In the case of many organisations and businesses in Belfast, the advantages of digital marketing are frequently underestimated. Whilst public understanding of digital marketing is on the increase, gaps in this knowledge currently mean that companies that use online marketing in Belfast are at an advantage over their competitors. In all the projects we oversee, our measured results continuously reflect why digital marketing is essential for Belfast businesses. Companies in need of digital marketing can be overwhelmed by the large choice of agency options available. Let’s discuss the importance of digital marketing, its various applications, and how you can use each digital marketing channel to grow your business.
Are You Looking for ‘Digital Marketing Belfast’?
ProfileTree – Expert Digital Marketers and Brand Strategists with a Local Flavour Serving Businesses in Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
We are a self-made, family run agency based in Belfast and Monaghan. We’ve established ourselves in the Northern Irish market since 2010. We’ve grown the team, collected awards, and helped local and international businesses with building top-notch websites. We’ve also helped hundreds of small and medium sized businesses with free digital marketing training through programmes funded by Northern Ireland’s Councils over the course of three years. Investing in building a digital marketing strategy for your business in Belfast means making sure your new partnership is built on proven methods. Our multi-talented experts can deliver on all aspects of digital marketing from social media marketing to building fully fledged websites and creating content optimised for SEO growth.
Digital Marketing Belfast: Digital Marketing Explained
What is the role of digital marketing? What is a digital marketing strategy? And why is online marketing so effective? The most cited definitions describe the practice as the marketing of products of services using digital technologies, mainly on the internet. Indeed, the impact of digital technologies on marketing strategies has been significant. But what are these digital technologies, and why are they so relevant to internet marketing and advertising?
The technology used in digital marketing is incredibly diverse and continues to grow. However, marketing managers and digital marketing executives across a range of industries in Belfast and beyond allocate much of their resources to technologies such as electronic display advertising (one of the many elements of digital advertising), mobile phones, email marketing and social media marketing. Regardless of your choice of medium, relevance and user experience are essential for a real return on investment.
Digital Marketing Belfast: Most Popular Digital Marketing Channels
Various aspects of digital marketing tend to concentrate on the online world’s most popular channels. These are typically composed of leading social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Likewise, video streaming platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo are becoming more prominent in the world of marketing. Put simply, the role of digital marketing in business is to market on channels that create, accelerate, and transmit product value to the consumer.
Digital marketing in Belfast is becoming increasingly dominant, partly due to the exponential rise of social media. According to WeAreSocial’s Global Digital Report, the number of internet users worldwide is 4.88 billion, up 9.1 percent year on year. This translates to a global social media user base of 3.484 billion, with 5.112 billion smartphone users across the world. The role of social media in digital marketing is therefore extremely valuable to businesses in Belfast and across the world.
Digital Marketing Belfast: Efficient Digital Marketing Channels
Far from being limited to social media, digital marketing is a diverse and rapidly growing industry. Indeed, digital marketing involves a range of skills and expertise. See below for some examples – all of which can be accessed via ProfileTree’s digital services list:
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #1: Copywriting
You probably heard that ‘Content is king.’ The Internet thrives on good content. Whether it’s social media marketing, video marketing, or SEO, content is the magnet that attracts traffic, users, conversions, and it is the reason why people are attached to their phones. To build a strong brand online, you need to craft strong and relevant messages that would engage and influence your audience. Across all digital marketing, great copywriting is a huge asset that enriches the quality of your digital marketing messages. Think of social media captions, tweets, campaign taglines, ad descriptions for Google Ads or even Google’s rich snippet. These are different areas where great digital copywriting is essential.
Copywriting VS Content Writing
Content writing and copywriting are primarily distinguished from each other by purpose. Content writing is designed to educate or entertain, and the content created is usually long form content. Meanwhile, copywriting is designed to persuade. Most ads involve copywriting because they seek to compel the audience to take an action.
Copywriting is a skill that requires a long experience because although you’re creating short form content, you need be careful with choosing the wording. Every word counts when you’re creating a tagline or a caption of five to 15 words. You want them to be relevant, memorable, and creative. For instance, Calls to Action can make or break your paid digital campaigns. While ‘Buy Now’ is pushy and salesy, ‘Book a Free Consultation’ is helpful. When it comes to digital copywriting, minor changes make huge differences.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #2: Content Marketing
Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell. Content marketing is an efficient strategy, many B2B brands rely on it entirely. It is much more than merely creating articles and blogs and scattering them on your platforms every now and then. It’s an art of being creative to create valuable, thought-leading content, and a science to build authority for your brand on the most relevant topics.
Data-Based Content Strategy
A data-based content strategy is only achieved by conducting thorough keywords analysis and being on top of industry updates. To be a thought leader, you need to live and breathe the industry. We always tell our clients that nobody knows an industry better those working in it. Keeping an eye on the crack will inspire your content strategy and enable you to develop content and start conversations with your visitors or followers. Additionally, using analysis tools like keyword research tools, social listening tools, Google Trends, and Google Search Console are your right hand to find out what people are searching for and how you can become their go-to hub for quality content.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #3: Email Marketing
Email marketing is a direct marketing channel that lets businesses share new products, sales, and updates with customers on their contact list. Its high ROI makes it crucial to most businesses’ inbound strategy. Email marketing is the most profitable and cost-effective direct marketing channel, generating an average return on investment of $42 for every $1 spent. For this reason alone, email should be a key pillar of your digital marketing strategy. There’re many different typed of email marketing, too. Not all of them are necessarily promotional.
Modern email marketing has moved away from template-based, mass mailings and instead focuses on consent, segmentation, and personalisation. This may sound time-consuming, but marketing automation handles most of the heavy lifting for you. For email marketing to be as efficient as you want it to be, think of adding value to your audience. It’s not all promotions and discounts that create value. In the long run, a well-designed email marketing strategy not only drives sales, but helps build a community around your brand and establishes a long-term partnership with customers. It is a way to build brand loyalty and increase the customer lifetime value.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #4: Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s overall experience in order to get more visibility and traffic through search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business. There’re so many factors that influence a website’s SEO performance. Some of these factors are technical, such as loading speed, clean code, mobile-optimised design. That means that your website needs to be built in accordance with the highest standards to be considered by Google. Other factors of are related to the quality of the website’s content, its layout, domain authority, and relevance.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #5: Electronic Display Advertising
A type of online advertisement that combines text, images, and a URL that links to a website where a customer can learn more about or buy products. There are many ad formats. These ads can be static with an image or animated with multiple images, video, or changing text (also called rich media ads). Think of these as the good old billboards but instead of having them on the corner of the street, you put them on selected, relevant websites with high traffic.
The biggest benefit of having display ads is its ability to target specific sections of the audience that match parameters based on your requirement. The display advertising targeting feature ensures that your ad reaches the right audience, and ad spend isn’t wasted on a demographic that isn’t interested in your product/service. There’re multiple ways through which you can target your audience:
- Demographic details like age, gender, interests, etc.
- Specific search keywords
- Topic-based targeting through choosing a group of websites that fit a specific topic/category within which your business operates.
- Interest-based ads: Google collects data on its users’ behavior, and depending on what users are searching for, you run display ads that resonate with specific interest areas.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #6: Voice Search Marketing
Voice search is making people’s lives easier. Because users can multitask, do things quicker, and get instant answers to their questions, a voice-activated speaker is rather like having your own personal assistant. It helps you get things done in next to no time. That’s why it’s on the rise.
The nature of voice search marketing makes optimising your website for voice SEO quite different from text-based SEO. The length of voice search queries is longer. In a text-based context, a user types a maximum of two to three words. Voice search, on the other hand, is much more conversational. It will be mostly longer than ten words. More than 20% of voice searches are triggered by a combination of 25 words.
People will use their natural language, rather than type up keywords to gauge a response, so SEO should be tailored to this type of delivery. Questions now have clear intent, as this format demands specific information. Optimising your content with greater context will push your business higher in the SEO rankings creating more traffic on your website. The key to more successful voice SEO is optimising your content for long tail keywords that include questions, comparisons, and more detailed queries.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #7: Video Production and Marketing
Video marketing is the most engaging type of online content, and it will only continue to grow. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Vimeo, and even Facebook are all focusing on video. Not to mention the rise of paid streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, HBO, and many others. In the past, only a few brands could afford to produce videos online, especially on a regular basis for bite-size social media content. Today, video marketing is much more affordable and easier. Customers also have expectations of watching videos for the products and services they use. With influencers sharing videos almost daily, video marketing is becoming the preferred type of content for many. It’s engaging, digestible, and entertaining,
For a small, or medium sized local business, incorporating video marketing into your content strategy puts you ahead of competitors. The video production process is now much easier: shooting, editing, and even optimising for YouTube search is much faster. Just like your content strategy, if you’re planning to create multiple videos, it should be in line with your overall digital marketing strategy.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #8: Digital Advertising
Digital advertising is an ocean of options. Each social media platform has paid advertising options with different objectives to choose from. Video views, engagement, reach, app installs, lead generation, sales, the objectives are many. Other than social media, there’s also paid search engine advertising where you pay Google to put your website at the top of the results for relevant keywords. Display ads that we’ve discussed earlier are also digital advertising. Google Display Network, for instance, is composed of thousands of websites where these ads are displayed. Every time a visitor clicks on a banner ad, the website gets a commission. That’s how some websites increase their revenue. Display ads also work the same way on free mobile applications.
Digital Marketing Belfast Channel #9: Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing may include promotions sent through SMS text messaging, MMS multimedia messaging, through downloaded apps using push notifications, through in-app or in-game marketing, through mobile websites, or by using a mobile device to scan QR codes. Mobile marketing takes advantage of the fact that many users of mobile devices carry them around wherever they go. As a result, location-based services can collect customer data and then offer coupons, deals, or promotions based on their proximity to a store or a place frequently visited by the consumer. Mobile marketing is also extremely cost-effective. There are a variety of options to choose from for any budget and the impact it can have when compared to the cost is significant.
Digital Marketing Belfast: How Digital Marketing Is Helping Small and Medium Sized Businesses in Belfast
How fast is digital marketing growing in Belfast? How has digital marketing changed the shopping experience as we know it? Continue reading to gain more insights into the practice and to discover how to promote your business digitally.
How digital marketing is changing our lives lies in how online consumers decide to engage with their favourite brands. Only ten years ago, many consumers would make their decisions based upon television & radio advertising, as well as billboards, bus advertisements, magazine reviews and ‘word of mouth’. However, many of these elements of traditional marketing are losing relevance to digital channels enabled by tablets, smartphones, laptops, and desktop computers. It is therefore fair to say that our dependence on online is stronger than it has ever been, and the effect of digital marketing in the world is highly significant.
For some useful insights, let’s look at local search. When, for example, we search for ‘digital marketing near me’, ‘digital marketing company near me’ or variations of those phrases like ‘digital marketing agency Belfast’ or ‘digital marketing consultant Belfast’, we are searching for relevant businesses within a local and nearby vicinity. Such targeted searching has transformed how we advertise and promote products or services.
How does this translate to real value for businesses in Belfast? The answer is reflected in a series of research findings by WordStream, Search Engine Land, and Google. These findings demonstrated that 72 percent of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles, with 82 percent of smartphone browsers conducting ‘near me’ searches. Meanwhile, 28 percent of searches for something nearby led to a purchase, with local searches leading 50 percent of mobile users to visit stores within one day.
This means that local enterprise is better equipped to compete with top industry players. In a nutshell, digital marketing for small business has significantly levelled the playing field, both in Belfast and across the world. The struggle for competition in Belfast and further afield is intense, and digital marketing planning has become crucial.
Digital Marketing Belfast’s Growth
The importance of digital marketing in today’s scenario shouldn’t be underestimated. Across the world, digital marketing is occupying larger chunks of the global marketing spend. Indeed, according to research recently published by Magna, the three channels with the highest ad revenue growth are social media (38 percent), online video (27 percent) and search (18 percent). Meanwhile, Smart Insights have reported content marketing as the activity that will have the most significant impact on business in the near future.
All of these findings come amidst the backdrop of a digital United Kingdom, which is now the largest online advertising market in Europe with a whopping 2019 spend of £1.34 billion. This has created a wealth of opportunity, with educational institutions in Belfast and beyond continuing to develop digital marketing skills in their students. Notably, the Digital Marketing Institute has highlighted content creation, social media strategy, search engine optimisation and UX design as some of the most in-demand skills today.
Belfast is emerging as a hub for such skills, and ProfileTree are proud to employ some of Northern Ireland’s most talented content writers, designers, and brand strategists as full-time staff.
Digital Marketing Belfast: Why You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy
The advantages of digital marketing are significant, and they continue to grow. Why choose digital marketing?
Digital Marketing Belfast Advantage #1: Reach Your Customers
A full digital marketing strategy will identify areas where marketing can be applied. However, the core of this strategy will focus on the fine details of your audience and how to target customers through digital marketing. Companies that market well know their customers and will target them with online media content that engages, informs, and inspires. Bring your digital campaign to your target audience on the devices they love to use and reap the benefits of enhanced engagement and sales.
Knowing where, when, and how to target your audience represents one of the most valuable skills in digital marketing. At ProfileTree, our dedicated team of analysts and content marketers can identify your audience and deliver campaigns that truly reflect the valuable role of content in digital marketing.
Digital Marketing Belfast Advantage #2: Stay Competitive
Why have a digital strategy? The digital marketplace is saturated with competition. It is crowded with competing and conflicting messages, meaning that branded messages can become easily lost or drowned out. Launching a campaign without a well-researched and managed strategy often results in failure – and this goes for both small and large industry players. Fundamentally, good digital marketing levels the playing field. Google search engine ranking pages reign supreme. By investing in ProfileTree’s digital marketing solutions, you can enjoy the benefits of having your business joining the top results in these pages. Let us grow your profile while you run your business: it’s what we do.
Digital Marketing Belfast Advantage #3: Demonstrable Results
Unlike many elements of traditional marketing, digital marketing is accompanied by a range of advanced technologies which facilitate the measurement and analysis of various campaigns. These include changing metrics for web traffic, engagement, and sales, as well as keyword performance as part of a wider search engine optimisation strategy. This crucial data informs marketers on whether consumers saw the advertisement; if they liked it, and if their engagement with the campaign led to a sale. ProfileTree are leaders in digital market analysis. Forget impressions, likes and vanity metrics: we drive campaigns that are data-focused and highly targeted.
Digital Marketing Belfast: The Right Digital Marketing Agency for Your Business
ProfileTree is an award-winning, full digital marketing agency based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. But what separates us from others offering online digital marketing services? At ProfileTree, we do digital differently. We devise digital marketing strategies that engage and inspire, driving organic traffic and potential customers to your site. The impact of digital marketing on businesses has triggered a revolution in how every one of us makes our browsing and buying decisions. We are proud to offer our clients industry-leading expertise on all types of digital services, engineered to maximise and enhance their business’ online marketing performance.
Digital Marketing Belfast: Why Choose ProfileTree
In Belfast and across Ireland, ProfileTree have become established as sectoral leaders in digital marketing and creative content campaigns. We excel in delivering real, measurable results for our clients. Since we began in 2011, our campaigns have picked up a raft of prestigious awards. Clients place their trust in our knowledge of digital marketing, secured by an industry leading team of content writers, video marketers and brand specialists.
A Full-Service Digital Marketing Belfast Agency
Our client case studies are sounding proof that ProfileTree is Belfast’s number one choice for digital and content marketing services. Are you looking for a fresh approach to digital marketing for your Belfast business? The good news is, here at Profile Tree we’ve built our own local company that puts digital and content marketing at the forefront of everything we do, and we want to share our ideas with our amazing customers. We have all the expertise you need, whether it’s web development, digital, video, social media and more, for a service which provides real results.
The Local Digital Marketing Scene
We’ve loved seeing digital marketing become increasingly popular in Belfast. Because it means our local businesses are very much awake to the value of an engaging, strategically planned online world built around conversations and conversions. Except for one thing…this isn’t always the case. The digital marketing boom has also meant an influx of digital companies offering your business support. This could be from a digital agency in Belfast, marketing agencies in Belfast or other similar businesses. Digital marketing in Belfast, therefore, has often become fractured down to piecemeal advice about individual marketing elements, delivery of services too disconnected from other parts of your digital presence to be effective or projects built around surface appearance but not strategy and results.
What Makes ProfileTree Different?
We Live Digital Marketing
We’ve built our own company on digital marketing, especially SEO and content, meaning we pass on tried and tested methods combined with enhancements to make the most of the very latest changes.
Straight Talk and Hard Work
We don’t have ‘meetings about meetings’, plus we keep our bills clear and our deadlines short. One of the reasons our returning customers choose us as their trusted partner.
We Listen
While some digital marketing companies will be out to sell isolated services ‘off the shelf’, we’ll want to understand your business, your goals, your brand, and your audiences to connect your digital world. By taking this approach, our service – taking in the work of a Belfast design agency, a marketing company, a digital agency and much more – connects your digital marketing spend to your business goals and marketing outcomes. We avoid vanity projects and vanity metrics, instead of understanding and working towards the outcomes you need online. We also love building a real relationship with our clients. So, you can find us at the end of the phone, anytime for advice and support to help your business grow with us.
Connected Digital Marketing
Digital marketing doesn’t mean a few social posts or ‘ticking the box’ of trying out the latest digital fad in your business. Digital marketing means connecting your company’s online world with clear goals, clear customer journeys and a close eye on creating conversions for real ROI. Our clients, by taking a step back and working smarter with ProfileTree, unlock a new level of results from their online world.
Engaging Digital Marketing
Talking WITH rather than talking to potential buyers is the key to content success. You wouldn’t buy from a salesperson whose first words are ‘buy now’ any more than you’d buy from a company online who didn’t walk you through the reasons to convert. We have years of experience researching, developing, and testing content designed to start conversions and drive conversions.
Engaged Digital Marketing
Something that’s often missed is involving your own team in your digital marketing plans and you’ll create an online presence and online campaigns built to be a living part of your business, fueled by colleagues and their ideas. It’s often overlooked that great digital marketing comes from listening first and planning second, not from using ‘off the shelf’ products and trying to build strategy around the tools.
Evolving Digital Marketing
Your online plans might be working, but if you haven’t planned for change, you’re planning to fail. Constant changes in – for example – social platforms and Google analytics will mean a choice between reacting to the benefits to be found in change or playing catch-up with the competition. We help our clients to take a longer view of their online presence to make sure they’re steering into change rather than reacting.
Digital Marketing Belfast: How Much Does Digital Marketing Cost
Working with so many different businesses over the years taught us to work with different budgets and requirements. We have created multiple packages for each of digital marketing services. Of course, every project has its own requirements but generally, we use your requirements and budget to come up with a suitable digital solution. In other words, you set the requirements, we tailor a package within the limits of your spending. Contact us for a free quote and a digital consultation about your digital marketing strategy.
Digital Marketing Belfast: Ready to Book a Free Digital Marketing Audit?
A digital marketing audit is where one of our expert team members go through your digital marketing channels such as social media pages, website user experience, and SEO performance and analyse it to give you a brief of your brand’s digital well-being. Fill the form and send us your questions, we will be happy to answer all of them. Please do let us know if your business is registered in Belfast. Alternatively, you can book a chat with one of our team members to audit your digital marketing channels for free and find out how we can help you establish a strong digital marketing presence in Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
More services: Social Media Marketing Belfast, SEO Belfast, Digital Training Belfast
