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Social media marketing, search engine marketing, advertising, content marketing. There are so many different tools in a digital marketing strategy that it can be difficult to know where to start. However, that’s often because we’re looking at it in the wrong way. Rather than trying to find the best online marketing tools, you should start by thinking about the goals of your digital marketing strategy, then choose the tools that fit those goals. Here are some of the goals you should focus on, and some of the strategies that can best help you reach them.
Increasing awareness
Awareness is as simple as it sounds. It’s a measure of how well known your company, brand, products, and services are. The aim here is not to show your distinct brand (though that can be incorporated) but simply to get as many people noticing your brand as possible. To that, creating a great, organic social media presence is a great way to engage directly with an active community, many of whom might be receptive to your messaging. Otherwise, native advertising, as well as social media advertising, tend to grab a lot of attention for the brand. Of course, good press relations are important and, online, that means working not just with newspapers and traditional media but new media like podcast sponsorships and influencers, too.
Growing the brand
The brand of the business is a powerful tool, indeed. It’s a language, using not only text, but the imagery, iconography, and a story that is told throughout all of your marketing when done well. Whenever it comes to establishing a home for the brand on the net, few things do it better than a well-designed website. With outsourced web development, you can ensure that your website is given the attention and professional care needed to not only make it fit your needs but also presents your brand in the best possible light. Developing a brand style guide can help you stay consistent with that style all the way through your different marketing materials.
Driving traffic
When it comes to growing the brand, increasing awareness, or otherwise using the site to further your business goals, you also have to consider the fact that people need to be on the website in the first place. As such, driving traffic is not usually a primary goal, but a necessity that you have to tick to reach other goals as named above. Great advertising with landing pages leading to the website work as a way to drive traffic to the website. Content marketing that addresses problems faced by the audience is another great way to bring traffic onto the website, as well. It’s important to remember that traffic doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting meaningful interactions or sales, so be sure to utilize the tips mentioned in the other points if that’s really what you’re after.
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Driving sales
How you drive sales all depends on the process by which you sell to the customer in the first place. If it’s done on the site, then bringing customers to the site with the communicated intention of offering them a product is the cleanest way to drive sales. However, you need to make sure the website is designed to funnel them towards that point of conversion. This is done through what is called a conversion rate optimization strategy. Effectively, it’s all about looking at what elements of the website might need to change in order to make it easier and more efficient for them to navigate towards that aforementioned point of conversion.
Growing leads
Not all businesses work by driving customers towards a point of sale, however. Some need to build a relationship with a customer, incentivizing them to get in touch or to respond to offers that get sent their way. If you need a more gradual approach towards that business to client/customer relationship, then lead building is the strategy. Lead building uses SEO, advertising, and content marketing just as much as the other goals mentioned above. But it also necessitates that you can track your leads, as well. One of the best ways to do that is by using a site lead capture form tool. When used to take details in order to register them for an email campaign, you get a point of ongoing communication with them but, more importantly, you get identifiable details by which you can start tracking the lead nurturing process from there.
Showing thought leadership
Just as well as a brand can help dazzle and sell your audience on the benefits of the business and its products and services, don’t underestimate the power that the right business leader can have on the perceptions of the market, either. As well as content marketing on your own website, writing content and articles for other publications, blogs, and authoritative spaces online can help you build your personal brand. Your personal brand can reflect on your business. If you get a reputation for being a respectable and insightful business leader, then people expect a similar level of quality from your business, too.
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Measuring the specifics
As well as setting the goals that best suit the needs of your business and choosing the marketing methods that can best help you reach those goals, it’s important to have methods of tracking them. When it comes to driving traffic or sales, then there are very clear numbers you can easily track so see how effective you are at those. However, for other objectives, setting SMART goals and finding the KPIs needed to track your progress on them is essential. Otherwise, you might have a course in mind, but without quantitative proof of it, you can’t tell if you’re heading in the right direction.
The next time you’re looking to launch a digital marketing campaign, be sure to start by identifying why you’re doing it in the first place. You don’t need to have a single goal, but you need to have defined and solid goals.