In today's entrepreneurial landscape, understanding digital marketing is becoming crucial to finding a product, figuring out its distribution channels, and understanding your competition. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur launching a startup, an aspiring influencer building your online presence, or a small business owner looking to expand your reach, understanding the essential tools and strategies of digital marketing can propel you towards success.

For instance, if you are launching your online clothing boutique from scratch, do you try to grow a brand, get leads, or make sales? Understanding digital will enable you to pinpoint your ideal audience and come up with a roadmap on how to communicate value and make your first sale. As we all know, sales is a game of perception. Many times, business people get stuck at the product development stage, while sadly, when a client takes hold of the product, their first concern is price, even before they look into the quality. That’s why price tags are written in bold and ingredients in italics.

Let's say you are running a software development startup. An agency might tell you to start building a social media presence by posting educational content. Most often than not, the focus now turns from product development to building an audience. What most people are in denial of is that building an audience by itself is a product. Now we have developers who are doing content; hence, we end up with substandard products because all the time was spent on reaching an audience other than building the software or product.

Don’t get me wrong, you can benefit from content marketing strategies and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Content helps you establish authority, but its not all. Authority takes time to build, and it only takes one post on X to lose it. What you can't lose is quality; it doesn’t matter how much they badmouth a product; a product is the first line of defence for any successful marketing compaign.

Content is content, irrespective of the kind of business we are talking about. Be it a freelance photography business, a digital marketing agency, or any other kind of business. The big question is what content is and how to incorporate it as a strategy.

Content is any piece of information that an ideal customer interacts with in the marketing funnel. Anyone who ever becomes a prospect or a customer passes through several awareness levels. Some don’t know what they need, others do , others know where to get, and others know the best place to get it.

Now, content should be able to take anyone from whatever stage they are at to a higher awareness level. Regardless of the entrepreneurial journey you're on, understanding and implementing these essential digital marketing tools and strategies can unlock new opportunities and propel your business towards success in the Kenyan market. By staying informed, adaptable, and proactive, you can navigate the digital landscape with confidence and achieve your entrepreneurial goals.

Any other thing you will ever hear about digital marketing is on the basis of awareness levels. Next time, before you even consider paid ads or influencer marketing, ask yourself: for this particular product and market, what is the awareness level am targeting? What should I do first? should I try and make sales or should I educate the ideal client first and raise his awareness level to a place where he can now convert and become a customer.

Again, sales is a game of perception. People buy with emotions, then try to justify with logic. On the other hand, businesses make products with emotions and try to justify the product with logic.  A customer hardly cares about the specs you spend hours explaining. They always ask ONE questions.

How much !!!