Do you have a digitally-based business, in other words, a business that operates online, either directly selling goods to customers or acting as a conduit for potential customers? If you do, then you have probably found yourself having to compete with a multitude of other companies also on the internet that are trying to get noticed.
The best way to get your company noticed over and above all these competitors, many with similar businesses to yours, is to use the services of a digital marketing agency. These agencies ply their trade in the digital world known as the internet and usually consist of one or more consultants who set up an internet marketing campaign for you aimed at bringing your online company to the attention of search engines on the Web. As it is the search engines that will find and display your company in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), the agency you use will naturally base the internet marketing campaign they are doing for you on getting these browsers to notice your website.
However it may seem, getting your website noticed by search engines is not the ultimate aim of a digital marketing agency. Its underlying aim is to pull or push internet traffic to a specific website, and to turn human internet searchers into customers of that specific website. Search engines are inanimate, it is the human beings who are looking at the list of websites displayed on the SERPs that count, and who are the ultimate targets of digital marketing. You, as the owner of a website want to get these individuals to not only visit your site, but to buy goods from it, or to contact you about the services you offer, and this is what a digital marketer should be doing for you. They do this by applying certain techniques and processes in an online marketing campaign that they have recommended to you.
The combination of techniques and processes chosen for your campaign typically fall into three main categories: paid, unpaid or a combination of paid and unpaid. Paid advertising, or Pay-Per-Click as it is often called, involves paying search engine directories to list a website. This is a guaranteed way of getting your websites into the SERPs and you will most likely see your site displayed in a matter of days. This is because the search engine directories are being paid to display your website. The downside of this kind of paid campaign is that it is costly and there is no guarantee that people will visit your website any more than they would any other.
Unpaid digital marketing, on the other hand, uses ‘natural’ or organic search engine optimization methods to create awareness about a website which is made to appear high up in the SERPs without the aid of paid listing. Of course, without the injection of cash, results are likely to take longer to show, but in the end, the effect is the same as paid marketing. If your website ranks on the first page of the SERPs, you will get attention as this is the page searchers will look at with the most interest, regardless of whether paid or unpaid methods were used to get you there. Depending on your budget, the digital marketing agency working for you will employ either paid or unpaid methods, or a combination of the two.