WTH is digital marketing and why does your business need it?

As the daughter of a small business owner, I strive to apply the same entrepreneurial spirit I learned from my father to everything I do.

I grew up in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, where my dad launched his environmental clean-up company, AST Environmental. Watching my dad build a business from the ground up as a kid made me realize I wanted to marry my love for marketing with helping other businesses, just like my dad’s.

I went to journalism school at Bowling Green State University, where I chased breaking news, refined my communication skills and met amazing people who allowed me to tell their stories. While I will always have a passion for journalism, it never quite satisfied me the same way digital marketing does.

Your digital footprint matters, and whether you want to admit it or not, your potential customers are looking you up online and on social media before they decide to do business with you. And if you want to get ahead of the game and keep up with your competitors, it’s time to start thinking about how digital marketing services can increase your return on investment and create the digital footprint you want the world to see.

So what does digital marketing mean anyway? One part of it is social media. Social media can be an effective channel to build an online reputation. It can showcase your expertise and personality as well as draw in more customers to your business with social posts and targeted social media campaigns.

Another part of digital marketing has to do with how easily you can be found when people search online. Making sure your website or blog posts include certain keywords that people search on Google can help your website come up in the results. This is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. The content that appears on your website or social media matters when consumers Google you. Most people are on their phones all day long and turn to Google and social media for answers to their questions. Online consumers often never look beyond the first page of a Google search. Being on Page 1 of a web search is critical. The average consumer isn’t going to second-guess those rankings.

From social media campaigns to SEO to email marketing, each piece of digital marketing plays an intricate part in the success of a business and building trusted relationships with customers. If companies don’t pay proper attention to digital marketing they are going to miss out on some major business opportunities.

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