Digital marketing is one of the key forms of marketing in modern times. Very few businesses succeed without a successful digital marketing strategy in place. A definition of strategy for business can be found in the PDF attachment to this post.
A solid online presence is one of the best ways to ensure customers see your products and services, and it provides a platform for communication between businesses and customers that cannot be duplicated elsewhere.
Razi Salih once owned a digital marketing agency and is well versed in the variety of techniques businesses can use to create an effective digital marketing strategy. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a successful digital marketing strategy, so choosing the right strategy to meet your business goals is essential.
Social Media Marketing
One of the most successful digital strategies of 2018 according to data gathered by Smart Insights was social media marketing. Effective social media marketing involves connecting with a target audience through a variety of social media platforms and using this connection to gain insights, build brand awareness and loyalty, and drive website traffic to increase sales.
Choosing the right platforms helps to ensure that any targeted marketing reaches the right demographic. The major social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and SnapChat. The target demographic will determine which platforms are best for each individual business to use to connect with customers, as will the type of media you believe will best attract your customers.
For example, if you believe video content is the way forward, engaging through video sharing platforms such as YouTube may be the best strategy. However, you will need to ensure you choose platforms that are regularly used by members of your target demographic to avoid wasting time and money.
Content Marketing
Smart Insights data identified content marketing as the second most effective digital marketing strategy of 2018. Content marketing focuses on the creation and distribution of content to customers that is relevant, fresh, valuable, consistent and useful.
The most important aspects of this are valuable and relevant; sending information that is neither valuable nor relevant is essentially spam. Content marketing can form part of a social media marketing strategy, but it can also be distributed in numerous other formats.
Valuable written content that is distributed effectively can be one of the best ways to generate leads. Creating interesting, informative and useful articles and blogs that have clear and easy to use links back to a website landing page can prove one of the best formulas for driving traffic to a website.
Mobile Marketing
Having a presence on mobile is equally as valuable as having an online presence in today’s modern world. Research shows that as many as two in five shoppers will consult at least one channel for search or social media as they shop, and four in five will turn to their smartphones as a natural part of their regular habits for consuming.
This might be looking at online reviews or ratings, checking if the item they wish to purchase is currently in stock, searching for an address or telephone number, or actually shopping via mobile. Whatever the reason, customers using their smartphones as part of the shopping process has become the rule, rather than the exception. Calibrating marketing strategies to encompass mobile is therefore essential, as is optimising websites for smartphones as well as desktops.
The short video attachment provides some quick tips to optimise your website for mobile.