Marketing has always been about connecting with your target audience in the right place and at the right time.

Today, that means you need to meet your target audience where they are spending most of their time. The place is on the internet.

Did you know that in 2022, there were more than 4.95 Billion global internet users? This was up from 400 million users in 2021. That is a huge number of people, a huge number of people that could be your customers too – but only if they know about you.

Want to learn more about digital marketing and learn why it’s important? Keep reading.

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your company’s online marketing efforts.

Digital marketing is how your target audience will find you online, engage with your Brand, fall in love with what you offer, build trust and ultimately… buy from you.

Let’s dive in to:

1. What is Digital Marketing?

2. What are the benefits of Internet Marketing?

3. Digital Marketing Strategy vs Digital Marketing Plan

4. How do I write a Digital Marketing Strategy?

5. How do I write a Digital Marketing Plan?

Read on to learn more about Digital Marketing, what it is and how you can create a digital marketing strategy for your business to reach more customers than you ever thought possible.

1. What is Digital Marketing?

In this digital era, anyone can use technology to promote their business. Create innovative designs and share it on the internet.

Digital marketing is otherwise known as Online Marketing or Internet Marketing. It embraces many traditional marketing techniques but includes some important ‘upgrades’ so they apply effectively in the digital space.

Digital marketing is defined as the use of digital channels or technologies to sell, or promote, a product or service.

So, what does digital marketing consist of? We call them the 9 pillars of digital marketing and they are:

• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing (SMM)
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Influencer marketing
• Mobile marketing
• Marketing analytics
• Affiliate marketing

All 9 pillars fall under the umbrella term ‘Digital Marketing’ and come in no particular order – all 9 are equally important these days.

But for a real-life example of these pillars in action… if you are being encouraged to buy something when you’re browsing online, that is the 9 pillars of digital marketing at work.

2. What are the benefits of Internet Marketing?

The number of potential customers or, prospects, you can find online is much larger than you’ll ever be able to attract locally.

We are talking a global audience of 4.95 billion people here, a number that is growing considerably each year. Imagine the possibilities if you opened the doors of your business to that many people.

It could be life changing for you and your family.

By incorporating only 50% of the digital marketing pillars into your digital marketing plan, you will be able to reach a global audience in a way that’s cost-effective, scalable and measurable.

Some of the key benefits of digital marketing include:

• The ability to interact with your prospects and learn exactly what they are looking for (in otherwords, get to know your customers better!).
• The ability to reach out to anyone, anywhere, as there are no geographical boundaries in the digital space.
• Target the right audience at the right time – personalisation is simpler with digital marketing.
• Communicate with your prospects at every stage of the buying process.
• Save money by reaching more customers for less.
• Get to know your audience and drive engagement to create brand loyalty.
• Gain inspiration from the power of customer loyalty schemes.
• Track and monitor responses to your marketing efforts easily and quickly.

3. Digital Marketing Strategy vs Digital Marketing Plan

Even though marketing professionals often use these two terms interchangeably – Digital Marketing Plans and Digital Marketing Strategies differ from one another.

But do keep in mind that to find success in business online, both are necessary.

The most notable differences between the two are that a digital marketing strategy is something you establish first. Followed by your digital marketing plan which outlines how you’ll accomplish all the goals you’ve defined in the digital marketing strategy.

Here are some other differences between a digital marketing plan and a digital marketing strategy:

• Definition: The digital marketing strategy is the reason you have digital marketing efforts. This might be because the business needs to earn more to support its growth, or the business requires more brand recognition to secure long-term customers. In contrast, a digital marketing plan is the method by which you’ll deliver your strategy.
• Purpose: The purpose of a digital marketing strategy is to align your digital marketing goals with the overarching goals of the business. While the purpose of a digital marketing plan is to develop the specific steps you’ll need take to realise your marketing goals.
• Focus: Another difference between a digital marketing plan and a digital marketing strategy is in what each focuses on. Your digital marketing strategy will include your goals, campaign objectives, target audience, methods of communication and competitor analysis. Comparatively, your digital marketing plan should focus on the implementation method and more tactical steps you plan on taking to achieve the goals you’ve included in the strategy.

Now that we’ve covered the differences between the two, hopefully you’re now clued up on why they’re both important. So next, we’re going to delve into how to write your own digital marketing strategy!

4. How do I write a Digital Marketing Strategy?

A strategy gives you direction, this is true in all aspects of running your business. A digital marketing strategy is no different and why it’s often described as a roadmap to grow your business online.

From our experience, many companies without a digital marketing strategy lack clear strategic goals. They often come hand-in-hand and it draws into question whether there is a deeper strategic issue within the business. If you are struggling to find the time, or just don’t know where to start – this guide from HELM can really help put you back on track.

A clearly defined digital marketing strategy provides you with clarity. Without one, it makes it very difficult to allocate resources to specific digital marketing channels and even more difficult to measure whether you’re hitting your targets. Here are three questions to illustrate this point…

• How much profit did we make?
• How well did our customers respond?
• What could we have done better?

Three very easy questions to ask that are, often, very difficult to answer – unless you have written a digital marketing strategy.

So, how do I write a digital marketing strategy?

You can start by writing down answers to these questions:

• What am I trying to achieve? (state all your goals)
• Who is my target audience? (age, demographic, location etc)
• What is the ideal customer persona (e.g a young male professional with an affinity for green living?)
• Which digital channels are most suitable? (e.g Instagram, Facebook, Google Ads based on market research)
• What is my maximum budget? (include a small contingency)
• How many staff do I need to assign?
• What is the market demand for this product/service?
• How do I measure and report on the campaign?

Once you have answered all these questions, you will be 90% of the way to have written your digital marketing strategy. Build upon it further by adding questions specific to your niche and goals. Before you know it, you’ll have a digital marketing strategy that you feel confident will drive your business forward. 

Now, let’s focus on the execution of your strategy and that is the digital marketing plan!

5. How do I write a Digital Marketing Plan?

Firstly, let’s do a quick recap – what is a digital marketing plan? We can then provide you with a template showing you how to create your own.

Remember that digital marketing is achieved through digital marketing channels, embracing the 9 pillars, as outlined above. Therefore a digital marketing plan involves a deliberate decision-making process regarding your digital marketing strategy and decides upon the most appropriate digital channels that will help you fulfill it.

In short, a digital marketing plan is defined as a step-by-step, actionable process that focuses upon delivering the digital marketing strategy. 

Now that you fully understand what a digital marketing plan is, here is a real-life example of one based on a Gantt chart.

What’s really useful about this example is that it is an interactive Gantt based template, most are offline PDF’s which don’t provide you with a great deal of value-add. But with this interactive gantt, you can clearly see step-by-step, how to build your own digital marketing plan with some realistic time frames included for each task too. Super helpful!

Now that you’re fully prepared, it’s time to write your digital marketing plan!

Your next steps.

At VIEWFULE, we appreciate that it takes time to develop an effective digital marketing strategy and, in-turn, write an effective digital marketing plan. But if you invest the time to do so, the rewards can be huge and life changing that much is clear… engaging with a market of 4.95 Billion global internet users is no joke. Riches are to be made if you get it right and many companies do each and every day.

Should you need any guidance on writing either one or perhaps just an honest chat on digital marketing for your business. Reach our for your FREE consultation and we’ll talk through digital marketing, from effective digital channels to strategy and plans so you keep ahead of your competitors and gain market share!

When it comes to Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, we think of Google Ads. This is primarily because of Google’s size and influence, they hold over 90% of the global market share. All the other search engines, combined, hold less than 9% of the market. A staggering fact isn’t it?

The purpose of this article is to help you understand what Google Ads (previously known as Google AdWords) are all about, their relevance for your business, and the different ways in which they can add value to your marketing efforts. So without further ado, let’s reveal how you can boost your online sales in 2023 with Google Ads!

Google Ads have transformed even the smallest Brands into global empires.

If you want your business to be featured alongside the huge number of searches that take place on Google each day (spoiler, it’s over 8.5 Billion) and rapidly increase your Brand awareness whilst growing your bottom line, in our opinion there is no better ‘bang for your buck’ than using Google Ads. 

Here are our top 5 reasons to consider Google Ads to boost your online sales in 2023:

1. Google Ads Deliver Quality Leads

2. Control Ad Spend With Google Ads

3. Increase Brand Reach with Google Ads

4. Rich Reporting Capabilities in Google Ads

5. Faster Results Than SEO with Google Ads
   
   

1. Google Ads Deliver Quality Leads

Sales professionals and Marketers alike know the importance of quality leads. At the end of the day, your ad campaign should meet the objectives of your brand.

With Google improving its algorithms every day, you can be assured of reaching your target audience. With billions of searches every day, frankly it would be hard for them not to.

Google Ads allow you to bid for specific keywords – short or long-tail keywords. While the latter allows you to target potential customers with high intent, the former may get you higher traction with fewer leads.

You can generate leads in so many ways and from so many services with Google Ads – the world really is your oyster.

Ever felt that Google knows what you like more than your best friend?

This is all down to Google’s smart algorithms. They can detect user intent and serve them just what they are looking for on a silver platter.

Having the ability to essentially ‘know’ user intent, retain all that data and then provide a platform in which an every day person can advertise using it is a game changer.

No other platform, search engines or social media alike, come close to the power of Google in this regard and it’s all down to the algorithm and volume – the number of people, just like you, that use it every day making it more intelligent.

The power of Google Ads is in the Audience Segments

Your ad has to be exciting and make a big enough impact to sway users, ideally in under 3 seconds. With Google Ads, you can target users who are looking for a product that your business has to offer by using highly-targeted audience segments.

These audience segments and affinity segments are separate to keywords but equally as important. They help to focus your marketing efforts by connecting more deeply with the type of person who is most likely to engage with your Brand.

For example, someone searching for the latest super-efficient solar panel are likely to be the type of user who has affinity for green living. In this case, we would choose the affinity audience ‘Green Living Enthusiasts’ to target them (amongst others).

This level of precision provides you with an edge over other advertising channels and allows you to win more leads.

2. Control Ad Spend With Google Ads

Once upon a time, marketers really struggled to keep their ad campaigns within budget. The reporting capabilities and the speed of communication was poor to say the least so everything was slower and based on estimates.

Likewise, the marketing options available weren’t particularly effective either – but they were all we had – and you often needed to use multiple companies in order to advertise across multiple channels.

This approach increases operating costs and creates accounting challenges; trying to juggle lots of invoices and payment schedules isn’t easy and worse yet – they carry their own costs too.

Google Ads are a simpler & more effective marketing option

Google Ads use multiple channels, with powerful reporting capabilities that are near real-time combined with fast ad development times all provided by one single company.

This approach solves many of those marketing challenges from yesteryear. With the added benefit of it being digital marketing, which virtually puts your brand in someones pocket and follows them wherever they go.

Your business can be seen every day across Google Search, GMail and YouTube amongst others  – the reach is extraordinary and the marketing of dreams only 20 years ago.

It is almost impossible to overspend with Google Ads as they hand complete control of how your money is spent over to you. You can target specific keywords, assign the number of bids, and set daily budget limits. Most importantly though, you are only charged when an ad is actually clicked putting you firmly in the driving seat.

3. Increase Brand Reach with Google Ads 

Google Ads are so much more than just a means to drive clicks. They are a powerful tool to spread brand awareness and increase your exposure. This is particularly important for new businesses.

Reinforcing your Brand name, personality, reputation, etc are all vital to build trust with your visitors. The more you repeat these things consistently, the stronger your Brand becomes and the more trust you earn with potential customers too. And it is trust, that will ultimately earn you sales and loyal customers, make no mistake – trust is everything.

By leveraging the Google Ads network, even if potential customers aren’t clicking any of your ads, they see your Brand. Your name, your contact details and what you offer, in addition to whatever else you choose to showcase on your ad.

There are even options to focus on increasing your Brand’s reach above all else, less clicks and more impressions for example. With this level of customisation and flexibility, you can hone down and refine your marketing goals – and achieve them. It really is a ‘have your cake and eat it too’ situation.

4. Rich Reporting Capabilities in Google Ads

When it comes to marketing, reporting is vital. If you are unable to analyse precisely how your ad campaigns are performing then, at best, you are gambling with your advertising budget and at worst you are marketing blind.

Without powerful reporting capabilities, it throws into doubt just how effective your marketing campaign really is – your ROI and Conversion rates being the most important – and worse yet, you would have no idea what to improve to turn things around. 

Google Ads not only provides a plethora of analytical information itself, such as the example seen above, but it also integrates seamlessly with Analytics suites to greatly expand these capabilities and provide the clarity of what this traffic leads to on your website.

Our Analytics suite AnaTrix, is 100% compatible with Google Ads and allows you to track all this ad traffic using Events, it’s a feature which helps track conversions. All the while, monitoring in real-time what all the website visitors are actually looking at on your website without compromising their privacy.

AnaTrix is a cookieless, privacy-centric analytics suite and well ahead of its competitors in simplicity and size – less than 1kb! Take a look…


Google Analytics also provides highly detailed monitoring capabilities which you can then report on. No matter which analytics suite you choose, it all serves to empower so you are fully in-control, at all times, and can see when campaigns are beginning to go ‘off piste’ and require intervention before the wheels really fall off.

5. Faster Results Than SEO with Google Ads

Google Ads are a faster way to grow your business. However, full disclosure, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is still the backbone of the most highly visited websites. The posts and pages you see on the first page of the Google search results aren’t just well-written with carefully researched keywords; they belong to websites that have amassed a huge number of backlinks which they have steadily gained over time.

Backlinks are, and probably will be for some time yet, the joint number one ranking factor for websites along with Core Web Vitals (which we wrote an article on recently).

However, SEO does not happen over night. It can take years before one of your webpages is ranked on the first page of Google for a broad keyword search term. Many businesses, sadly, never see the day because they never saw the value of engaging with an SEO specialist to get them there. But with Google Ads, you can work around this problem.




When you get started with Google Ads, your chances greatly improve as you leap-frog all the organic results on the search engine results page (SERPs).

As you can see in the example above for an Accountant, when searching for ‘accountant in kapiti’ your business could be right there at the top. Because of this premium ad placement, your web traffic grows exponentially and it grows easier with time too.

There’s no endless search for valuable backlinks that will bump your page up the search results place by place like with SEO. Plus there’s no trawling over keyword density on your post-click landing page. When those Ads start – you are right there, at the top.

Precisely where everyone looks first and that means you stand to capture most of the web traffic. 75% of all clicks on the first page happen at the top. 

Your next steps.

At VIEWFULE, we help to provide businesses, just like yours, with getting the best ‘bang for your buck’ every day. Putting up signs all over town, creating radio ads, writing a newspaper ad or even performing a leaflet drop have largely become inefficient marketing methods by today’s standards. The ROI is poor by comparison, very hard to track and report on, and the costs have increased considerably to $1000’s per month in some cases. You can avoid this entirely with Google Ads. So reach our for your FREE consultation and we’ll talk through if Search Engine Marketing is right for your business.