Focus On Early Secret

 Content Marketing We  can trace the origins of content marketing back to 1895, with a magazine pub- lished by John Deere called The Furrow. It served to educate farmers on how to  increase profits, and threw in some nice pictures of the latest in farming machin- ery for good measure. It’s still in publication today, which speaks to the staying  power of this particular skill set. Using content as a digital marketing strategy is a deep well of career development.  Not only are skills needed to create and distribute engaging content across a variety  of platforms, but that content must be designed to attract a specific target audience  and drive people to take a measurable action (like buying a tractor, for example). The  digital marketing space hosts a wide variety of content types: blog posts that serve  to segment potential audiences; podcasts that educate and create brand awareness;  social media updates; infographics; and even e-book...

 Understanding Where Your Traffic Is Coming From Many different avenues can lead people to your site, ranging from ads to search  queries to people bookmarking your page and then returning. Here are the com- mon default sources of traffic as recorded by Google Analytics: » Email: Visits from those who have clicked the links in your email promotions  and newsletter. » Organic search: Visits from people typing search queries into search engines  such as Google or Bing. » Direct: Traffic from users who type the exact domain of your site, such as  Pepsi.com, into their browser and navigate straight to your site. If someone  bookmarks your page and then visits your site again via that bookmark, that  visit also registers as direct traffic. » Paid search: Traffic from paid search is traffic you have purchased, such as  pay-per-click ads from search engines. » Referral: Visitors from sites that link to your website, such as blogs and forums. » Social: Vi...

 Following Up with Email Marketing magine that it’s seven o’clock on a Tuesday morning. You wake up to the beep- ing of your alarm, roll out of bed, and stumble to the kitchen, where the coffee  that you programmed to brew last night is just finishing its drip cycle. You grab  a mug, add some cream and a tiny sprinkle of sugar, and sit down at the kitchen  table. Then you check your email. If you’re anything like most adult Americans, this routine may be familiar.  Email is not only part of our daily routines, but also one of our primary sources of  information. It probably isn’t a surprise to you that email has a higher return  on investment than any other channel by far. In fact, email returns an average  4,300 percent return on investment for businesses in the United States. Email plays an important role in digital marketing because it helps move customers  from one stage of the customer journey (see Chapter 1 for more on the customer...

  Setting up Boomerang Traffic Needless to say, not everyone who comes to your site will convert on the first visit in fact, for most sites, only 2 percent of web traffic converts on the first visit. So  how do you get the other 98 percent to “boomerang” and come back to your site?  You do it through a strategy known as ad retargeting. For instance, say that you go to the online shoe and clothing store Zappos. You  look at a pair of shoes and then leave Zappos without buying. Next you visit the  Huffington Post to read an article and notice an ad for the same pair of shoes that  you were just considering on Zappos.com. You are being retargeted. In this sec- tion, we go into more detail about what retargeting is and how to employ it in the  following sections. Defining ad retargeting After people have visited your site, sales page, or social media page, you can safely  assume that they’re interested in learning more. Even if they left without buyin...

 Tapping into Paid Traffic How do you get traffic to your website? This is the number one question that  business owners ask about digital marketing. The truth is that getting  traffic to a website is not a problem. In fact, thousands of traffic platforms,  including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, allow you to buy advertising and would  love nothing more than to send traffic to your website. The question isn’t how to  get traffic; rather, it’s what to do with the traffic when you get it. What product or  service should you offer? What content should you show your visitors? Should you  ask them to give you their contact information or come right out and ask them to  buy a product or service? Paid traffic is available in many forms, such as pay-per-click advertising using  platforms like Google AdWords, banner ads, and paid ads on social networks that  include Facebook and Twitter. Paid traffic is a powerful tool because it helps to...

 Networking That Moves the Needle You’ve probably heard the old adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you  know,” which, of course, means that you have to engage in networking.  Networking is all about the public relations side of your business. In traditional public  relations (PR) endeavors, you seek out third parties such as newspaper journalists who can amplify your marketing message. Social networking accomplishes this  same goal by finding and associating with authoritative and influential individuals and brands on the social web. Although social influencing is about distributing your own content such as blog  posts, podcasts, and videos to establish authority, you can connect with others via  social networking by sharing other people’s content with your audience. As with  person-to-person networking, in social networking you use social media to look  for and to establish connections in the hopes of creating mutually beneficial part-...

 Knowing the Three Key Players in Search Marketing Three main players make up the search marketing landscape, each with a differ- ent motivation. Understanding who the players are and what they want gives you  a better understanding of how to make search marketing work for your business.  The important players in search marketing are » Searchers: People who type search queries into search engines » Search engines: Programs that searchers use to find products, services,  content, and more on the Internet » Marketers: The owners of websites and other channels that publish content  and make offers to people on the Internet As a marketer and business owner, you want to maximize the amount of traffic,  leads, and sales you get from search marketing. To do this, you must give search- ers and search engines what they want. Understanding searchers’ needs The key for both marketers and search engines is understanding the mindset of  searchers. By understanding ...

 Writing a sales letter Mastering copywriting is a bit like mastering a craft such as pottery or oil paint- ing: It involves a tremendous amount of art. That said, writing persuasive copy  starts with understanding the fundamental components of a sales letter. In truth,  you can apply the principles that comprise a persuasive sales letter to all your  communications, including emails, blog posts, presentation titles, and more. A beginner can use the process we describe here verbatim, but as you become  more comfortable with the process, feel free to change it to meet your circum- stances. A sales letter, above all else, should be truthful and therefore might not  contain some of the elements outlined in this process simply because they don’t  apply to your offer. Here are the steps of the process required to write a well-crafted sales letter. You  can refer to this as a checklist to ensure that you’ve included all the essential ele- ments of a per...