With the emergence of social media and all the new online platforms that surface from year to year, it’s difficult to keep up with all of them.

Yet, it’s important to have a marketing skillset to remain competitive if you are a business owner that wears many hats.

How teaching myself digital marketing skills improved my bottom line

Most people who run their own business know some minimal traditional marketing skills to get by.

But now, they also need to adapt to the digital marketing world and learn digital marketing skills to survive.

This is important for businesses that want to engage with their customers, keep their brand in the forefront, drive traffic to their website or blog, and improve their bottom line.

As a result of the constant changes and new trends in social media, I’ve had to learn how social media works and how to use it.

I’ve had to find ways to teach myself about digital marketing and the impact (or lack thereof) it has on my business.

Below are the areas I have used to  develop my skills in the world of online digital marketing.

Setting a budget

The first thing I did was set a budget to determine how much money I could afford to spend by utilizing my marketing efforts.

Once I had this in place, I was able to take advantage of various opportunities as they became available.

I also had to make sure that I understood what kind of a return I could get on my marketing investments.

One of the first things I did was perform a Google search to find out how to market my products and services online, and capture the attention of my target audience.

Here are some of the top skillsets that were key for me to develop.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

First, I learned the importance of SEO and the need to have an understanding of this growing trend that is obviously here to stay.

I taught myself about it by reading e-books, online tutorials, and by doing free online research.

I discovered that, since Internet users have turned to Google for typing in keywords to assist with their online searches, my marketing content should be fully targeted by using keywords-rich content. That way my content wold be easily found by users online.

I also learned that 61% of marketers saw improvement in their inbound marketing strategy as a result of implementing SEO techniques.

Email marketing

Email marketing is yet a another very effective marketing strategy.

I cannot only use it to capture new customers, but to also follow up with customers who have expressed an interest in my products or services.

Email marketing is also effective because it’s the one tool that needs to be used repeatedly to take potential customers through the entire sales journey.

Full service email marketing uses different email techniques that, when combined together, result in an ROI of roughly 3800%.

Webinars

Creating webinars is another excellent marketing tool that can be used to reach your customers and sell your products and services.

Through other webinars, I have learned how to develop my own tailor-made, well-targeted webinars designed specifically for customers who are in need of my know-how, training, products, and services.

There is a variety of techniques that need to go into play before a webinar can be successful.

This includes techniques such as developing a list of subscribers who may already have an interest in my product or service, positioning myself as an expert, preparing the proper marketing tools, developing slides, mottos, images and more.

All of these are excellent marketing techniques that I’ve had to learn to keep my business afloat.

I did this by ensuring that I was always fully engaged, and that I had plenty of customers flowing into my site.

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