Marketing was always meant to help businesses interact with their customers better. But as we go through this pandemic and more people go online, digital marketing is becoming more and more helpful for businesses.
Digital marketing is marketing your business through the internet using social media, email, and other digital channels to find and connect with consumers at the right place and at the right time. A digital marketing campaign is often coupled with traditional marketing strategies to successfully achieve business goals.
Many businesses today understand the value of digital and mobile channels but struggle to create an elaborate plan to acquire and engage their customers better. It is a challenge to businesses because of the very scope of digital marketing and the amount of work needed to make an effective marketing strategy. You need a strategy that has techniques, content, and extensive plans to execute your marketing campaigns well in a way that is personalized to the consumer’s experience.
About 45% of companies are doing digital marketing for their business but have no defined strategy. If you are one of these companies, we listed down 15 ways a digital marketing strategy can help you transform your business.
- Setting clear goals
Not having a clear goal compromises your engagement with your customers. Digital marketing can help fix this by allowing you to reevaluate what you want to achieve with your business and how having a clear strategy can help. Whether it’s gaining more customers or increasing engagement — come up with objectives that will give you direction so you can allot the right amount of resources to fulfilling your goals. When this becomes aligned with how you run your business, you will be able to track your progress through analytics as well.
Knowing your goal also helps you figure out how many and what kind of people you will need to carry out these tasks. This promotes more organization in the business that will benefit its facets.
- Understanding your market
Whether your company is business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) or both, you will need a clear digital marketing strategy to identify the needs of your target audience so you can deliver the right kind of content. And you need to understand your online marketplace now more than ever because of the continuous shift to digital. You can practice social listening to know what your customers are looking for and how exactly you can optimize your marketing campaigns to meet their needs.
- Making your marketing more customer-centric
You can take on a more customer-centric approach through your digital marketing strategy by creating an Online Value Proposition (OVP). This OVP has to be distinct so audiences can distinguish you from other companies who have similar products and services but at the same time suit different target customer personas. You can offer something unique that can only be found on your online channels to attract new customers. Then, you will need to develop a clear strategy to communicate your proposition. This means focusing on a content marketing strategy that will effectively carry out your message.
- Measuring the ROI of your marketing efforts
Having a clear digital marketing strategy helps you track your efforts to match your marketing and your sales. Companies who align these two have better chances of growing their business as compared to those with poor alignment. Allot the right budget to the different areas of your marketing strategy like the channels or campaigns you are planning and make sure they align with your goals. Unlike offline marketing alone, digital marketing allows you to measure the ROI of your marketing efforts. This shows why integrated marketing is important and how it can help maximize the resources you have to execute a successful marketing strategy and campaign.
- Making use of multichannel marketing
A strategy allows you to map out the ways and channels in which you want to market your business. Integrated marketing is more important now because the rise in digital platforms makes it more challenging for marketers to coordinate their message across these channels. Planning carefully will give you better chances of increasing brand awareness and creating a more seamless experience for potential customers. For example, there are 2.6 billion monthly active Facebook users as of the first quarter of 2020. In 2019, over 87% of video marketers on LinkedIn said that it was an effective channel to execute their video marketing efforts (Wyzowl, 2020).
You will also become more aware of which marketing channels work best for you by monitoring your website traffic, content performance, and lead generation. For example, if you find that you barely have any traffic coming from organic search, you will allot more time to improve your SEO performance. Or if you keep track of how your audience interacts with your content, you know what to produce more of and even get some promising leads while doing so
- Taking your digital marketing seriously
Devote more time and resources towards digital marketing so you know how to keep your business relevant, how to capitalize on current trends, and know how your competitors are performing. Do not use an ad hoc approach because a digital marketing strategy builds your brand and that will take time. Doing so will only make it easier for competitors to dominate the market.
- Knowing your online customers better
You can use tools like Google Analytics and Google’s Keyword planner to see what is working for your business and what is not. They also give you an idea of what you can integrate into your marketing strategy to attract more people to your working channels. But even this information is limited because it only shows quantitative data. You can couple this with online feedback tools to really know the sentiments of your visitors. This will help you find areas of improvement that will show you where and how you can redirect your marketing efforts.
- Staying updated
Study what top online brands are doing in digital and how they are executing their strategies. Look into brands like Google, Amazon, and Dell to learn more about other marketing tools and tactics you can incorporate into your business. Try different approaches and see which one engages your online audience the most. This will keep your business competitive and continuously improving.
- Optimizing the use of digital tools
It is not just about using analytics tools but also creating the necessary strategies based on the information you have. You can progress to search marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing to have a more comprehensive view of how your business fits into the digital sphere as well as maximize its potential for growth.
- Engaging a larger audience
You can make your business visible to a wider audience since going digital allows people with different demographics and geographic locations to engage with your content. You can tap into mobile consumers as well considering how around 51% of smartphone consumers find a new product or service while surfing the web.
- Lead generation
Using Salesforce CRM allows you to generate hot leads that are nearest to your location. Remember, the one who calls the business first gets to close the deal first. With lead generation of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you will be able to have one platform that collates all the information of our leads where we can update the platform in real-time. CRM or digital marketing solutions also help businesses with limited manpower get better leads with proper strategies in place.
Another way you can use digital marketing strategies to generate leads is with Facebook ads. Facebook provides leads according to the target market you’ve set when publishing the ads.
- Getting more conversions
Conversions show how well your digital marketing strategy is working. Digital marketing can help increase your conversion rate through the marketing materials and campaigns you put online. Create a conversion rate optimization plan that includes optimizing social media channels and other ways you can build better connections with your target audience to encourage them to take the next step. Optimize your product reviews, templates, and call-to-action buttons. Use the necessary digital tools as well like SEO, SEM, SMM, etc.
- Considering AI technology and unified data systems
A strategy will show you the benefits of artificial intelligence as it gains popularity among marketers. Marketers who reportedly use AI increased from 29% to 84% in just two years. As empathetic marketing becomes more necessary during this time, AI can help develop personalization from gathered data sources. It can analyze consumer behavior, find patterns, and use data from various platforms to help businesses get a better view of how customers engage with their products and services.
However, one of the biggest challenges companies face is the use of multiple data management tools. This makes unification more difficult and could lead to ineffective management. Third Pillar is one of the top companies that provides CRM software development to help boost your engagement with your customers.
- Creating more personalized experiences
As more customers expect dynamic interactions, companies have to continuously find ways to make customer experiences more personalized. The content they see will be more effective if it is tailored to their previous actions on other channels. Marketers need a real-time approach to customer experience to appeal to what they want to see. Salesforce mentioned how a study of consumers and business buyers discovered that 84% of customers say that their experience with a company is just as important as their products and services. This urges businesses to innovate and find ways to improve engagement across all digital touchpoints.
- Implementing marketing strategies and trends
Trendjacking is one of the key digital marketing strategies. It means capitalizing or riding on the current market trends. Always be on the lookout for the latter and plan how you can incorporate this into your brand. The more relevant your content is, the more people will remember you. On the other hand, marketing trends like interactive content, content marketing, and video marketing are just a few of the many different strategies you can implement to better advertise your business.
If you want to continuously improve your business, shift your focus to your digital strategy. COVID-19 has undeniably affected businesses all over the world, but it also made them realize the importance of digital transformation in the midst of such uncertainty.
At Third Pillar, we are committed to helping you achieve your business goals. Set a consultation with us and let us know how we can help you!