more punch behind your pitch because you're going to have to market to fewer customers