Do you know how to create a killer digital marketing strategy for any type of business? Learn the secrets of a more effective strategy you can make and drive more revenue.
Eight out of ten businesses fail within the first 18 months, a discouraging fact but true nonetheless.
Though many reasons like lack of financial boost, improper business plans, wrong locations play a huge role, lack of or uncreative digital marketing strategy can also be a business downfall.
As the adage goes, ‘you can’t build a strong building without a strong foundation’, the business can’t prosper in this internet-age without digital marketing.
Regardless of how good, beneficial, or creative your product/service is, it does no good to you if people don’t know about it in the first place.
So, how can digital marketing help push your product into the market, we hear you think out loud. Read on and find out!
Digital Marketing Strategy:
The first and foremost thing that every business, irrespective of the size or sector, needs to understand is that digital marketing is neither a myth nor a mystery.
It’s very simple to understand and execute. Before delving into the ‘how’ of digital marketing, let’s understand the basics.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is one of many components of marketing (like analog, traditional, etc.) and a way to promote your product but in an electronic form. Simply put, digital marketing helps businesses search and find the right audience and convert them to loyal, paying customers.
And depending on the usage, digital marketing is of many types: Email marketing, social media marketing, paid marketing, content marketing, inbound marketing, and the list goes on.
The best thing about digital marketing is that it is cost-effective and always to the point without wasting additional time or resources. Also, regardless of the size of the business, they can represent themselves internationally and get responses too.
Airbnb, the best example to prove that digital marketing strategies work like a charm when applied the right way. Their killer marketing strategy i.e., social media marketing is connecting the vendors and travelers. The images, videos that are uploaded on their social media platforms every day attract millions of people across the world.
With its numerous advantages, it comes with no surprise that by 2021, the marketing leaders will spend 75% of their marketing budget on digital marketing.
Coming to the digital marketing strategy, it is a set of plans that are later turned into actions to help businesses achieve their set targets or goals. The right digital marketing strategy helps your race ahead of your contemporaries while making your presence known in the market as well as your customers.
Digital Marketing Strategy is an ever-evolving process that digital experts wield to your business strengths and showcase the key aspects that make your business special. So it takes proper planning to get tangible and fruitful results.
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Below are some of the tips to help businesses leverage digital marketing strategies:
Creating a Killer Digital Marketing Strategy:
– Understand Your Targets Short, & Long-term Goals:
While we know that you know your business and various aspects of it like the back of your hand, so your enthusiasm to jump-start your strategy might prove hazardous for your business.
Instead, we say take time to know all about your business like what makes you tick amongst the crowd, what is the key aspect that makes you special in the market, etc. Then create a short-term and long-term goal where you can set your business future on the right track.
Now coming to the goals, decide what you want to achieve in the short term and long term, then create strategies. For short term goals, look for the current trends, the present requirements of your customers, etc.
As for the long term goals, know the big picture, think big and broad. For instance, you are looking to have a customized app and generate more leads, your marketing strategy for the long-term should be elaborated around these goals.
– Know Your Niche Market And Marketing Resources:
The next obvious step, knowing the market. The ever-changing, dynamic market, and how well you leverage the market to your advantage defines your business. Along with having a sound knowledge about the market, know what are your strong marketing tools i.e., whether you write good blog posts or social media posts, infographics, paid marketing, or even video marketing.
Now you form a marketing strategy by combining all your strong tools and promote/market your strengths in the market (See! Having good knowledge about the trending market helps.) to get more customers, leads, followers, conversions, etc.
– Search For Your Spirited Souls, A.K.A- Target Audience
‘Customer is King’- we agree, so do all and any kinds of businesses. Gaining new customers while retaining the existing ones, is and will be the ultimate goal of any business. So, you must know the type of customers who are purchasing the kind of products you are selling.
Reaching the right customers depends on many factors like gender, age, social status, occupation, hobbies, etc. You need to categorize and choose your target audience accordingly.
To under this categorization better, consider a simple instance, you have a female couture clothing line. And when you market your business, your target audience should/will be female (of course!) and the age limit should be somewhere across 20-40 years. Here the financial status of an individual customer also varies but not necessarily. Choose your niche customers instead of spending your resources all over the place, this saves both time and money.
Post to Gaining Customers:
Now, this is a different ball game in which you focus on how to make a lead your life-long, loyal customer while also making your existing customers happy. When a customer clicks on your ad or lead and submits their email, you need to connect with them on a personal level and make them feel like a family.
Sending them timely emails, messages, personal discounts, birthday month discounts, etc all make a difference for your brand and increase the sense of loyalty among your customers.
According to Microsoft, 96% of consumers around the world say that customer service is an important factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. Remember, happy customers are the biggest marketers who promote your brand for free and word of mouth marketing is the best marketing strategy.
– Sell Your Customers a Story, Not a Generic Product/Service:
Who doesn’t love a good, heart-touching story? We certainly do, so will your customers.
Telling your story can make your business more natural and reachable to your customers, making them connect to you on an emotional level. This makes them more loyal to you and is more likely to make a purchase from you rather than your contemporaries.
In fact, according to a study conducted by Deloitte, over 76% said that they have used the same brands for more than 4 years as they trust it. Honesty, trustworthiness, loyalty, emotional connection all play a huge role in marketing your brand.
You mustn’t tell them some elaborate story just for the sake of telling one, your story needs to be authentic and real.
– Keep An Eye On The Competition:
‘Keep your friends close, enemies closer.’ This line works perfectly when it comes to knowing your competitors. Study their marketing strategies and know what point of theirs is attracting the audiences.
From looking at their websites, apps, to searching for the keywords and promotional content they use, to how they interact with their customers, the success of a killer marketing strategy lies in this. Study your competition, plan a strategy, execute it better than your competitors.
– Stay In Tune With The Millenials:
With Social Media:
According to IBM, 55% of buyers research on social media before purchasing a product/service. No matter the age of a person, everyone is present on social media be it Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and even Youtube (video marketing is all the rage now!!).
The biggest advantage of marketing via social media is you can approach millions of users all across the world and make your product/service known. Influencer marketing is also a trending aspect in social media and the easiest way to connect with the younger generation, who more often than not tend to listen to their advice. On the whole, the social media marketing industry is cost-effective and efficient too.
Tesla, an innovative electric car company has over 6.1 M followers on Twitter which is higher than BMW, Audi companies combined. Though a new and younger company in the market, this car manufacturer has their priorities right, and that is staying connected with their customer-base (existing and potential) by posting about something new, innovative, exciting a few times a month.
Through Emails:
Sending your customer base a customized email can go a long way when it comes to building brand awareness as well as marketing your product/service. To capture their interest, you need to send them timely emails with discount coupons, new season arrivals, etc, but they need to be short and crisp with creative and compelling subjects/headlines.
Automated emails are fastly becoming the best way to stay connected with the customers as well as building new ones too.
– The Eureka Moment – See It Prosper:
Finally, the last step.
Build the perfect strategy with the right marketing tools, keywords, and don’t forget to analyze your past marketing strategies to know what worked and what did not. Marketing strategies are ever-changing, so you need to implement the right techniques at the right time to get maximum results.
Before you finally see your digital marketing strategy work its wonders, consider all your options like marketing budgets, are your creatives set in place, is this the right time (be on a lookout for the right opportunities), know your best selling product, and rightly leverage your strength.
Here’s a recap for creating a killer marketing strategy:
– Understand Your Targets, Short, & Long-term Goals
– Know Your Niche Market And Marketing Resources
– Search For Your Spirited Souls, A.K.A- Target Audience
– Sell Your Customers a Story, Not a Generic Product/Service
– Keep An Eye On The Competition
– Stay In Tune With The Millenials
That is all, see your strategies come to fruition in the form of more conversions, brand awareness, loyalty, and of course, sales.
Best Digital Marketing Strategies:
Technology is ever-changing and it changes the latest trends. Below are some of the best digital marketing practices that are trending in the market:
– Personalization: Make your customers’ feel special. Send them special nothings in their birthday/anniversary month. This increases brand loyalty and they will prefer you more.
– Chatbots: Chatbots provide round the clock assistance and provide quick answers/solutions to the queries/complaints of your customers. This can increase your conversion rate and thereby sales.
– Video Marketing: Video marketing is all the rage now. It is the best way to engage your customers (existing, new, and potential). Making a creative, fun, or impactful video is one of the leading marketing strategies.
There is so much more to digital marketing that wielding it the right way can make your business go places. And the first step to executing a killer digital marketing strategy is understanding it.
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