Digital marketing covers a wide range of marketing activities delivered through digital technologies. Techniques include search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, pay per click (PPC) advertising, content marketing and e-mail marketing.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing access to a website by procuring that pages appear at or near the top of a search engine results page for a specific set of keyword terms. The higher your page ranking, the greater your online visibility and the more traffic that will be driven to your site. According to the Search Engine Journal, over 40 percent of revenue is captured by such organic traffic.
SEO demands carefully constructed websites which try to factor in search engine algorithmic vagaries and have engaging content. For example, Google looks for pages which incorporate or are closely related to the keywords used during a search. See Google SEO Starter Guide for more information.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is booming, especially through the use of social media influencers. It utilizes social networking websites, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, as a marketing tool.
Businesses use social media optimization to captivate and draw new visitors to their websites by either adding social media links to their content or promoting activity through their social media channels.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay Per Click is a type of advertising where a business pays a fee every time its adverts are clicked on, as opposed to organically earning visits as is the case with SEO.
An advertiser needs to set up its ads in a search engine advertising platform, select relevant keywords which will trigger links to its website and determine how much it is willing to bid for each click.
Content Marketing
Content marketing has been defined as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Content can be included in educational articles, e-books, videos, and webinars that address specific questions the desired audience is likely ti have.
Legal Pitfalls
When selecting keywords for PPC and SEO, one must be careful not to infringe the trademarks of third parties, notably competitors.
Similarly, when drafting content, the author must resist the temptation to plagiarise third party content on similar websites as this is illegal and would be likely to lead to copyright infringement proceedings.
If you provide digital marketing services or associated software, and need any legal advice please contact us using the contact form.
For further information, please contact Simon Halberstam at Simon.Halberstam@smab.co.uk