Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel. Essentially, if a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it’s digital marketing.
Whether you’re in the process of launching a new business or already have one, having a strong online presence for your brand is extremely important. Digital marketing is absolutely essential if you want your business to become a success. From helping you attract new customers to increasing your sales, the right digital marketing strategy can really take your business growth to new heights.
In this article, we’ll discuss six effective digital marketing strategies you can use for your business.
- 1. Word-of-mouth marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing (or WOM marketing) is when a consumer’s interest in a company’s product or service is reflected in their daily dialogues. Recommendations from other people are one of the most powerful marketing methods you can use.
The problem: it’s slow. And the longer your business cycle, the slower the word-of-mouth becomes. You can address the speed issue by soliciting testimonials, recommendations, and reviews on social media.
Suggest happy clients leave a review on Google, Facebook, and Amazon if your business uses those. Word-of-mouth marketing is great, but it’s rarely sufficient as a marketing strategy.
- 2. Create relevant, valuable content-content marketing
Content marketing is a pull strategy where you use content to attract users to your offering. It’s used for both B2B and B2C. Content marketing identifies the right content to produce, which can then be found via search engines and posted on social media.
A great way to slice through the digital marketing noise to build rapport with your potential customers is to provide them with valuable content.
Relevant content exists in the sweet spot where what you want to say meets what your customers want to hear.
Here’s how to get started
– Think about your expertise, brand voice, and what unique value you can provide
– Research what questions your audience is asking
– Use your findings to create content in that overlap
- 3. Invest in social media advertising
There’s no denying it: A huge portion of your desired audience spends time on social media. Facebook alone has more than 2.3 billion active users across a huge range of demographics, and the platform lets you target ads to people with specific locations, interests, ages, behaviors, and more.
Social media advertising is especially useful for small businesses that sell their products online, since it’s a prime opportunity to reach people across the country or even world in just a few clicks.
You can post on Facebook and Twitter but you can also pay influencers to promote your brand on Instagram. While you could employ an in-house social media team, you can also pay professionals to perform specialized social media marketing.
- 4. Search Engine Optimization
Another effective strategy businesses should be using is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a huge part of modern marketing. Essentially it is when you create website content to optimize the pages and land high up on search engines using specific keywords, metadata, and hyperlinks. You should start your SEO strategy with a single keyword that is unique to your brand or business.
The advantages of utilizing SEO are almost endless. For instance, if you happen to own a plumbing business, having an SEO that is focused on plumbing will help you improve your online visibility in search engines.
- 5. E-mail marketing
Email marketing is a popular strategy as well. Building a consistent, informative, and engaging email newsletter will create a loyal customer base and a way to further promote your brand and its new products and services. In an email marketing strategy, online and offline communication both aim to capture a client’s email address to maintain an ongoing relationship via newsletters or email automation.
It’s one of the preferred methods for B2B but can also work for B2C, and is especially effective when decision cycles are long.
- 6. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is the premium version of word-of-mouth marketing. It’s based on recommendations from famous and influential people, and is therefore much more powerful than word-of-mouth between ordinary people.
In the B2B version of influencer marketing, the marketer will build partnerships and PR relationships with key opinion leaders.
In the B2C version, marketers establish a sponsorship agreement with a macro-influencer, a person who fits the company’s brand values and has an important reach into its target market.
There isn’t a magic marketing solution
Our jobs would be easy if we could just press a button to create the perfect cookie-cutter marketing plan for every client — but they’d be so much less fun, too. At the end of the day, there’s no magic marketing solution for anyone.
Marketing is about connecting with the right customers, in the right place, at the right time. It looks different for every company.
If you have questions about where to go next on your marketing journey, KJ Web Office is happy to help!