The world is changing at a fast pace, and businesses have to adapt to keep up. One reflection of this is the ever-expanding role of digital marketing within companies’ marketing strategies.
The ability for businesses to reach potential customers with their branding is vitally important, so, naturally, companies are always looking for the best ways to engage those customers.
With people spending so much time online, both at work and at home, the internet is a logical place for businesses to try and reach those customers. One of the great things about digital marketing is that it doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, you’ve got a great opportunity of reaching those people.
This is one of the reasons digital marketing is so prevalent in all businesses, but there are several key aspects you need to get right if your online marketing is going to work for you.
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What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is quite simply the marketing effort that you use to reach people through the internet and electronic devices. Modern life revolves around the internet, which has meant there has been a considerable growth in our ability to market to people through digital means.
There are a variety of different ways to reach your audience through digital marketing, and various mediums will suit different businesses. With 3.5 billion Google searches per day and 1.6 billion people logging into Facebook each day, these are numbers that no business can afford to ignore.
So how can you tailor your digital marketing to generate leads and create new customers?
Analytics
It’s all well and good being able to implement different digital marketing strategies, but you’ve got to be able to figure out if they’re working, and if they’re not, why they’re not.
Digital marketing is very data-driven, and you need to be able to understand how to interpret that data to optimize your campaigns. There is a range of different techniques that are used for analyzing data in digital marketing, and there are great courses from schools like Emerson College that can give you all the skills you need.
The amount of data we have access to is one of the significant benefits of digital marketing, so it’s essential to make the most of this aspect.
Understanding Your Audience
One of the most important things with any marketing is understanding your audience. You’ve got to know the type of people you’re targeting, the messages those people want to see, and how you can get them to take action.
If your digital marketing doesn’t consider your audience, then you’re going to find it very difficult to get a return on your investment.
Spend some time working out what your audience looks like and tailor your marketing to suit this group of people.
Choosing the Right Mediums
Digital marketing offers lots of different ways to reach your audience, so you need to find the right mix that’s going to allow you to meet your targets.
Some of the most commonly used digital marketing tools include:
- SEO
- PPC
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
SEO
For the majority of people, their first step when they have a question is to type it into Google. If you’re the first result that shows up, then you’re going to get a lot of clicks, which you can turn into sales.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about getting those free organic clicks from Google by ranking at the top of the search engines.
PPC
SEO takes time, and it’s not guaranteed you will make it to the top of the rankings for your keywords, so PPC offers you another option. Pay per click advertising allows you to place ads for different keywords, so you feature at the top of the results on a search engine.
This is an effective way to reach a targeted audience, but you do pay for every click.
Social Media Marketing
Virtually everybody uses some form of social media these days, which means these platforms are a great way of reaching your target audience. Through platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you can build your audience and engage with potential customers for free, or you can run highly targeted ads.
Social media marketing is a great way to expand your brand’s reach and create new leads.
Email Marketing
We’re all used to getting spam emails in our inbox, but that’s not what email marketing has to be about. If you can build your list and offer your subscribers real value that is sent to their email inbox regularly, then you will drive sales for your company.
First, you’ve got to earn the right for someone to give you their email address, then you’ve got to engage them with useful content that’s going to grow their relationship with your business.
Content Marketing
Your business should be an expert in your industry, and you can use that knowledge and expertise to market yourself to your audience through high-quality content.
Earning a customer is about building a relationship, and content marketing is a great way to do this. People have a question, you answer it, and the customer sees you as an authority whose skills they need to have on their side.
Influencer Marketing
This has been a growing trend in marketing in recent years. Influencer marketing involves brands working with individual influencers, people with large digital followings, to promote their goods.
Influencers often have loyal and engaged followers and using the right influencer can be a great marketing tactic.
Follow Up
Once you generate leads through digital marketing, you’ve got to make sure you’re following them up correctly. Your return on investment doesn’t rest on how many leads you create; it rests on how many leads you convert, so you’ve got to make sure you’re following up on your leads effectively.
Marketing is just the first step, you’ve got to make sure you’re converting, and that means following up on all your leads.
