If you own a business, then you know that the vast majority of the marketplace is based online. Majority of consumers make their buying decisions by first exploring their options online through search engines, websites, and reading customer reviews. And now more than ever, more and more people are also making their purchases online for home delivery. Not only is it convenient, but in today’s environment—mandatory.
If you are new to digital marketing and want to leverage its power in your business then keep reading because I’m going to show you how all these works based on experience and not just theories.
Digital marketing is defined as marketing on the internet through digital channels. It’s another term for internet marketing. Not only is it less expensive than traditional marketing, but it’s a lot easier to reach a large number of new and existing customers with less money. Whether you’re thinking about transitioning from traditional marketing to digital marketing, or ready to add digital marketing to your promotional mix, this post has got you covered.
Today I’m going to share with you seven digital marketing strategies that I have personally used and gotten results with, but before I proceed, I strongly advised you not to try all of these strategies at once, instead, pick one of these strategies, experiment and master it before you proceed to the next.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You’ve likely heard of the term SEO but maybe you weren’t sure what it means. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s the act of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. While there are a few search engines out there, the most popular is Google. An effective SEO strategy follows specific guidelines and best practices that will ensure a website ranks on the first page of search engine results.
Some of these guidelines include optimizing your pages with:
Relevant keywords
Easy-to-navigate website structure
High-quality relevant information
Use of specific headers to break up content and to help the search engine understand the content
To rank on the first page of the search engine, you need to structure your website and pages to attract organic traffic. Without SEO, it’s almost impossible to grow an online business organically and you’ll need to also use paid advertising. SEO is also closely related to other digital marketing elements like email marketing and content marketing. They work together to give customers high-quality content.
An effective SEO campaign addresses three key elements: your website, Google, and your audience. Google then ranks your site when a search query that matches your focus keyword is entered. You might be wondering, how Google does that. When Google’s algorithm assess your site, they take into consideration the site’s structure and content. They then match your content with search queries and related keywords to determine how relevant your content is to these questions. Google also checks for quality links to your website—links tell Google that other people value your content and that it’s a reliable source of information. Several good-quality links directed to your site will increase your chances of a higher Google rank. Not all links are good for SEO—links from high authority sites, like news organizations and professional associations, are what Google considers as good signals.
Another very important factor that Google considers is the amount of time visitors spend on your site. Using Rankbrain, an artificial intelligence algorithm, Google measures the amount of time spent on your content. The longer visitors spend on your site, the better your SEO chances. So, posting unique and creative content with high-word counts will help improve your website’s ranking.
2. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing involves the use of social media platforms as channels to reach large audiences.
Rather than covering every social media platform, I want to give you some very important tips that will help you grow your social channels
The first is to focus on just one social media channel when you are just starting out.
It takes time to build a following on social media but numbers aren’t everything. What you want is a loyal following. When you spread your strategies to every social media channel out there, your attention gets divided and the results get diluted.
So how do you choose a perfect social media channel?
This leads us in to the second tip; which is to go where your target audience is and cater to the platform.
If you have to choose just one social network, its not about choosing the one with the most active users, its all about understanding the audience that’s there and if you could serve the reason for them being there. You really need to think about why this particular audience is using this specific social media platform. For example, people usually go to YouTube to learn about how to do something or to be entertained, but Facebook is different, think about it;
Have you ever gone to Facebook to learn how to use a DSLR camera or learn how to build a software? Probably not. People do not check Face Book for how to do things or tutorials, people like and share things that are helpful, entertaining, informative or funny, so if you are going to try and bring people into your world, present your messages as a story, videos or something else that will likely stand out from an endless feed of varying content. Connectyu on the other hand is a social media platform where Africans can connect and share their creative ideas, information or entertainment with other Africans. The primary intent of users on this platform is to make strategic and important connections with each other and be proud of who they are as Africans. So create content that cater for their intent of being there. If this is your audience, take advantage of a less competitive land scape from both an ad and organic perspective.
3. Content Marketing
Wikipedia defines “Content marketing as any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content to acquire customers.”
This content can either be video, audio, text form for example like on a blog, etc
Content marketing is permission-based marketing. Potential clients opt-in to this type of marketing and sometimes share it. To gain the trust of your potential customers, you need to be able to provide them with something relevant; content marketing is built on this idea. Content marketing should be helpful while subtly guiding readers in their decision-making process.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience–to drive profitable customer action.” For example, I sell mobile phones online. Instead of focusing on my landing page and product description, I can direct my effort into content which my prospective customers may read before trying to make the purchase.
4. Blogging with SEO in mind
Blogging is not writing about what you did today or how you travel to Africa for exploration, that’s a diary, but don’t get me wrong, this kind of content can work well if you have an existing and loyal audience. But for most of us who wants to get more traffic, leads or sales, we need to intentionally target problems that your target audience wants to solve. In the world of blogging this whole process can be summed up in to what is called KEY WORD RESEARCH. When you have a blog that’s updated regularly
5. Email Marketing
According to research from Campaign Monitor, every $1 put into email marketing generates $38. For this reason, email marketing is one of the most popular digital marketing techniques among digital marketers. It is so popular that 82 percent of B2B and B2C companies are using it.
Email marketing, if implemented properly can prove very effective. Another report from Campaign Monitor shows that a well-defined email marketing strategy is 40 times more likely to acquire a customer than the combination of Facebook and Twitter campaigns.
Successful email marketing campaigns share relevant, timely information that is personalized to the recipient. Segmentation is an essential component of email marketing; it ensures that you’re reaching the right people at the right time. When you understand their position in the buyer’s journey, you can email them information to help them make a purchasing decision. Educational content can come in many forms, but emails typically share blog articles, white papers and eBooks, and webinar offers. Instead of sending links to external content, you can also write robust newsletters that educate.
In addition to educational content, you can inform them about promotional offers in an attempt to persuade them to take action.
6. Digital Advertising
Digital advertising can also be referred to as paid advertising. It refers to every strategy and process involved in generating referral traffic to your site via paid digital display ads. Marketers often conduct digital advertising on different platforms, depending on where their target audience is most concentrated. Some of these platforms include:
Google (Adwords)
YouTube
ConnectYu
CMTVPlus
Among all the above-listed platforms, studies show that Facebook and Google alone drive 80 percent of the referral traffic. Ads on Google and Facebook are typically pay-per-click (PPC) ads, which means that the advertiser pays a fee every time their ad is clicked.
Another great feature of digital advertising is the ability to use remarketing. With remarketing advertisements, you can successfully convert window shoppers to customers by showing them ads after they have left your website. Have you ever searched for an item in an online store, only for you to leave that site and see the same item on another site you visit? That is remarketing. Businesses use this tactic to send customers back to items they’ve viewed before on their site. The idea is to remind the customers that they were once interested in this product. Perhaps when they were on your website it wasn’t a good time to make a purchase or they needed to think about it a little more. When you show them a remarketing ad in the future, you may be able to convert them at that time.
7. Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing, as the name implies, is a digital marketing technique that involves marketing strategies focused on mobile users. Research shows that more than 80 percent of internet users own a smartphone, so this is an important niche to reach out to. In this case, the marketing strategies are mobile-based. Examples are; SMS, MMS, mobile apps, and websites.
Now I would love to hear from you which digital marketing strategy you think is most effective in online marketing, let me know in the comments section below. Thanks for reading.
