In your years of reading and grasping for information, you might have read or heard about “Digital Marketing.” Since the beginning of the digital age, the term has been utilised quite extensively. But what is Digital Marketing? To put it simply, Digital Marketing is an umbrella term for using digital expertise to generate leads and ultimately convert them into sales. It may surprise novices, but social media marketing is only one of the many methods for Digital Marketing. Its main goal is to create an online presence; thus, Digital Marketing involves video and game advertising, search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing, social media optimisation, as well as many others.
Digital Marketing is a universe of its own – it can be overwhelming. Your success lies in your skills and strategies in harnessing digital tools. These 5 ‘not-so-secret tactics for virtuoso Digital Marketers’ have withstood the test of time.
1. Build Your Brand
Oftentimes, the fact that people build relationships by making memories is overlooked. Memories are stories. A brand’s strong foundation could come only from a compelling story. Otherwise, you’re just another money-making company.
Digital Marketing, or any marketing at all, comes down to conveying your message to your customers to elicit emotions. What feeling does your brand try to evoke from your audience? Whether you are a fast-food giant who always says “I’m lovin’ it!”, or an active-wear company who encourages people to “just do it”, your brand must always connect to your audience on a deeper level.
2. Humanise First, Monetise Later
Long-term relationships bank on give-and-takes. In the process of gaining your potential customer’s trust, you must show the value of what you can give them. This is a question of content – ask them to buy without asking them to buy.
To succeed, keep in mind the nature of the Digital Marketing channel you will use. To smoothly ease into your audience’s feed, you must adapt to their state of mind. For example, YouTube users are not in a buyer’s state of mind. They are most likely on YouTube for entertainment or education. You can appeal to this by throwing in interactive ads. Otherwise, you will be wasting the 5 – 15 seconds that the audience cannot wait to skip.
3. Ensure A Return Path
Now that you’ve hooked your audience, your leads – how do you get them to return and stay? With the massive information traffic online, a clear return path is essential for a high lead conversion and customer retention rate.
A strong online presence is a huge part of an ideal return path. It is done through retargeting: promotion emails, push notifications (e.g. for ‘cart abandoners’), personalised social media ads, etc. Offering trials and beginner discounts is also a strong customer magnet. Everyone loves free stuff.
To finalise your presence, make sure you are where you’re supposed to be. This means being in the right media and utilising the right tool. If you’re selling eco-friendly soap bars, don’t use #activelifestyle or place your ads in gaming videos. That would create disconnection and probably yield no return on investment.
4. Test the Waters
Digital Marketing is an ocean with numerous channels to choose from. This means that each channel varies in effectiveness and compatibility with your brand. Testing keeps your strategy from drowning. Thus, start small. Understand which markets, in what media, are huge opportunities for your business and branch out from there.
You can combine mediums and audience demographics with a minimal budget. Then, you can start picking out and scaling the most effective combinations.
5. Watch What You Pay
Tracking and analysis are your Digital Marketing Strategy’s bloodline. Without it, you will not know which tactics work and which ones do not. Before investing time and effort in any strategy, make sure you can see how it goes every step of the way.
Sure, you can automate ads. However, as customers go through every step of the Sales Funnel, you need active management. From testing (see number 4), identify your Key Performance Indicators; from these KPIs, you can extrapolate the data you need to optimise your strategies.
After more than 13 years in the industry, we have seen the growth of digital marketing first-hand. And with the long number of years that we’ve been here, there is only one thing that we can say for certain: if you do not keep up, you will get left behind. If you wish your business to remain competitive in this digitally advanced world we are in, you must adapt to the rapidly changing marketing landscape. To achieve that, you will need a hand.
Are you ready to kick-start your Digital marketing campaign? We can help! Contact the experts at Accentuate Web Design & Marketing today for a free consultation. Alternatively, call us on 0457 444 589 to speak to our team right away!
