Before getting into the what the role of a VPN for online businesses entails as well as covering the ins and outs of various strategies and tactics, it’s crucial to understand the background of digital marketing and what some of its subtopics are composed of. It’s also a good idea to get informed about VPNs in general.
Digital marketing is essentially a variation of advertising that is exclusively online and is the life force of any digital company looking to grow its influence and success. Gartner’s glossary entry about Digital marketing gives us a concise overview of digital marketing means. So, digital marketing comprises the following ways of reaching an audience; email, search engines, social media, websites and apps.
The term itself was coined sometime in the 1990s, following the development of the early Web 1.0 platform. The digital marketing movement began along with the establishment of client/server architecture and the rise of Personal Computers (PCs). As the PC developed, so did Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and established itself as a significant factor on the internet.
Early on in the 90s, e-mail was the primary marketing medium online in that it was the only way to directly target and market to people, online. We could say that an early version of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, was alive back then where tagging, backlinks and keywords were being used (even overused) to create high rankings for websites. Later in the early 2000s we saw the dot-com boom, which was the spark for digital marketing on a much larger scale. Marketo.com covers more aspects of digital marketing as we know it today.
Table of Contents
What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
Digital marketing strategy is an essential thought process that online companies have to use via online marketing channels. A digital marketing strategy is instrumental in creating an online marketing plan that allows you to successfully implement your company’s presence.
Today’s digital marketing is very multi-directional, multi-channel or cross-channel. A more detailed look at how data and analytics play a part to spread the influence of a digital company can be found on HBR’s site.
Thanks to the data domination of big search engines and their presence in every aspect of the online world, a critical part of a digital marketing strategy, plan or campaign today for branding and outreach is SEO. Other aspects of digital marketing that are an integrated part of modern marketing are keywords, ad research and competitor analysis.
SEO/SERP
The role of SEO in digital marketing is to improve the handshake between dominant search engines such as Google, and the website that is marketing itself. The point is to improve the traffic going in and out of the website, also called traffic. By targeting natural (organic) results via SEO, a website is able to look at its content using this tool and increase the amount of visitors, thereby turning these visitors into potential customers. When SEO is optimized, a website will rank higher in the SERP, Ahrefs has a good explanation of the Search Engine Results Page. By ranking higher and attracting more customers, the business will gain more web outreach. These systems will help an online business not only rank higher but also attract users from other markets.
So What Does a VPN Have to do With Digital Marketing?
Where does a Virtual Private Network (VPN) enter the conversation when it comes to digital marketing? Let’s think in terms of safety, reach, link building and analytics.
Safety
A VPN is software that you can install which functions on any of your devices. Think of it as an intermediary between your device and the internet network. A VPN connects to an external server which essentially cloaks your IP address, location and activities from your ISP and from other ISPs. It’s essential to be able to conduct your digital marketing safely and anonymously, for both your company and you personally. You want to be protected from hackers, opportunistic data thieves and the like at all times.
Reach
What can a VPN do for digital marketing reach? Well, if your target audience is located in a different country for example, a VPN can help you reach that audience by connecting to a server in that country. This way you can Google search like a local and be exposed to local data. Using a VPN also allows you to find new customers, access local content in that region. Another perk is that a VPN will allow access to restricted content that would be otherwise inaccessible.
Link Building
Thanks to VPNs, marketers and SEO specialists are able to apply multi-links and build different accounts to multiply reach, which would be subject to throttling (slowing down of your bandwidth) if done on a single IP. As we’ve talked about above, this will help with SEO and consolidate a website’s abilities with SERP and rankings.
Analytics
In terms of analytics, it is crucial for a marketing team to analyze their performance of local SEO in the target market. Using a VPN makes this process more efficient. By analysing competitor activities, new backlink opportunities also arise as well as the ability to find out what users and customers are thinking, for example.
VPN + Digital Marketing = Good Business
On a World Wide Web containing infinite good and bad data, sensitive transactions, as well as issues with security and trust, it’s crucial to be safe. For digital marketing, that means using a VPN to secure the safety, reach, link building and analytics aspects. Being untraceable, safe and everywhere at the same time is the magic formula for any online business. This is why VPNs play such an important role in Digital Marketing.
Author Bio : David Janssen is the founder and managing director of VPNOverview.com. With an international team of privacy advocates and cybersecurity researchers, he strives to make technical topics accessible and understandable for the common man. Cyber threats and privacy concerns are growing exponentially in our increasingly digitalizing world, and arming people with the right knowledge and tools to protect themselves is pivotal.
