The world is getting increasingly digitized, and the need for digital content is at an all-time high. Now, if you've been looking into digital marketing, you have come across words like digital media or digital content.
So what do they mean? Simply put, digital content or media implies any form of media or content distributed using electronic devices.
Digital media is only created, viewed, modified, and distributed through electronic devices. As a digital marketing consultant, I have seen the shift from traditional to digital media.
However, people are still reluctant to work with digital marketing mediums, mainly because they don't understand digital media or what it means to go digital.
People also often don't know what questions to ask a digital marketer. So I decided to address this and created this simple guide to understanding digital media and how it can help businesses.
In the following, you will find what digital media or content means, what digital marketing terms you should know about, and what questions you should ask a digital marketer. So, without any further delay, let's check it out!
What Does Digital Media/Content Mean?
Digital media or content means any content that exists in digital data. It is stored on digital or analog storage in specific formats. For example, any content that is digitally broadcast, streamed, or contained in computer files is digital media.
Because it is the primary way people consume media nowadays, its implications on how to make brands successful are wide-ranging.
The following describes how digital content helps businesses establish themselves in an industry. So, without any further delay, let's dive in!
How Does Digital Media Help Businesses?
Digital media is the primary way for people to consume media and content right now. That means it affects our day-to-day lives. So how does it help with businesses? Well, there are three main ways it helps, those are:
Customer Engagement & Brand Awareness.
Equal opportunity for all.
Aligns with current customer trends.
How Does Digital Media Help With Customer Engagement & Brand Awareness?
Around 82% of the population in the US uses social media. It's their go-to option for consuming content, keeping up with the news, and interacting with friends. In addition, 79% of social media users use social media to share their life milestones with their loved ones.
That means the value of social media to people is immense, and that connection with social media is what companies can leverage to grow their brand using digital media.
Social media and brand recognition go hand in hand. Most social media users want brands to engage with them through likes, comments, sharing, and other interactive methods.
Many look to social media for discounts and customer support. So tapping into these genuine needs and wants on social media immensely helps businesses with customer engagement and brand awareness.
How Can Digital Media Provide Equal Opportunity For All?
Small businesses have a tough time establishing themselves in a niche, with large companies dominating and wiping out the competition with their vast resources.
However, with digital media, small businesses can capitalize on the human connection aspect and make connections that ensure they get a foothold in the industry.
Also, with the accessibility of online advertising mediums like PPC, small businesses can quickly reach a wider audience and carve out a community of their own for sustainable growth.
Digital content or media plays a central role in these methods and somewhat levels the playing field by prioritizing ingenuity and creativity more than the money spent on broadcasting.
How Does Digital Media Fall in Line With Current Consumer Behavior?
According to a 2017 report, the average American spends 24 hours a week online, and most people look for products and services online.
Whether a friend or family member shares their experience or stumbles across a piece of content that spurs them to investigate a brand, there are countless avenues to discover. Consumers nowadays look for brand content they can align themselves with before making a purchasing decision.
Digital content plays a crucial role in helping with customer acquisition, as it's how a company broadcasts its products, services, and mission statement. Now that you know how digital media helps businesses, let's look into the different types of digital media you can use.
What Are The Different Types Of Digital Media?
There are three different types of digital media/content. To be successful online, you need to reach your audience and hook them to your brand. To do that, you will need compelling digital media. But first, you need to know what they are. The three types of digital media are:
Owned media.
Earned media.
Paid media.
What Is Owned Media?
Owned media refers to the content that is unique to your brand and that you and your team have created. It can be anything from websites and social media channels to blogs, videos, infographics, ETC.
Of course, you need to optimize the content for SEO so that it pops up whenever your desired audience searches online for anything related to it.
The great thing about owned media is that it lets you control the conversation surrounding your brand. Still, the content must be high-quality and unique to have a positive impact.
What Is Paid Media?
Paid media is using online tools to promote your existing content archive. It can be anything from PPC, local service ads, paid search ads to display ads, and Facebook ads. If done right, it can raise brand awareness by huge margins while ensuring a better effort ROI.
The best thing about paid media is that it's data-driven. By analyzing the analytics report, you will know what's working, what isn't, and what you need to do to make it work. Paid media supplements your overall digital marketing strategy by injecting more views and engagement for your content and products.
What Is Earned Media?
Earned media is the hardest form of digital media to generate, as consumers generate it. It's generated when a consumer advocates for your brand through word of mouth, social media, reviews, testimonials, shares, re-posts, or other methods.
The best thing about earned media is that it's completely free, significantly reducing your customer acquisition cost. However, with earned media, you cannot control the conversation as it is entirely in the hands of the consumer.
To get good quality earned media for your brand, ensure you have strong organic rankings on search engines and high-quality content.
So now that you know about digital media or content, the next step of the journey is to work with a digital marketer and find highly impactful solutions for your company. So that's what we will talk about next!
What Questions Should You Ask A Digital Marketer?
I've been in digital marketing for more than seven years now, and I often encounter clients who don't understand what they really want from the marketer or how they can help the brand.
Now, there always needs to be a clear understanding between a digital marketer and the client. It's the only way to have any chance of success.
To do that, you need to ask your digital marketer some poignant questions that will answer how they can help out. Here is a list of questions you need to ask your digital marketer:
How long will the SEO efforts take to show results?
How important is the keyword research phase?
Why shouldn't I just integrate high-ranking keywords in my content?
How to create highly impactful social media campaigns for my company?
Why should I emphasize the mobile-first approach?
Is there a way to drive traffic to my website right now?
How can I ensure my company avoids penalties doled out by search engines like Google?
How much is video important for SEO?
Can you generate online authority without blogging?
What's the use of meta tags?
How do I rank high locally?
How does PPC differ from organic traffic?
How important are "calls to action"? And how do you create them?
Does website design and development impact my SEO score?
How do I generate leads without exhausting most of my resources?
How do I optimize my conversion rates?
How to create a comprehensive email list?
Are image alt-tags important?
Do I have to add my company to local business directories to rank high?
How does online PR work?
How do I tackle reputation management online?
Why do I need several different approaches to my digital marketing strategies?
How much of my resources do I need to allocate for sustainable online growth?
How much ROI can I expect?
How flexible are the campaigns?
So these are some of the questions you should ask your digital marketing partner. These are not all the questions, but they are general ones common to all the niches.
However, you should ask your digital marketer niche-specific questions, so make sure you have them ready. If you don't know how to get the correct answers for your company, you can schedule a free consultation with me, and you will have no pre-set obligation to work with me.
So now you know what digital media is and how it can help you, and you know how to ask the right questions to a digital marketer. However, when you speak to a marketer, they will often use industry terms that you may not understand.
To make your conversation more effortless, I will give you a table of the most common digital marketing terms so that you can easily understand how digital marketing and the marketer will help your brand!
What Are The Digital Marketing Terms You Should Know?
You already know the importance of digital marketing and media. You've already selected your digital marketing partner, so now you guys need to have "the talk." To do that, you need to understand digital marketing terms.
Since you are past the initial stage, this list will forgo any basic terms you might already know. So instead, here is a table of digital marketing terms that carry weight behind them and are not "buzzwords" that attract attention:
The Takeaway
So that concludes my simple guide on digital media and how it can help your business. Hopefully, now you know how it can help, what questions you should ask a digital marketer, and what your digital marketing partner is saying.
It can be easy to get lost in the digital space. Finding the right person to work with can be challenging. It's the reason I wanted to create this guide. I hope that it will help you find the right digital marketing consultant for your brand, and with them, you will find sustainable growth for your business.
That being said, that's all I have for you today. I will come back with something new about the delightful world of digital marketing soon. Until then, see ya!
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