Digital marketing is a wide concept encompassing numerous techniques with the final purpose to get more customers to your business. Without digital marketing, no business can survive in the current economy. After all, marketing is all about reaching people in the environment where they spend the greatest part of their time. Your potential customers spend most of their time online: searching for information on Google, using social media platforms and reading their emails.
These habits determine your marketing strategy. A good digital marketing plan must cover these three critical elements of your prospects’ online browsing: search engine, email and social media. Today we will discuss some of the most effective strategies for making your company and your products more visible to prospects and persuading them to become your clients.
Your Website Is Your Number One Digital Asset – Treat It as Such
Whatever marketing strategy you apply, its final phase takes place on your website. No matter how clever and persuasive your campaign is, you stand to lose lots of sales and potential customers if your website fails their expectations.
What do people expect from a website? These are the five features of a great website, from the customers’ point of view:
- mobile responsive
- fast loading
- easy to browse
- clean design
- great copy
For this reason, you must continually work on and invest in your website, updating its design and copy, improving the browsing menu and search options, and removing all unnecessary elements which slow down its loading time.
Search Engine Optimization – On Page and Off Page
Search engine optimization is a set of techniques which is aimed at placing your website among the first and most relevant Google results for keywords pertaining to your business. SEO is a complex and ongoing work. It involves two activities:
- on-site: optimization of your website in terms of setting meta tags, meta description, including your keywords in the URL and in titles and headlines;
- off-site: sharing content on other websites and online forums with links pointing back to your website (link building strategy).
The more that reputable online sources point to your website, the higher the rank is given by Google to your website.
AdWords Campaigns
As you may imagine, there is a high competition for ranking for the most predictable keywords (such as “leather shoes”, or “cheap mobile phones”). In order to gain more chances of being ranked for a specific keyword, you bid for it (set a price you are willing to pay every time someone clicks on an ad containing your keyword).
AdWords campaigns are effective as long as they are carefully researched and planned – otherwise you may spend way more than you were prepared to do.
Social Media Marketing
This is the most recent and the most effective branch of digital marketing. Approaching your prospects on the social media helps you open up channels of communication and build a relationship with your potential customers. When they reach your website, they already know your company and your product and have already established a relationship of trust with you.
Email Marketing
The traditional digital marketing strategy is still alive and thriving. Email newsletters, special offers and personal messages to your customers are just as effective now as direct marketing used to be decades ago. Keeping in touch with your qualified leads and your loyal customers is a critical aspect of a successful marketing and customer relationship strategy.
