Lauren
In today’s increasingly digital world, it is no longer enough for brands to rely on word of mouth or traditional marketing methods to expand their reach and grow their business. To remain competitive and profitable, businesses need to embrace digital marketing.
With a digital marketing strategy, your brand can capitalize on online channels and resources to reach your target audience and boost your bottom line.
Here are five simple and effective digital marketing strategies that you should consider using:
1. Social media marketing
Nowadays it seems like nearly everyone is on at least one social media platform. In fact, over half of the worldwide population is active on social media. If you are not using social media platforms to connect with your audience and share content, you are missing out on a major marketing opportunity.
If your target audience is spending time on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, then your brand should be, too. Focus on one platform at a time until you are able to use it effectively, and before you know it, you will be able to reach consumers on any social media platform.
Here are three tips for effective social media marketing:
Engage with your audience
Far too often, businesses post content on social media without taking the time to connect with the people who engage with their posts. If someone posts a comment about how much they love your brand, respond! Try drumming up more interactions and engagement by asking your audience to post comments using a specific hashtag or by running contests that encourage your audience to share your posts. This will help expand your reach on social media platforms.
Post regularly
Going a week without posting can be more like a year in social media time. If you aren’t posting consistently, your brand won’t stay in the front of consumers’ minds, and it will be hard for you to gain momentum. Create a social media calendar so that you can make sure you are posting content consistently.
Go live!
Many platforms, like Instagram and Facebook, are making it easy for businesses to interact with their audience in real-time. Live video is an engaging way to reach your target audience on social media.
2. Email marketing
Email marketing is a digital marketing tool that helps you stay connected with prior customers while also building a relationship with consumers who can become customers in the future.
Email marketing allows you to keep your brand at the forefront of your audience’s minds, which can help turn people who are interested in your products into new customers and people who have already bought from your business into repeat customers.
When your emails provide value by offering industry-related tips and insights, sharing discount codes and information about sales, and inviting customers to connect with your brand, it will help establish brand loyalty and increase your conversion rate.
Email marketing offers a high return on investment, and it should be part of every marketing team’s online marketing strategy.
If you want to make the most of your digital marketing strategy, here are three email marketing tips to consider:
Segment your email list
Remember that your email list is composed of unique individuals. You should not send the same types of emails to all of your subscribers. While an email announcing a sale on snow pants might be enticing for a consumer living in Michigan, it would likely be ignored by a consumer living in Florida, for example. Segment your email list by demographics, location, purchase history, and other factors so that your emails are more effective.
Personalize your emails
Personalizing your emails will increase your open rate. When consumers receive emails with personalized product recommendations and information like their first name, it will help them feel like they are more than just a number to your brand. Use email marketing tools that will send out personalized emails for better email marketing results.
Send your emails at the right time
Timing matters. If you send your emails at the right time, it can increase the chances that your audience will open and read these emails.
Do some research and figure out when the best time to send emails would be based on your target audience and adjust accordingly.
3. Mobile optimization
A growing number of consumers are shopping online using their mobile devices. If you want your digital marketing strategy to be successful, you need to make sure you are targeting these mobile users.
If a consumer cannot access your content, sign up for your email subscription list, or navigate your website on their mobile device, they will likely look elsewhere for the products and services they need.
Here are three ways to make your brand as mobile-friendly as possible so that you don’t lose business from mobile shoppers:
Make your content scrollable
Instead of forcing your customers to click through multiple pages on your website, make your content scrollable so they can see everything easily.
Optimize your emails
Your website is not the only resource that needs to be mobile-friendly. Make sure you are considering your mobile users when crafting email newsletters. Your CTA buttons should be easy to press, your email images should have a high enough resolution that they are clearly visible on small screens, and your text should be broken into small, digestible paragraphs that are easy to read on a mobile device.
Avoid flash
Flash plug-ins might seem engaging and interactive, but they can be a nightmare for mobile users. Avoid using flash so that you don’t isolate the consumers that will read your emails and browse your website on their phones.
4. Paid advertising
With paid advertising, you can get your business on the front page of search engine result pages, and in prime positions on social media platforms and relevant websites. While this digital marketing strategy costs money, it can help get your brand before countless more consumers and drive traffic and conversions.
The added visibility, impressions, and conversions you can gain from paid advertising will be well worth the price tag if you are able to use this strategy effectively and target your audience properly.
Here are three tips to help you use paid advertising to grow your business:
Retarget your audience
When someone leaves your website after browsing your products, you can provide personalized ads based on the products they viewed while they were on your site. While they may not have made a purchase the first time they were on your business’ website, seeing these targeted ads can lead them to go back and make a purchase.
A/B test your ads
Use A/B testing to figure out which ads generate the most leads and conversions. This way you can make sure you are making the most of the money you spend.
Don’t forget about social media
While many marketers focus on paid advertising on search engines like Google and Bing, it is also important to remember that social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook also offer paid advertising. When you pay for advertisements on these popular sites, your message will be put in front of a large audience.
5. Content marketing
Content marketing is a way to connect with your target audience through engaging content like videos, blog posts, social media posts, and infographics.’
Prioritizing your content marketing is a great way to share news about your business, encourage online engagement and interactions with your company, provide relevant information for your audience, and communicate the heart of your brand.
Content marketing should be a key part of your digital marketing strategy because it will help expand your reach, increase your profitability, and lead to repeat business.
When you consistently share content that adds value, it will cause people to think favorably about your brand and encourage them to interact with your brand again in the future. This often translates to more sales. As people continue to visit your business’ website, follow your business to view your content on social media, and subscribe to and read your email newsletters, it will increase the likelihood that they will eventually convert.
Content marketing is also a good tool for boosting your search engine optimization. When you utilize keywords within your blog posts and other online content and provide information that your audience finds useful, it will help your business rank higher in search engine results pages. Considering the fact that only 25% of internet users ever look past the first page of their search results, the higher your website ranks, the better.
Content marketing boosts SEO, which leads to more traffic and, ultimately, more conversions.
Not only will content marketing boost your bottom line by increasing sales and conversions, but research has found that this strategy is roughly 62% cheaper than traditional marketing efforts. With all of the benefits that content marketing has to offer at a fraction of the cost of other marketing strategies, your business cannot afford not to use this strategy.
Here are three content marketing tips to keep in mind:
Add value
Customers don’t want to read blog post after blog post of advertisements about your products and services. They want information that will provide value.
Think about what your target audience is interested in and provide them with helpful information that they will appreciate.
For example, if you sell dog products, your audience might like to read about 10 dog-friendly parks in their area or tips for how to leash train a new puppy. This type of content will be far more engaging and yield far better results than a post describing the dog leashes you sell.
Be creative
Switch up the type of content you post from time to time. Your audience will grow tired of seeing the same kind of content from your brand each day. Do you usually post quote images on Instagram? Try changing things up and posting a video. Are the video posts you create typically how-to videos? Try sharing behind-the-scenes video content, a fun video featuring your employees, or a Q&A.
Use keywords wisely
Where should you use keywords? In your website headers, meta tags, and within your blog, email, and social media posts where appropriate.
Where should you avoid using keywords? Every third word of your content.
You should only use keywords where they fit in with your content. If you keyword dump to try and increase your SEO, it can actually have the opposite effect. Search engines will rank your site poorly, and it can damage your reputation and connection with your audience.
When used appropriately, keywords can help your marketing strategy. When you stuff your posts with keywords, your content will suffer.
If you need help finding ways to come up with fresh content that successfully utilizes keywords and adds value, visit the Content Cucumber website and book a demo.
