Getting started with digital marketing can seem like a lot all at once and when trying to figure out how to use it to drive customers to your website, it can seem even harder. Focusing on a few core digital marketing activities can provide significant improvements in your ability to drive traffic and ultimately customers to your website. We will cover five digital marketing activities we think will help drive the most customers to your website:

• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• SEO
• PPC/Search Advertising

Social media can be a great way to reach your target audience both organically and through paid advertising. Social ads are a great way to get people on your website, all major platforms including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok offer various different types of ads which allow brands to target individuals across the platform based on a variety of targeting options available such as age, interests, geographical location and also various other criteria like job titles to allow brands to narrow down their target audience and serve ads to those users most likely to click through. Although ads cost to run, brands can quickly drive traffic to a website landing page for only a relatively small investment.

On the other hand, growing an organic following can provide significant value once established by driving regular traffic with no direct associated cost. Relying on ad traffic alone is simply not enough, the key to driving long term traffic to your site lies with building and maintaining a relevant following on social media, organically. You can now connect your website to many different platforms with the introduction of features like Instagram’s shop which allows you to connect your website directly to your social media so potential customers can view all of your products while still being on the Instagram app. Having this feature ensures you can get your products directly in front of your target audience which increases the chance of a user clicking through and buying on your site.

Influencers are becoming a popular means of driving website traffic from social media. Influencers are now partnering with brands to co-create content and drive web traffic through affiliate link schemes. This allows brands to tap into an existing audience of people and serve content through their favourite social media account and individuals they follow, making it more likely a user will click the link through to your site.

Email marketing has been around for a long time but still continues to be one of the top ways to drive traffic to a website. Whether you capture email addresses via a form, social media or even in person, you can then begin to serve content to these users on a regular basis to keep them engaged and drive them to your site time and time again.

Email marketing can be used to provide direct and personalised offers straight to potential customers which invite them to click through to your site for a potential saving or particular offer you are running. You can even use it as a means to bring previous visitors back to your site who may have potentially abandoned their cart which have been proven to drastically improve the likely hood of them returning to your site and buying.

Marketing automation software now allows you to run automated campaigns which you can target to any audience and particular segments. Automating email campaigns not only reduces the likelihood of error but also reduces the amount of time and effort needed to allocate to this type of marketing, allowing you to free up time work on other techniques. Once you have your emails optimised you can rest assure your email marketing is taken care of (with some close supervision and regular optimisations).

Emailing marketing however doesn’t come without its challenges, there are a range of factors which must be considered before conducting and continuing to send emails to theses individuals. Brands must consider a few vital elements which need to be implemented throughout to ensure the success of future email marketing campaigns.

• A/B Testing is king
• Optimise for mobile
• Optimise subject line and preview texts for better open rate and CTR
• Don’t spam your contacts
• Personalisation drives engagement

PPC (pay per click) advertising is one of the most popular and most utilised forms of digital marketing. We all know that being on the first page results to searches is important with only the top few results ever being clicked, runnings search ads targeted to your chosen keywords and phrases can drop you right at the top of the search results and drive larger volumes of traffic to your site. Not without its costs, PPC ads offer a quick way to rank for the keywords you want, only needing to out bid your competitors for the space.

You can also run remarketing ads in the form of search or image ads which retarget individuals who have previously been on your site and looked at something in particular. Ever searched for something to have a look and then see the same product ads across other sites? Yep you guessed it, that’s remarketing. Proven to have a high ROI, remarketing is a good way to drive previously interested users back to your site and thus increase the amount of traffic you can drive to your site.

In the marketing world, a sound SEO strategy that works is like gold dust with it proven to drive high volumes of  convertible traffic which have searched something relating to your website and it’s offerings and thus land on your site.

If your looking to drive long term, valuable traffic then SEO is the one for you. If brands can create content that is both useful and relevant to their industry, they can begin to gain a foothold in their target audience and drive significant amounts of relevant traffic to their site. The key here is to then use content as a foot in the door so to speak and then keep these users on your site after landing and consuming the initial content which in turn drives more exposure for the brand and it’s site.

Some key factors to consider to create an outstanding SEO strategy are:

• Create regular and useful content to your industry
• Conduct keyword research which targets the best performing keywords more likely to drive traffic
• Optimise your user experience
• Optimise website performance and core web vitals