Digital Marketing Training

Digital Marketing Tutorials and the Application of Digital Marketing

How can small or medium sized businesses take advantage of digital marketing benefits i.e. economic and effective for sustainable customer centred strategy over long term?

This is opposed to short term and one-off marketing strategy based round costly and low analytic conventional channels such as print, radio and television focused upon indirect ROI or KPIs, especially digitally literate generations?

Digital Marketing Strategy

Advantages of Digital Marketing

The advantage of keeping marketing in house and using digital versus outsourcing include:

• Requires market research into consumer behaviour, with focus upon and directed by existing, prospective customers and stakeholders
• Unique to your business or organisation and target market with your website as ‘shop front’ being visible online locally, regionally, nationally or globally for market reach and penetration
• Analytically rich through variety of channels during search and purchasing process while customer feedback can confirm KPIs as valid
• After initial front loading of technical resources, marketing content and including financial, a living system has been created which can be maintained, reviewed and adapted following the SDLC systems development life-cycle (versus one off strategy or campaigns although not precluded e.g. ‘Best Job in the World’ dependent upon social media)
• The system can run organically through inbound digital marketing techniques attracting targeted traffic through SEO search engine optimisation and customer generated (social) media
• Allows customer and stakeholder input, ownership to inform system and an increased likelihood of success due to authenticity and grounding, or ‘bottom up and lateral’ digital communication channels

Some years ago, the ATDW Australian Tourism Data Warehouse developed the award-winning ATDW Marketing e-Kit downloaded several hundred thousand times, especially offshore.  The kit summarised below is pitched at sole, small or medium businesses who cannot and should not commission large advertising or marketing companies to promote their business, and do not require high level expertise.  Further, larger marketing bodies e.g. Tourism Australia, should have no need to commission global advertising giants for marketing strategy when they have a highly visible shopfront or website already?

1. Who is this document designed to assist?

These ATDW tutorials have been put together to help small and medium Australian tourism operators successfully market their business online. If you don’t have a website for your business or have one that is not performing to your or your customer’s expectations, these tutorials are for you.
Further, the same can be replicated across other sectors or industries whether goods or services, the principles of good (digital) marketing strategy are the same.

2. Roadmap to success

What do I need to do and in what order? Each tutorial can be read independently and no
technological background is required to understand their content.
You will find a list of all the tutorials organised in different sections on the following:

a) The basics
b) Website
c) SEO Search Engine Optimisation
d) e-Marketing
e) Online booking e-Commerce
f) Analysis and statistics
g) Online distribution
h) Social media

3. Why the Internet?

The Internet is a network of computer networks, which anyone can access and participate in using a web-enabled computer. Users turn to the Internet to search for information and interact with other users such as friends, peers and communities. It comes as no surprise that travellers use the “net” extensively to plan and organise their trip. Latest international research shows that more than 80% of travellers do so.

This signifies that- as a tourism business - you need to move your Internet strategy to the centre of your business model. Having a website that sits “on the side”, a Facebook page that isn’t managed and no social media strategy will not allow you to compete in the online world.

Business and organisations need to move beyond the notion of digital (channels) being an added budgetary item for any advertising or marketing spend and leverage their own customer base for feedback, generation of marketing content, transmission or sharing and visibility.

For more blog and articles related to services and digital marketing click through.