The "rule of seven" is a marketing principle that states a person must be exposed to your brand or ads at least seven times before buying from you. 

Digital marketing is related to IT in that you utilize your company website as the hub of all your marketing activities and there are technical skills required. A digital marketing specialist will likely interact with IT but typically a trained marketing expert with experience in brand management and communications will run the digital marketing of your company rather than IT. 

When hiring a digital marketing specialist or firm to assist your company, ask questions including: 

• Are you Google Ads certified? 
• What type of results have you achieved for your clients? 
• Is there a specific area of digital marketing you specialize in? 
• What is a typical budget size you require? 

What is your average ROAS (return on ad spend)?

Click-through rate?

Cost per click? 

Conversion percentage? 

First, you want to have a website that showcases the amazing product or service you offer. You want to invest in branding and messaging to set your business apart in the marketplace. This happens on your website. Invest in quality photography, video, and work with a professional like L2 Digital to develop your brand identity and message so that your advertising sticks. Couple this with quality, consistent product/service delivery and your marketing will help your business take off. 

A blog is a great way to build trust with your clients, attract new ones, and rank higher in search engine results. Keeping fresh relevant content, answering questions, and directing people back to your website are great ways to grow your online presence, reputation, and show your active in doing business online. Make sure you are linking out to resources and other authoritative sites in your industry, and link to other pages within your site, so Google, Bing, and Yahoo! make the connections. The other plus about a blog is you can take the content you produce on your blog, and share it across social media, create graphics, quotes, and highlights from your blog to promote across social. This is helpful in attracting the right audience to your site to drive new business. 

SEO or search engine optimization is the ongoing process of improving your website in search engine results. There are a number of ways to improve your search results. These are SEO tactics. Tactics can include blogging, alt-tags, meta descriptions, keyword density, keyword strategy, inbound and external linking, and page authority. SEO is very industry and website specific so determining the best strategy for your business is a custom solution that should be built out over a period of at least 12 months to see optimal results. SEO, done right, does work and can be a major factor in getting qualified traffic to your website. 

New laws that impact digital marketing include consumer privacy and accessibility. Consumer privacy - means you need to disclose and gain consent when you are collecting private information on a website visitor through cookies or other means of gathering information. This can be as simple as a notification and prompt to "accept" or "decline" cookies. 

Accessibility - over 4,000 lawsuits were filed this year around ADA compliant websites. You need to show you've done your due diligence on making your website accessible to the public and anyone who might be wanting to access your website including those with disabilities. This can be accomplished in a number of ways including a software install on your site. 

To start running a digital marketing campaign, you need a website and an ad account. Depending on the type of business you have, our digital marketing firm will recommend different placements for your ads. You want to be strategic about your ads, the messaging, the offer, the pricing of your products, etc. That's really where the heavy lift comes in. Setting up the campaigns is easy. It's the content of the ads and the call to action that you want to spend time on. Figure 10% of your sales for marketing with a minimum of $250 per month for ads for a small business. 

Hiring a digital marketing professional can help increase sales, reach new clients, and grow your business. When making a hire you have a couple of options: 

1) Bring a professional in-house full or part-time employee to work exclusively on your business. The pros of this choice is the hire is 100% devoted to your business 8 hours per day. 

2) Outsource your marketing efforts to a digital marketing firm with a track record of success. Here you get dedicated talent and a team of people to work on your campaign. Additionally, a digital marketing company like L2 Digital has clients across multiple industries to apply best practices and leverage our experience and team to take your marketing to the next level. 

An advertising agency will typically work with larger clients and develop an integrated advertising campaign across TV, radio, billboards, and sponsorships spending upwards of $100,000+ on a single campaign. 

Digital marketing has lowered the barrier to entry into advertising to reach a large audience. With Google Ads and Facebook Ads starting as low as $2 or less (one of our client's cost-per-click (CPC) is $0.12 per click), it is less expensive and more efficient for companies to advertise and hire a digital marketing company to manage their ad spend. 

Some companies function as both a digital marketing shop and a full service advertising agency. Companies like L2 Digital Marketing in Pasadena will take a client on with as little as $250 per month to spend on ads, while also working with major clients on $100k+ campaigns. 

Choosing what platform to build your website on is an important decision. WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix to name a few are all options. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish and what your goal is for your site can be a big part of your decision-making in this area. If you want to get into e-commerce, WordPress or Shopify and possibly Squarespace. If your website is more informational, you might be able to get away with a Wix or Squarespace. However, you want to also consider the fact that Google search seems to favor WordPress sites that are well built in search engine results. Additionally, Wordpress can grow with your company and are fully customizable to the needs of your business. 

When you advertise with Google you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Your ad is only shown when someone searches for what you offer and your ad is only triggered when a "keyword" that you want to be found for is used in Google search. Thus Google ads when done correctly can significantly help grow your business. Please note that many times it may take 3-6 months to optimize a campaign and begin seeing results.  

You have to start somewhere. Even if you have a small marketing budget, you can and should start investing in advertising your business. I recommend hiring a company like L2 Digital Marketing to do SEO on your website and paid search. 

Marketing automation is using technology to trigger timely marketing messages at points along a buyer journey. For example, a prospective customer signs up for a $5 off coupon. This triggers a set of email messages or text messages to that customer.