Digital Marketing Strategy Part 2
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Digital Marketing Strategy Part 2
Digital marketing uses digital channels in order to attract the attention of the target market, which is the topic of this discussion.
Image Credit: Chaffey & Smith (2017).
Redefining the future of digital marketing
A recent article published on Adweek by Deloitte Digital focused on redefining the future of marketing, Digital marketing is no longer a one-way sales push of advertising and promotion. People want to connect with brands on a human / emotional level and experience an ongoing journey of 'building connections, delivering experiences and earning trust'. ICF Next shares some great examples of brands that are going even a step further than that and encouraging participation.
Following are marketing platforms through which to create a customer focused marketing strategy.
Image Credit: Unsplash Photos
Company Website
Prepare your website for your marketing campaign by making it inviting and organised with a strong online value proposition (OVP) that will attract your target market and enable them to see how your brand can help solve a problem they have. The brand website is the place where customers can download content, sign up for a newsletter, make a purchase or take the action you desire.
1. Securing your site
Update your site to https to protect against hackers and to optimize google search engine. On your sales pages, use secure socket layer technology to collect credit card details to encourage your customers to purchase online.
2. Landing pages
A landing page is the place you send contacts who come from your marketing efforts, so they need to be graphically appealing with a clear call to action that contributes to conversion. According to Hubspot, embedding video on landing pages can increase engagement by 80%.
Landing pages can be tested through Google AB testing to fine tune them for success.
3. Transactional Web site
Chaffey & Smith have identified 5 purposes for a transactional site:
1. Establish brand identity
2. Motivate people to product sample
3. Generate an action step - ie opt in mailing list, phone call, enquiry etc
4. Generate sales
5. Customer service (before and after the sale)
4. Personalisation can be built into a website to enable the algorithms to collect data via cookies regarding purchases and customer behaviour, and used later to retarget the customer with personalised content & specials.
Social proof 'like box' can integrate into your website to grow trust in your brand. 79% of consumers trust social proof as much as personal recommendation.
Include social media icons on your website, and build in the facility for people to share content on their social media pages.
Photo Credit: Adobe Stock
5. Generating Web Traffic
Getting customers to visit your website is an ongoing challenge for marketers. Web traffic can be optimized through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), pay per click, and through sharing content on social media.
Search Engine Marketing
SEO
Search engine optimisation is about where you are ranked in the search engine when a customer types in keywords that match your product or service, with a goal to be in the top 5 positions on the first page in order to be seen. It is highly competitive, but SEO is one of the most powerful digital marketing methods to direct traffic to your website, dominated by algorithms. Ingredients for success in SEO are using key words (use Wordstream to reveal which keywords are driving traffic and conversions), providing quality content, links to other sites with high rankings, and having multiple links from other sites that include key words. Neil Patel's video below on SEO will give further insights into this challenging field of expertise.
Video Source: Patel, N. (2017).
Adwords/ Pay per click
Like SEO, Google Adwords also optimise key word search, but the marketer pays for each lead that clicks on their ad (paid media). Here is a coaching video for Google Adwords.
Video Source: Marziani, T. (2019).
Marketing with Content
Useful, shareable and branded content should be prepared by brands in the form of blog articles, videos, webinars, newsletters, infographics, audio and e-books to draw customers into your marketing funnel.
Industry experts say that creating meaningful content that educates, entertains and inspires your target audience will dramatically increase the value of your brand, and is a powerful strategy for online success. Forbes and Hubspot believe that video is the future of content marketing. (See Digital Marketing Trends for more details).
In a 2017 Conductor survey, customers were found to be 131% more likely to buy from brands that shared meaningful content with them, with brand affinity increasing over time.
Image Credit: Stebbins, C (2017).
Social Media Marketing
When choosing a social media platform to focus your marketing efforts on, ensure your target audience is on that platform. Different social media has features and benefits that can assist you in achieving meaningful business goals. The infographic below summarises the benefits of each platform.
Social media is the perfect place to share your owned media content with your target market through your social media accounts. You can reach thousands of people in addition to your loyal followers through paid targeted advertising. When people share your content and talk about it on social networks, you are receiving earned media.
Image Credit: Benson, L. (2018).
Display Advertising
Display advertising is paid media that delivers brand messages and advertising via 3rd party websites or through social media, placed in a position where your target audience will be likely to see it. One of the challenges of display advertising is adblockers that stop prospects from seeing ads.
Influencer Marketing
Marketers often use social media influencers as an inexpensive way to raise awareness about their product or service, build credibility with their audience, and create social conversations around their brand in order to increase web traffic online and convert to the sale of their product or service.
Blogging
53% of marketers say blogging is their top content marketing priority
66% of marketers in 2017 used blogs in their social media.
Blogging helps to increase SEO rankings to help attract high quality leads and positions your brand as a thought leader in the industry.
Company blogs are widely read and the shelf life is long if the content is helpful and relevant
Challenges are visibility in with over 1 billion blogs on the internet. More great info in the video below.
Video source: Patel, N. (2019).
Video
According to recent statistics quote on Forbes, video is the future of content marketing with 87% of all online marketers using video
According to news shared by HubSpot:
Video is projected to claim more than 80% of all web traffic by 2019.
Adding a video to marketing emails can boost click-through rates by 200-300%.
Embedding videos in landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80%.
90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions.
According to YouTube, mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year.
See more stats and info about video in the Digital MarketingTrends Blog
Email Marketing
Based on 2018 data, email marketing is still the most effective marketing channel that delivers the highest ROI with the lowest expenditure, beating social media, SEO and affiliate marketing. 85% of adults use email.
According to Hubspot Research, adding a video to marketing emails can boost click-through rates by 200-300%.
Utilise Hubspot to build email automation and personalisation, building a strong and loyal customer base that is segmented according to their demographics. Hubspot CRM automation can be set up to remind customers about your brand through an email series even while you are in Bali on a surfing holiday.
Video: The Deep End, (2019).
Conclusion
Creating a successful digital marketing strategy in 2019 and beyond should focus on building connections, delivering experiences, earning trust, encouraging participation, and delighting the customer. Effective digital marketers personalise content and deliver it to the right people at the right time, through the right digital channels, thereby enabling the brand to reach its objectives profitably.