Being a digital marketer in Lansing, Michigan often means that working with clients outside of our area and answering the question - “What is digital marketing?”

If you do a good deal of media buying, you are probably aware that the most common misperception is, that digital marketing is limited to the offerings that media reps are out selling to businesses. These offerings tend to be advertising on content networks and websites, search engine optimization, and some social media. But digital marketing offers much broader and far reaching opportunites. People are amazed at the depth and potential of digital marketing. So, what is digital marketing?

Social media marketing strategy development begins with your audience and understanding who you are talking to. Then, it flourishes with our social media planning template.

Every social channel varies within its users. Based on the user, the content shared on that specific platform may be addressed differently. Although it may be the same information, the message, the title, and the photos should reflect your users’ interests.

Media buying services are not a well-understood professional services category. It's like interior design; everyone thinks they would be masterful with a big enough budget. But, sadly, many a mansion ended up with disastrous results. 

Media is big money. For many companies it's their largest expense. The prevailing truth about advertising is "the difference between a large company and small company is the size of their ad budget". 

So, if you are interested in hiring a professional media-buying firm, what can you expect?

Here is a list of what a competent buyer would do for you.

You could have a career in media in and never understand the most important element of a media buy - frequency. Professional media planning and buying is more about cost per point and gross rating points. But, pound for pound, frequency is the yeast in the bread. When you put it in, everything rises.

What is Frequency?

Frequency is the number of times, or how frequently, your audience is reached by your message. This is really important. Think about how we learn. We learn by practice, or frequency. We learn by repeating our times tables over and over again. We created a song for our ABC's and we teach kids to sing that song over and over again. Frequency is the key to learning.

Everything has a process. Media buying is no different. If you want to learn the secrets of the trade from a professional media planning and buying firm, this is the blog for you.

Here are the top 5 planning questions that you need to answer before you begin to contact media. 

1. State the goal of the buy

What is it that you are trying to achieve with budget? It sounds obvious but I assure you that you need to put it writing. Once you answer this question, everything becomes clearer. Your answers can range wildly depending on how your business is set up. Here are some legitimate goals:

Email marketing is still one of the most viable and successful business tools out there. Whether business to consumer or business to business, email still drives a lot of our commerce. Email has matured, but some companies have not matured with it.

What constitutes a good marketing email? Let's break down the top six ways you can craft a better marketing e-mail. 

Advertising on radio has become one of the most effective ways to reach a broad scope of potential customers. Statistics gathered from Arbitron show that radio broadcasting reaches approximately 228 million Americans from ages 12 and older. So no matter what type of demographic you are trying to reach, you are sure to be hitting the mark with a radio.

Inbound marketing for business is a methodology that uses your website to engage people who are online and searching for something. Inbound strategy helps you develop content that gets you to the top of the search results. Then with a great website and some intuitive software, those web visitors become engaged with you as it relates to your business category.