Over the recent years, technology has changed the way we do our daily chores on day to day basis. Soon as you wake up, whether it be half sleep, one eye open or whatever state we wake up from, the first thing that pops into your head is, where’s my phone? So, its very clear that our lives circle around technology whether it be banking, shopping and many more. However, these online services are always aiming for more costumer and traffic into their website by using various online tools. I will briefly go over few of them.

So, let’s just get straight into it.

Search Engine Optimisation

So, what is SEO – it stands for Search Engine Optimisation, “SEO is the simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what the site is offering”. (Fishkin, 2015) SEO is a marketing strategy focused on growing visibility in search engine results. SEO incorporates both the technical and creative foundations required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines.

Who uses SEO – SEO is used by every business and organisation in order raise awareness and increase traffic to their website. This helps your website rank higher than millions of other websites by focusing on the keywords that are typed into the search engine. Whilst SEO is not Internet Marketing, but it can be your arsenal in your overall Internet Marketing Campaign by using things like social media marketing and promoting.

“But I also believe that SEO is not the only game in town! SEO alone cannot help you reach your highest marketing potential. Social media, branding and other marketing strategies segue into and complement SEO, the combination strengthening and reinforcing each element to grow your business exponentially faster” (Chris, 2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqg3F-8jBec

Social Media Marketing

What is Social Media Marketing- Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach. (Target, 2011)

This is one of the best ways majority of the business do their marketing, with growing technology advancement and its consumption in the current market, it is fair to say that over 90% people use social media as a form of interaction. Through this platform, business and organisation can target their audience by advertising about their business or organisation as well as get direct feedback from customers and potential customers. some of the more common website such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.(AMA, 2016)

Some of the brands that were very successful by utilising these forms of marketing are online fashion retails brand such as Asos, Boohoo, and Misguided etc. who don’t have highstreets shops and purely operate via a virtual store. This is also a business strategy of reducing cost by not having multiple stores and instead just having a massive warehouse where they operate from.

Here’s an example of Asos using Instagram for brand exposure.

Asos, 2017

 Digital Marketing Audit

Audit a study of your brand’s digital presence whether it be on its own and in relation to your competitor set across six key areas: Reach, Architecture, Content, Conversion, Integration, and Measurement.( Mark Smiciklas, 2011)

6 Component of Successful Audit

• Reach – utilising tools that enable you to measure your branding in comparison to other brands/competitors. This is done by showing your presence in social media which is relevant to your organisation and measure potential reach via likes, followers, and subscribers etc.
• Architecture- This is all to do with your functionality, structure and channel design etc. Making sure information, tags, description are correctly presented to make the user interface very friendly and simple to navigate.
• Content- This is where you choose carefully what types of content you would want in your website or channel such as text, video, pictures, audio etc.
• Conversion- this is where your digital channels are designed with conversion in mind. These include feedback form or a review etc.
• Integration- This is where you make your social media sites accessible form your websites and crosslink it with all the other social media.
• Measurement- This is where you look back at your objectives and analyse the performance, influence, and engagement it had.  (Mark Smiciklas, 2011)

Whilst what I have written may be vague and generic, I have tried my best to simplify these technological terms so, anyone that is looking to open a new business, or even reach out to more customers are able to utilise tools such as SEO, Auditing, and Social Media Marketing to create brand exposure. These are some of the basic tools that most organisation use on day to day basis to compete with its competitors. By doing so you will be able to raise awareness whether it be a cause for an organisation or new product from a business.