SEO or Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing or SEO?

Interesting article by Amit Thakur via LinkedIn highlighting and questioning what’s the difference between digital marketing and SEO search engine optimisation; often not understood well in marketing while traditional media and strategies are preferred.

Digital Marketing versus SEO (Image copyright Pexels)

‘What is the difference between digital marketing and SEO?

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your growth-oriented online marketing efforts for the business promotion. 

Digital channels such as Google search, social media, email, and their websites to connect with their current and prospective customers involved in Digital Marketing.

Why Digital Marketing?

We are living in the digital world, where most of the people like to use the internet from their computers, mobile and tablets for searching any information about any products and services. Being on the internet it helps our business, product, or service to perform for their right customer. Digital Marketing gives you the power to lets the customer find you.

Benefits of Digital Marketing:

• Being on the Internet you will be available for 24*7*365
• Digital Marketing Helps Generate Better Revenues
• You can easily Communicate with your customer at a real-time
• Best platform to reach the right customers
• You can easily track your customer
• No need to pay extra for any Advertisement
• Digital Marketing Is More Cost-Effective than Traditional Marketing

What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is a technique for improving the ranking of web pages on SERP(Search Engine Result Pages).

SEO or search engine optimization is a way to get new customers and helps you to boost your business, services, products from the internet.’ (Thakur 2018).

Benefits of SEO

The benefits of SEO include constant long-term presence, organic results trusted more than paid digital, after significant front-end investment, informed by customers to attract new customers in their language, leveraging word of mouth, through curated consumer generated media or marketing content, from their regular and authentic feedback (adapted for use as content).

By grounding market research on customers whether focus groups, social media comments etc. any marketing strategy development or system can be cyclical (versus one off budget item and/or campaign), not unlike the systems or software development lifecycle which includes regular feedback for adaptation and improvement based on users.

It’s especially advantageous for sole operators or small medium enterprises lacking large budgets and access to expensive traditional media; they can compete with the physically larger competitors in the digital space using SEO.


Click through for related articles on digital marketing, digital or e-consumer behaviour, market research and marketing strategy.

Instructional Design - Digital or e-Marketing Introduction for Small Business

Topic:  Introduction to Digital or e-Marketing

for Small Business

Goal:

Small business owners and/or managers understand the concepts, resources and actions for a digital or e-marketing strategy.

Subject Matter Expert and/or Target Market:

Have the SME covered personally, however I would potentially approach a local business chamber of commerce looking to support local businesses in their marketing and sales.  It could also target a specific sector, like has already been done below, i.e. travel and tourism, or international education sector.

 Instructional Design - Digital or e-Marketing Strategy for Small Business

(Image copyright Pexels)

Rationale:

Worked in education and training small business related to study abroad in Australia developing a digital marketing strategy covering Central Europe, Turkey, UK and Australia; conventional marketing was too expensive, not transparent and ineffective.

Self-taught using available online resources, became familiar with many techniques and actions, with formalisation of learning through recent MBA course subject ‘e-Marketing’.

In my professional experience, in addition to state university and vocation school marketing managers, many small private colleges precluded any effective digital marketing strategy in favour of expensive conventional advertising and promotion via travel to one off events for international student recruitment; not financially viable in new markets nor medium term market development.

Generally Australia has low very digital literacy amongst managers and owners, including small business, due to legacy industries preferring existing processes, sub-optimal education curricula, demand for immediate simple solutions and lack of innovation.

However, the travel and tourism industry, with state agency support, have had access for over 10 years to an e-Marketing kit, designed for small travel operators to leverage their marketing and sales digitally, both locally in Australia and internationally with global network; it’s been quite successful as world’s best practice.

The advantage is that small businesses with good digital strategy can increase their target market, analyse well, work with their and gain insight into their own customer base and have more significant profile than physically larger organisations.

Content Delivery &/or Presentation:

Can be introduced, presented, learnt and assessed via basic understandable steps, requiring participants to bridge differences between conventional marketing or sales, with digital.

 The design would include:

1. What is marketing? How do your customers find you? What do they say about you?
2. Website appearance, design and management and content management systems (CMS)
3. Social Media how does it work? Which blog and social media?
4. SEO/SEM How to reach new audiences and markets?
5. How to evaluate any strategy or system?

Teaching and learning resources would include examples of good (and bad) practice via following or analysing a business from its website (social media, blogs, customer feedback etc.), feedback from participants relating to their own business examples.

This should be leading to them being able to assess needs, develop strategy, implement and evaluate, continually.

Outcomes are assessed by learner input, producing a strategy or approach, resources and media e.g. how to create a Facebook page, open a Twitter account, find useful resources etc.; using own PC, laptop, tablet or mobile.

After this overview, e.g. even presenting to actual target audience, could lead to being commissioned for more of the same, and higher-level training courses.

For more related articles and blogs click through Digital Marketing and Instructional Design for e-Marketing.