Do you have a digital marketing strategy mapped out for 2021? We're well into the year already, so if you don't have a structured plan in place yet for digital marketing, now is the time to do it!
A digital marketing strategy provides a framework for online marketing in your business, along with how to achieve its goals, acquire new customers, retain existing accounts, increase sales, etc.
Planning an effective Digital Marketing Strategy requires the following steps.
- Define your brand.
- Identify your ideal customer.
- Create measurable, achievable & realistic goals.
- Choose the digital strategies that are best for your business.
- Set a budget.
- Create a plan.
- Launch your campaigns.
- Track and monitor progress.
Once you create a plan, it's time to take action to implement it. There are many digital marketing channels you can leverage for this, either individually or in combination. These include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - SEO is a method of organically creating traffic to your website by improving your website's ranking on search engines, using keywords that are highly relevant to the business. The higher the rankings you get, the more potential customers will see you and get familiar with your brand. SEO aims at getting highly relevant and highly targeted traffic. So the traffic you generate from SEO strategies is those people who are actively showing an interest in your products and services.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - PPC is paid to advertise. When a customer searches for similar products and services online using very specific keywords, your advertisements will be displayed to them at the top of search results. In PPC you need to bid for the keywords that you want your ads to be displayed for. PPC is very cost-effective because you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement, so you are paying for results and not specific ad space. In addition, the traffic generated through PPC campaigns is highly targeted because these are people who are ready to buy your products and services, and not just browsing around. PPC is not only good at increasing traffic and conversions but is also a good method to increase brand awareness.
- Content Marketing - Content Marketing aims at reaching potential customers through engaging and informative content, such as blogs, infographics, etc. Such content should provide value for the customer by way of information that they may be seeking. A good content marketing strategy will be able to not only increase traffic to your website but increase conversions as well. In addition, they create greater visibility for your business on online platforms.
- Social Media Marketing - Social Media Marketing aims at creating brand awareness and thereby increasing traffic and conversions, through social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Social Media Marketing is the ideal way to create greater engagement with your customers, and another platform for paid advertising. People spend a lot of their free time on social media sites, so why shouldn't businesses use this as a means of reaching out to them?
- Email Marketing - Email marketing strategies are generally used for customer retention and retargeting purposes. It is the ideal way to 'keep in touch' with your customers by way of updates on product catalogs, updated information regarding your business, details on sales and offers, etc. Email marketing is the best way to retarget those customers who had visited your site before but did not convert to a sale. By sending them emails you can rekindle the interest they had in your products and services, and the increased brand awareness will create familiarity with your brand and business. Email marketing is also a very cost-effective method of digital marketing.
Take a few moments to give thought to the digital aspect of how you plan to acquire customers this year. The best way to approach this is to test several small campaigns, keep the best performer, and try again. That way, you'll build off your success and learn what works best in your local market!
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