In today’s online world, competition is fierce. In order to really gain traction with your website, brand, or business in this online world, you have to think outside the box and design a digital strategy that works for you and your marketing needs. With so many digital strategies available, how do you know which one is the best option?
This article will give you insight into the top digital strategies that work and that you can use to your advantage. Let’s take a look.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing or SMM is a type of internet marketing which uses social networking websites as a marketing tool. The idea of SMM is to create content that people will like and share across their social media network to help increase the possibility of broadening customer reach while increasing brand exposure. Some of the most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, however the list is endless as there are many smaller social media platforms available to use.
The Benefits Of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing can provide any business or website owner with a number of benefits. These include:
01.
Direct Access To Customers
Social media offers a unique advantage over other types of digital strategies. This is because it provides direct access and connection to your target market, potential customers and prospects. You can use social media to inform customers instantly about special offers, promotions, new products and so much more which can lead to more engagement, sales and profits long term.
02.
Advanced Targeting
Social media can provide direct targeting of your audience. You can find out about what they’re talking about, where their talking, they’re connections to other influencers, and what niche they fall in.
03.
Brand Awareness
Utilising social media gives you the opportunity to increase overall brand awareness. This is because there’s no limit on the location, demographic, and the consumer type your brand can connect with. The more someone shares what you have to offer the higher the reach you gain.
04.
More Potential Leads and Sales
Unlike traditional methods of advertising like TV ads or billboards, for example, social media advertising costs are relatively lower and you can reach more people.
05.
Lower Advertising Costs
Social media also has the ability to increase your leads and sales. This is because you’ll be able to market yourself to a number of demographics which may be interested in your offerings. A percentage of the leads interested in what you have to offer have a greater chance of converting into sales.
These are just some of the great advantages of SMM you can gain when integrating this strategy into your marketing efforts.
Elements To Create An Engaging Social Media Post/Campaign
Creating an engaging social media campaign or post isn’t easy. However there’s some key elements that you can use to help you get started:
01.
Conduct Market Research
Evaluating the competition is important to know what they’re doing and what you should be doing better. This can help indicate whether you can provide your audience with something your competition isn’t offering right now.
02.
Create A Content Strategy
Social media shares millions of pieces of content every year. In order to make your campaign work, it’s important to create a targeted content strategy that’s designed to help your audience with their pain points by providing solutions or information that may be of interest to them. Research your audience to see what they’re talking about and whether you can provide solutions for this.
03.
Set Goals For Your SMM Outcome
You’re not advertising on social media for the fun of it. It’s important to set reasonable goals to help you measure the success of a campaign and whether you need to tweak your efforts accordingly.
When To Post For The Best Effect
Posting on social media at the right time is important to get your content in front of your audience. However how do you know when to post? Here’s some tips on analysing and narrowing down posting times.
01.
Define who your largest target market is
USA, Europe, Australia etc.
02.
Define the timezone
of your largest target market and convert it to your time if you’re in a different timezone.
03.
Determine the peak times of when your audience is on the most.
This can be done by checking some of their profiles and when they post and share items. You can also experiment with posting to see when the highest interaction is.
Once you determine your timezone and the best time of the day when your audience is most likely to check social media, this is when you should post.
Why It Works and Who Should Use SMM?
Social media marketing works because you have the opportunity to directly target your advertising to your target audience. Because of this you not only allow yourself to increase brand recognition but you also have the ability to find out what marketing material works to engage your audience and what doesn’t.
Social media marketing is ideal for use by:
- Businesses or brands looking to make an impact in their industry.
- Website or blog owners looking for more traffic and followers.
- Affiliate marketers who want to improve their sales.
Other Digital Strategies That Pair Well With Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Video Marketing
What Is SEO?
SEO or search engine optimization is the process of helping to increase the quality and quantity of traffic that’s directed to your website through search engine results. There’s a lot of different strategies to use to improve your SEO, and long term it can help increase long term sales and profits.
The Benefits Of Search Engine Optimisation
There’s some benefits of SEO that can help you long term. These include, but aren’t limited to:
01.
Increase In Traffic
When done right, SEO can help to increase your organic traffic. This is because the higher in search engine results you get, the more people will see your website and will likely click on it.
02.
Better ROI
SEO can give you better ROI long term against other strategies like normal ads. This is because when you pay for visitors, you might only be able to convert 2% of 1000 people into a sale. When you get the same clicks from SEO you have a 4% chance of converting people into a sale. This is more profitable for you long term which is great for your ROI.
03.
Get Ahead Of The Competition
SEO allows you to have the advantage of getting ahead of the competition. While your competition may also be conducting their own SEO Strategy, when done right, you can have the advantage of really honing in and boosting your efforts to overtake and get ahead of the competition. This can lead to more profits in your pocket.
04.
Results Are Permanent
In Facebook’s own words, the Customer List Custom Audiences feature “enables you to create an audience using your data such as email addresses and phone numbers (typically from subscriber lists). When using this feature, your data is locally hashed on your system before you upload and pass it to Facebook to be used to create your audience”. In a nutshell, it presents a great opportunity for upselling and/or cross-selling.
Types Of SEO To Look Into
There’s a few different types of SEO to look into when implementing your strategy.
ON-PAGE SEO
On-Page SEO refers to content and other elements that will be published on your website. This can include inserting internal links, infusing keywords, meta descriptions, meta tags, and customizing URL structure, improving images and inserting alt attribution.
OFF-PAGE SEO
Off-page SEO refers to activities being performed after the webpage has gone live. This includes sharing the post, liking the post on social media, commenting on the post, giving it a rating, answering questions and so on. This is important if you’re working on your search engine marketing efforts or other strategies.
Key Components Of A Successful SEO Strategy
A successful SEO strategy isn’t built in a day. It takes trial and error to get it right. Here’s some tips to a successful SEO strategy long term.
- Optimize your website to be mobile friendly.
- Improve loading times to help reduce bounce rate.
- Secure your site with HTTPs.
- Ingrate social media into your website.
- Utilise content marketing with your SEO efforts.
- Build quality and safe links back to your website.
- Implement a user friendly website navigation design.
- Ensure pages are useful and relevant to what people are searching for.
- Choose your keywords carefully.
Why It Works and Who Should Use SEO?
SEO works because it helps to naturally bring your website to the top page of search engine results. When you’re on the first page of Google and other search engines, you have a higher chance of being chosen by possible customers to fulfil their needs.
SEO is ideal for:
- Businesses or brands looking to grow
- Website or blog owners wanting to increase traffic
- Affiliate marketers who want to scale
- Influencers wanting to make money
- Anyone looking to boost their website in search engine results
Other Digital Strategies That Pair Well With SEO
- Affiliate Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click & Search Engine Marketing
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is an approach that utilises the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable and consistent content in order to attract and retain a target audience. The overall goal of this content strategy is to inform your target audience about your business, company or website, to help drive them to make a clear and profitable action that will benefit you.
Joke Time!
The Benefits Of Using Content Marketing
There are many different benefits of using a content strategy. These benefits include, but aren’t limited to.
01.
Build Authority and Credibility
A content strategy can help build credibility and authority through the development of creating high quality content. The more informative, useful and relevant content you develop, the more your target audience will see you as a leader in your industry.A content strategy can help build credibility and authority through the development of creating high quality content. The more informative, useful and relevant content you develop, the more your target audience will see you as a leader in your industry.
02.
Helps Improve Organic Traffic
A content strategy has the ability to improve the inbound traffic to your website, especially when adding a backlink. The more high quality sites you add your content to, the higher the possibilities of gaining referral traffic are.
03.
Increased Conversion Rate
A content strategy also has the ability to help increase your conversion rate. Depending on your strategy, you’ll be able to create content that will fit into a sales funnel to directly move people into making a purchase.
04.
Helps Build Trust and Long Term Relationships
Depending on your target audience, content can also help to build trust and overall long term relationships with your audience. The more you publish great content regularly that resonates with your audience, the more you’ll build a relationship with them and the more they’ll trust you.
How To Write Better Content For Your Marketing Strategy
Writing content is easy but writing great content is hard. Here’s how you can write better for your content strategy.
01.
Choose A Topic That You Can Solve
Your customers have pain points. What they want is someone to help them solve these pain points. When choosing what to write about, make sure you choose a topic where you can help solve their dilemma. You can also use Google autofill to help you find out what to write about.Your customers have pain points. What they want is someone to help them solve these pain points. When choosing what to write about, make sure you choose a topic where you can help solve their dilemma. You can also use Google autofill to help you find out what to write about.
02.
Use Better Styling
Don’t forget to style your blog well. Use subheadings, bullet points, and short paragraphing to help reduce long bulky text, but to also help balance white space around the content. This will make it easier for your audience to read without eye fatigue.
03.
Spell Check
Make sure to check your grammar and spelling if you want to be credible in your industry. Your target audience won’t take you seriously if you’re content is riddled with mistakes.
04.
Use Screenshots + Images
Images and screenshots are highly important. They not only make your content appealing but can get your message across. Use high quality images and clear screenshots to help your target audience understand what you’re trying to say.
05.
Check For Plagiarism
Don’t forget to check your content for plagiarism. This is important not only for SEO purposes but for your reputation as well. Websites like Copyscape can help with this.
How To Push People Through The Sales Funnel Using Content
01.
Write Powerful Product Descriptions
Write product descriptions that tell a customer the benefits of the product in 100-200 words. Showcase its special features in bullet point form.
02.
Trigger Emotions From Your Content
Depending on what you’re writing about, try to trigger emotions such as passionate anger or happiness. If you’re writing content for social media, this is the best outlet for triggering emotions.
03.
Write Informative and Helpful Blogs
Research and write informative and helpful blogs that will gain attention and help to solve a problem your customers may be having. Use enticing headlines with power words – ‘Incredible Ways To Solve Your Mold Problem’ is better than ‘Tips To Get Rid Of Mold’.
04.
Showcase Reviews and Testimonials
Reviews and testimonials are great to help drive traffic. Make sure these are shown on your homepage or your product pages to help prevent customers from leaving your pages early.
Why It Works and Who Should Use Content Marketing?
Content marketing works because you have the ability to target your content according to your audience’s needs. You can cover their pain points, showcase special offers, inform people of exciting news and more. It’s also versatile across most other strategies.
Content marketing is ideal for use by:
- Businesses or brands looking to grow
- Website or blog owners wanting to increase traffic
- Affiliate marketers who want to scale
- Influencers wanting to make money
Other Digital Strategies That Pair Well With Content Marketing
- SEO
- Affiliate Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click & Search Engine Marketing
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the process of using emails to market your message to your target audience. It helps to develop relationships with existing customers and also new interested customers.
The Benefits Of Email Marketing
There’s many great benefits of email marketing that you can use to your advantage. These include:
01.
It’s Time and Cost Effective
Against traditional methods, email marketing costs a lot less and can give you more time to work on other advertising methods. Without the need to print and post the content you’re looking to tell people, you’ll have more time and money to work on other areas of your business.
02.
Easier Communication
Email marketing also provides an easier method to communicate with your target audience on a more personal level. It gives a direct line of access to a potential customer which is great when you’re trying to convert them into buying something from you. It’s also a great method for those who don’t like to call to communicate with you.
03.
Helps To Spread Important Information
You’ll have the ability to be able to share important information such as new sales, product offers, discounts and other information your customers may be interested in. This in turn can help to boost your overall sales and profits.
04.
Easier To Define Your Target Audience
Email marketing allows you to segment your database into specific demographics to be able to easily market set content better to your audience. This allows you to target the right people with the right information better which is great for long term business.
How To Design Subject Lines With Better Open Rates
Subject lines are very important in email marketing. Why? Because it determines whether someone will open your email or not. Here’s how to design better subject lines with a better open rate.
01.
Use Short Subject Lines
Keep your subject lines short and to the point. ‘Your Order 1423 Details Inside’ is better than ‘click here to find out more about your order details’
02.
Be Specific
Try to sum up what your email will be about in your subject line. ‘5 Top Bali Sales For September’ is better than ‘Sign Up For Your Next Bali Trip Today’
03.
Be Professional
Always be professional when designing your subject lines. Avoid BLOCK LETTERING, as this will appear that you’re screaming at someone. Instead capitalize each letter of each word to help make it look more professional. (This is called Title Case)
04.
Create A Sense Of Urgency
Use words like discounts, sale, and limited time to help create an urgency around your email.
How To Create Better Emails That Generate More Leads
To generate more leads you need to be able to entice your target audience to click through your email. You can do this by:
- Keeping subject lines professional, to the point, and informative.
- Keep emails clean in appearance when reading.
- Keep emails easy to read and define the point of your email in little words.
- Add simple and clean images to help break up text.
- Create a call to action to entice people to want to click through to your website.
Why It Works and Who Should Use Email Marketing?
Email marketing works because it allows you to narrow your database of potential customers and target the people you want to reach out to. It also helps you to communicate directly with interested people and can help you showcase important offerings in a cost effective way.
Email Marketing is ideal for:
- Businesses or brands looking to grow
- Website or blog owners wanting to increase traffic
- Affiliate marketers who want to scale
- Influencers wanting to make money
Other Digital Strategies That Pair Well With With Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is the idea of utilising influencers in your industry to help endorse and promote what you have to offer to their major following. This is generally done via the integration of a content campaign and is a great option for brands and businesses to collaborate with popular people across their industry.
Components Of A Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign
In order for your influencer campaign to work, it’s important to know the key components in order to make it successful. These include, but aren’t limited to:
01.
A Clear Goal Of The Outcome
It’s important to set and have clear goals in your mind of the outcome you’re looking to achieve. Are you hoping for more traffic to your website? More sales? More conversions to subscribe to your blog? Whatever your goal is be prepared to measure the results accordingly to see the impact your influencer can give you.
02.
The Delivery Format
If you’re working with an influencer to help promote a product or a service of yours, it’s important to know how they’re going to do this for you. Always talk about the delivery format on how they’ll promote you. Will it be written content? Podcast? Via video?
03.
A Clear Start and End Date
When utilising an influencer, make sure you have a clear outline of the start and end date. This is important for you to track and measure results of your campaign during this period of time.
04.
Define Your Influencer
The influencers you choose to promote your products is also important. You need to define whether they have the target audience you’re aiming to get leads from. Whether they’re in the industry that you fall in, and how many followers they have overall. Choosing the right influencer can make or break your campaign, so you need to choose wisely.
The Benefits Of An Influencer Marketing Campaign
01.
Better Return On Investment
Using the right influencer in your market can give you a larger return on investment. Why? Because influencers can affect purchasing decisions on those who follow them. This in turn can allow you to see more return on your investment on influencers long term.
02.
Authentic Messaging and Endorsements
Generally many influencers are very selective on who they want to partner with and the partnerships they start. Because of this if they decide to sponsor and promote your brand, it gives their followers an authentic message and gives you professional endorsement of your brand overall.
03.
Better Demographic and Audience Targeting
Influencer marketing has the ability to give you better targeting of demographics and your desired audience. Because you can choose the influencer in your niche, you have the ability to reach out to those who are in the same niche as you and the followers who may be interested in what you have to offer.
04.
Long Term Relationships
Partnering with an influencer can give you the benefits of gaining long term relationships not only from them but also from their followers as well. This can mean long term leads for you which could mean ongoing sales and profits depending on what you have to offer.
How To Find Influencers In Your Target Marketing
Finding the right influencer is important. Some ways on how to find the right influencer include:
01.
Know Your Influencers
Knowing your influencers is important, this includes their reach, authenticity, engagement, niche, and personality. Knowing your influencers inside and out you have a higher chance of choosing the right one.
02.
Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is another important factor. Knowing your audience is important when choosing your influencer because you need to know whether their audience matches with the type you’re trying to target. You don’t want an influencer in the health industry to be promoting products in the pet industry for example. It’s just not going to work.
03.
Know Where Influencers Hang Out
Influencers can hang out across multiple locations. It’s important to study where they hang out and promote the most. Some areas may include social media platforms, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and more. To find them you can use hashtags, forums, blogger outreach platforms, influencer directories, LinkedIn and YouTube to list a few.
Why It Works and Who Should Use Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing works because you’re targeting people who have a large sway or influence over people within a particular niche. Their audience already knows, likes and trusts them. When the influencer promotes something, their followers are more likely to be interested and buy the product they’re promoting.
Influencer marketing is ideal for:
- Businesses or brands looking to grow and expand their reach
- Website or blog owners wanting to increase traffic
Other Digital Strategies That Pair Well With Influencer Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
What Is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is the process of promoting through video on platforms like Youtube. Using video is a great marketing strategy for those who want to target more visual customers over those who read content. Getting your message across using video marketing has the ability to be able to reach a different type of audience and gain their attention.
Secrets To Creating An Engaging Video
To create a video that really grabs the attention of your audience there’s few key ingredients. These include:
01.
Focus On The Message, Not The Sale
Many people try to focus on selling in their video. While this is the main reason why you’re making a video, it shouldn’t be sold to your target audience that way. Instead try to focus on the message you’re trying to send. It should be clear, to the point, and lay out the problem and solution for your audience.
02.
Use The First Couple Of Seconds Wisely
You only have a few seconds to grab your audience’s attention. In these first few seconds it’s critical that you portray something interesting, something that your audience would take note of and listen to. It’s always good to start with a question mixed in with a pain point. For example: ‘Are you tired of always being tired?’
03.
Know Your Target Audience
Knowing who your target audience is, is vital to your video’s success. Make sure you research who your target audience is, their gender, age range, location, language and more. Knowing who your message is targeting is vital for long term success.
Key Elements To Include To Help Drive More Leads
In order to drive more leads from your video marketing there’s some key elements you need to remember:
01.
Video Editorial Calendar
If you’re planning to create videos on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis you need to make sure you have a video editorial calendar. Posting your videos at a set time each week or month can help your audience get into a routine with you. This is good when you want to get your message across and on time.
02.
Pre-production Checklist
Incorporate a pre-production checklist to make sure you cover everything you need to say in your video. This will help you keep track and will also help you work out whether anything is missing from your video that could catch your audience’s attention.
03.
Clear Call To Actions
To drive more leads your video needs a clear call to action. It needs to tell your viewers why and how they should utilise what you have to offer. Your call to action is your chance to finally grab your viewers attention to act, so make sure it’s setup well within the video.
04.
Consistent Voice and Branding
Your voice and branding needs to be consistent as well across the video. This helps to keep your brand in focus and helps viewers to learn who you are as a company. The longer they get to know you, the more loyalty you’ll gain.
Why It Works and Who Should Use Video Marketing
Video marketing works because it can capture your audience’s attention in a different way to how content marketing can. It can help send a message to your audience in a colourful, interactive, informative, and attractive way.
Video Marketing is ideal for:
- Businesses or brands looking to grow
- Website or blog owners wanting to increase traffic
- Affiliate marketers who want to scale
- Influencers wanting to make money
Other Digital Strategies That Pair Well With Video Marketing
- SEO
- Affiliate Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click & Search Engine Marketing
Overall
Digital marketing is valuable when it comes to marketing your website and business online therefore choosing the right strategy to get you ahead is important. By analysing the above, you’ll be able to decide which one is right for you. Need help? Contact our digital marketing agency specialists today.
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