What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing entails all marketing efforts that use an electronic device and the internet. This includes various digital channels such as search engines, social media, YouTube, email, your own website and other websites, to connect with current and prospective customers.
Over a series of blog posts we’re going to go over digital marketing for PADI and SSI dive centres. We’ve chosen Dive centres as an example, as we’re passionate about and have in-depth knowledge on diving and the diving industry. The same principles could also be used for any business from e-commerce sites to plumbers.
We’ll start with the basics then explore in more detail with each post about the various strategies that businesses can use from SEO, Social Media, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Marketing to Emails.
Why Use Digital Marketing?
Using digital marketing, you can reach an enormous audience in a way that is both cost-effective and measurable. Your dive center will be attracting people from many places near and far. It’s just not feasible or cost effective to advertise your PADI center in every country that your customers come from via traditional methods.
You can make it cost-effective as many of the paid options, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads, allow you to be highly targeted in the people that you reach. When you combine this with the various analytical tools, such as Google Analytics, Google Ads and Facebook manager, it allows you to understand your Return On Investment (ROI) on the various channels you use and which one gives you the biggest profit.
It’s also highly likely that the other Dive Centers in your area will also be using these channels to improve their market share and if you don’t you’ll be losing business to them.
The Main Types of Digital Marketing Relating to PADI and SSI Centers
Website – It might sound obvious to have a website, and we sure hope you do. But the way it is designed and structured can have a big impact on the number of leads you have. Technically it’s called conversion rate optimization, and is an approach that increases your leads per visitors ratio.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This is how you optimize your website to “rank” higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of organic / free traffic your website receives.
Social Media Marketing – This relates to how you promote your dive center on all the various types of social media including, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. It can include both paid and organic strategies.
Pay Per Click (PPC) – There’s two main areas for PPC within the diving industry: Google Ads and Facebook Ads. PPC is a way of driving visitors to your website where you are charged only when your ad is clicked. One example is Google Search Ads, which allows you to get to the top of Google Search instantly. You can check out our main website here to understand more about PPC.
Email Marketing – This includes any method you use to market to your customer via email. It might be a newsletter, a follow up email, promotions, or discount offer.