A Winning Digital Marketing Strategy

In an increasingly digital world, online marketing is the direction that businesses need to head towards for the best exposure and results. But there's a lot more to taking your marketing on the Internet than just creating a website and setting up social media accounts. Marketers must also be clued into the intricacies of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and other digital advertising techniques to meet their organisations’ goals. Digital marketing agency PurpleClick Media provide some insights into how to build a game plan that works for your business.

Discovering Your Digital Personality

Every business develops a digital personality, either as a digital introvert or a digital extrovert, so as to reflect their brand image and to connect with their target audience. Digital introverts captivate their audience with insight and thoughtfulness, while digital extroverts are bold, assertive and they dazzle customers with fun and excitement. However, the key here is to strike a balance between these two, because customers' personalities vary too.

Running deals or promotions through social media is an ideal way of winning over introverted customers, without exhausting them with unnecessary interaction. In a survey conducted by Content Marketing Institute, 66% of B2C marketers rate Facebook as their most effective social platform; followed by Twitter (50%) and Instagram (42%). However, studies also show that brand engagement on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook and 84 times higher than Twitter. This could mean that your business might want to consider utilising Instagram to reach out to more customers.

On the other hand, extroverted customers relish content so it is important to create meaningful ones that they will engage with. Be it blog posts, white papers, ebooks or infographics. these are different tactics businesses should incorporate into their overall marketing strategy.

Building Your Strategy

There are several techniques businesses can apply to their online marketing blueprint. This include, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Video Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Community building and more. Bear in mind that more often or not, applying a technique without proper planning and execution will not produce desirable results.

For example, SEO is effective in increasing brand awareness when done correctly. When customers search for you, your content and or website will be shown on search engines’ organic search results. However, it is not an instant fix and companies should generally budget for 6 to 12 months of SEO implementation, before seeing tangible results. Even if it does take some time, SEO is highly recommended as it's it is an online marketing technique that can help your business realise one of the best ROIs.

Also, by incorporating different techniques, it allows businesses to achieve multiple objectives. A simple campaign promoting a product or service would produce better results when you combine 2 or more techniques. For example, social media marketing to promote your product or service using rich visuals; a pay-per-click campaign to target search terms; and video marketing to captivate your audience. In short, build a digital marketing strategy that aids in achieving your business goals.

Cultivating Customer Excellence

Customers today go for brands that they can relate to so it is important to build a relationship with them. This should happen throughout their purchase journey, which is made up of five stages, and it tells us what goes through their minds before, during and after making a purchase.

This first step is a combination of offline and online marketing. A good approach would be engaging in guerilla marketing, then sharing it on social media to create buzz. The next step is getting yourself into your customers' consideration sphere, and this is where SEO and SEM can come in.

Once your potential customers take notice of your brand, you can convince them further through content marketing - show them what you can do and why you are better than the rest. Hopefully, all these persuades them in making a purchase. So, ensure that the customers’ path to purchase is kept simple. Eg. User-friendly web interface, clear call-to-action buttons or well-trained staff in physical stores.

The last step is to incite loyalty by analyzing the data collected about your customers purchase habits and preferences. These information are very valuable and aids in crafting better and more personalised services and even marketing campaigns, in future. As your business move into the momentum of utilising online marketing tools to better reach out to your customers, do not forget to periodically adjust your strategy to accommodate to the ever-changing digital landscape. Digital marketing is largely about putting your customers first, therefore, build a strong and consistent brand to stay competitive.