The digital landscape offers an excellent opportunity for businesses to advertise their products and reach out to potential customers. However, the digital realm is getting more competitive with every passing day, and businesses must develop better, more effective, and improved ways and means to meet their digital marketing goals.
Companies need to keep pace with the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, which is why it is essential to have an effective digital marketing strategy that yields good results.
A digital marketing strategy is a set of best practices compiled and applied to help businesses reach specific goals through digital marketing channels. The digital marketing strategy aims to develop a bridge between different digital channels, and meet the objectives of the business. An effective strategy ensures that all digital marketing channels are in accordance and complement each other to bring fruitful results, i.e., more sales and increased revenue.
Search engines, email, and social media are some of the most effective digital channels for connecting and engaging with customers and keeping them updated with your current and future offers.
Digital marketing triumphs over traditional marketing channels because it offers the flexibility to reach a specific target audience most likely to benefit from your services and products. With the right strategy in place, digital marketing is a cost-cutting alternative to traditional marketing techniques.
Businesses understand the importance of an effective digital marketing strategy. According to a survey, 200 global marketing leaders voted digital marketing strategy and planning as one of the top four essential skills that businesses should possess.
Businesses that fail to implement the latest digital marketing techniques lose their competitive edge and face a substantial drop in earnings. Hence, the importance of an effective and updated digital marketing strategy for the success of a business cannot be overemphasized.
Some of the apparent benefits of a digital marketing strategy are
- It saves cost and time and yields a better ROI.
- Helps reach current and prospective clients.
- Brings new opportunities to businesses.
- Increases the visibility and reach of the business, and helps meet goals.
- Sets businesses in the right direction.
- It helps businesses monitor their performance.
- It helps businesses analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
- Gives a competitive edge to businesses.
With that being said, let us look at some of the most critical components of an excellent digital marketing strategy.
1) Effective SEO is Key
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the critical components of any effective digital marketing strategy. SEO helps your website rank higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) organically, resulting in improved visibility and more traffic directed to your website.
SEO is a comprehensive process, and many factors need to be considered. Listed below are some SEO best practices:
- Keep user intent and preference in mind while designing the website's content.
- Write interesting title tags and meta descriptions, and place keywords strategically.
- Introduce the main keywords early in the content, which appears at the top of the page.
- Optimize the images displayed on the website.
- Optimize the loading speed of the page.
- Aim for authoritative backlinks from other informative websites.
- Regularly publish high-quality, authentic, and informative content on the website.
Following these tried and tested SEO best practices, your website will attain higher rankings for specific keywords. It will give you a competitive edge over other businesses that compete for the exact keywords that direct prospective clients toward their websites.
- SEO serves multiple purposes - it not only increases your user engagement rates, but also boosts brand awareness and increases the reliability and authority of your brand in the eyes of consumers. When your brand appears on top of the search results, it sends the message that your brand takes a leading position for the specific industry it belongs to.
2) Offer Quality Content on Your Website
- Despite the presence of multiple social media platforms, the business's official website remains one of the primary and most authentic sources of information. It is the foundational component of any marketing strategy.
Hence, your website should deliver an exceptional customer experience when users access it. For that to happen, the website should be responsive, mobile friendly, easy to follow, and should have engaging content with clear calls to action.
- The golden rule of a successful website is to offer informative, educational, and engaging content regularly. In this regard, regularly updating the website's blog is very helpful in targeting the right audience and increasing engagement. Regularly posting up-to-date and informational content will establish your brand as an authentic source of relevant information.
This drives more targeted traffic to your website and improves search engine optimization (SEO) ranking. The educational content from the blog can be shared across other marketing channels, such as social media and email.
- HubSpot, a renowned marketing company, studied how an informative blog can improve the sales of a business. The results showed that by featuring an updated blog on your website, your visitors could increase by 55%.
3) Make Your Website Mobile Responsive and Friendly
- According to the latest statistics, 59.5% of internet traffic comes through mobile devices. Hence, to deliver the best customer experience, making your website mobile-friendly and responsive is essential. A website is mobile responsive when its layout or content responds or adjusts according to the screen size from where it is accessed.
Mobile devices have different dimensions, and if the website's content does not adapt to the screen's dimensions, it can appear haphazard and out of place, making it difficult for visitors to understand and navigate the website.
Hence, responsive programming lies at the core of an effective digital marketing strategy. The website's content should adjust on all mobile devices, whether a tablet or a smartwatch. With the help of a web designer and SEO expert, you can make your website mobile responsive and ensure a faster loading speed across all devices.
4) Utilize Email Marketing for Your Benefit
- Way before the advent of social media, businesses used emails to connect with customers and get their message across. Email marketing is one of the digital marketers' oldest and most effective tools. It requires little effort and is a cost-effective way of meeting your marketing goals.
The ROI of email marketing is enormous. According to a report, for every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses generate an average of $42, which means that the return on investment is a whopping 4,200%.
- Email marketing gives good results because it is targeted at those prospective clients that are already engaged with your brand. People subscribe to your email campaign when they are interested in knowing more about you.
Use email marketing to share company updates, introduce new products and services, and share the success story of your brand's journey. With a little effort, you can convert prospective clients into long-term customers. Email marketing is a highly targeted form of digital marketing, which is why it yields 40 times higher results compared to social media when it comes to acquiring new clients.
- To save time and human effort, use different email automation tools to take care of recurring marketing tasks, such as scheduling email campaigns, monitoring the success of each email campaign, and scoring leads. Automation tools can help in building or customizing email templates, as well.
5) Increase Your Sales Through Social Media Marketing
Social media is a powerful tool that can do wonders for your business if utilized correctly. According to estimates, half of the time that we spend on phones is dedicated to social media and the average amount of time a user spends on social media is close to 147 minutes per day. Social media can help your brand in the following ways:
- Users can express their opinions through social media and provide valuable company feedback. It helps build a two-way engagement with followers.
- Social media is buzzing with user activity 24/7. Through social media platforms, brands can make important announcements, such as the beginning of the sale season, and be assured that the news will reach users on time.
- Brands can use social media platforms to introduce new products to customers in an exciting and relatable manner. This can positively influence consumers' purchasing decisions.
- Social media is effective in building brand awareness, increasing visibility, and ultimately, driving more traffic back to the website with which the social media page of a brand is linked.
An effective social media strategy acts as a guide for social media best practices, such as
- Which social media platform is the most suitable to represent your brand and connect with the audience?
- How to achieve maximum engagement, i.e., which times are most suitable for posting content on social media.
- How frequently should your brand post on social media platforms?
- Which form of content do the visitors prefer? Short videos, long posts, or infographics?
6) Marketing Automation Tools Result in More Efficient Marketing Campaigns
- Automation tools reduce your workload, improve work efficiency, and are more reliable than human efforts. As a result, more and more businesses are relying on automation tools for different aspects of their digital marketing.
According to a recent survey, 91% of successful companies claim that automation tools improved the efficiency of their businesses, and helped them achieve their goals quickly.
- To make the best use of automation tools, you should learn about the tools available in the market and which tools can better serve your business. In addition, understanding marketing automation trends is a crucial component of an effective digital marketing strategy.
7) Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a sub-component of social media marketing. Like email marketing and inbound techniques, influencer marketing is a cost-effective way to meet business goals. By including influencer marketing as a part of your digital marketing strategy, you are able to accomplish the following:
- Identify the top influencers who are best suited to promote your product. An influencer does not always have to be a glamorous celebrity, but rather someone who has a lot of followers and promotes products on their social media page.
- To understand the success of your influencer marketing efforts. Tracking the progress and the ROI you will receive for spending money is important.
8) Tap The Power of Video Marketing
- Video is one of the most exciting and popular forms of content that is enjoyed by a vast majority of internet users. Videos are fun to watch, easy to understand, and convey the message efficiently. As a result, most visitors prefer to watch videos over other forms of content. Online marketers understand the power of video marketing and try to present their content as exciting and impactful videos.
Video can benefit your business in multiple ways. For example, you can use it to explain a product's complicated functions, make essential announcements excitingly, or share a more personal picture of your business, such as your success story.
- Through video, you can also give a behind-the-scenes tours of your business. It will help your customers understand your business processes, and establish a deeper connection with prospective clients.
Keep your videos short, crisp, exciting, and to the point. Most viewers get bored quickly and have short attention spans. Being a savvy marketer, you should take full advantage of the true power of video in order to reach your marketing goals and beyond.
The digital landscape is evolving all the time. New trends supersede old trends. If you want to have a successful digital marketing campaign, it is essential to have an effective digital marketing strategy. It will help you stay on top of all the emerging trends and meet your marketing goals effectively.