In today’s crowded digital market place, it’s becoming harder than ever to stand out amongst the sea of competitors, and with so many online advertising options, what is the best use of your marketing budget? The key is to develop a customer-focused digital marketing strategy.
Here are six essential elements of a digital marketing strategy which will help you stand out from the crowd:
An Engaging, Responsive Website
Your website should no longer just be an online brochure.
It should be mobile friendly, encourage interaction and funnel your visitors to take an action.
With more and more people interacting with brands via their smartphones and tablets, it’s necessary to ensure you’re delivering a consistent and responsive experience across all devices. It should be just as easy for a user to engage with or complete an action on your website, content and social media with their phones as it is their laptop.
And oh yeah, we haven’t even mentioned wearable devices yet, but there’s going to be 116 million of these little gadgets shipped around the world by 2017, so that might be important.
Don’t sleep on anything related to mobile technology – we promise you’ll regret it.
Measured Search Campaigns
Search marketing is vital for bringing target consumers to your website.
However, whether you implement organic search or pay per click advertising, make sure to monitor your results to prevent your budget from skyrocketing.
Is SEO dead? HA, good joke, we really had ourselves going there for a second. SEO is alive and well, friends, but perhaps a bit more difficult than in the past due to an increased number of requirements and that pesky algorithm over at Google that keeps getting better and better.
Then again, search marketing isn’t just about SEO, so don’t forget about the incredible effectiveness of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
The key, whether you’re doing PPC or SEO, is to track and measure your results so you can maximize the value of your marketing budget.
Email Marketing
Sending consistent well targeted email correspondence is still one of the most effective ways to grow a loyal customer base especially when used with a customer relationship management system.
It’s amazing how overlooked and underused email marketing is, even as we are in 2016. Sending an email to your target audience is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic, engagement, and conversion.
You’re missing a huge opportunity, not to mention an integral part of a successful digital marketing strategy, if you haven’t implemented email marketing.
Add Social to the Mix
Whatever the size of your business, social media can play a key role in building brand awareness, industry authority, driving targeted traffic and providing great customer care.
Over the last year, we’ve talked a lot about how vital customer service is to the core of a company or brand. And in our opinion, social media is a space where you can delight your customers with unexpectedly exceptional customer service.
The increased social activity also gives a boost to your brand’s awareness, and adds credibility and thought leadership to your industry voice.
Even though many businesses had a difficult time discerning the utility of social media, they’re starting to figure out it isn’t just a fad.
Join the Dots with Content Marketing
A content plan is the most important part of a successful digital marketing strategy.
Using a content calendar, you can coordinate your campaigns, plan your publications, organize contributors and manage the editorial process.
Ah, content marketing – the darling of the digital space for the last few years. With more companies heavily investing in content, there’s an increased pressure to plan, organize and deliver magical, unicorn-like content that wins the heart of anybody who reads it.
Yeah, that’s not reality, at least not the unicorn part. But seriously, content is becoming so huge that you really do need to seamlessly plan, collaborate and organize your content marketing agenda to achieve success.
Measure, Tweak, Improve
Monitoring your progress using web Analytics will help you achieve a return on investment by identifying which parts of your strategy are working and what needs amending.
Everything in digital marketing boils down to value. Most companies and brands have tight budgets but expect huge results, and the only way to do that is to always, always, always Measure, Tweak and improve upon whatever it is you’re doing in order to extract maximum value.
In conclusion, developing a digital marketing strategy for your business will mean you are ready to benefit from the evolving digital market place instead of being left behind.
