When you’re looking for a new service or information about a product, where do you typically turn? Most people would say the internet. That’s why digital marketing is so important – it uses digital media and technologies on the web to inform people about products and services that businesses offer. But for the average business owner, figuring out how to promote your business using digital marketing can be confusing. There are a ton of methods you can use from website design to online advertising to email to various social media platforms. So, how do you figure out what is the best strategy when it comes to using digital marketing to promote your business? Let’s explore.
How to Think About Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Figuring out your digital marketing strategy starts with thinking about the buyer’s journey. First of all, who are your buyers? You will want to create buyer personas, which includes the qualities you expect to see in your customers, including age, gender, location, what drives them, what their challenges are, their interests and their shopping preferences.
Once you define your buyers, you’ll want to think about how they engage with digital channels. Are they more likely to be on Instagram or LinkedIn? Are they the kind of people who prefer to watch videos or are they going to download e-books? If your business is targeting professionally focused consumers, it makes more sense to incorporate LinkedIn into your digital marketing strategy but if you’re targeting teenagers, Instagram might make more sense. Figuring out your buyer’s persona and journey can help you figure out which strategies you want to engage and what tools you plan to use. It’s important to focus on the tools that are most relevant to your business—trying to use as many available digital marketing tools and strategies as possible will spread you out too thin.
Know What Skills You Need
While your digital marketing strategy will vary based off of the product or service you offer, there are seven core skills you should be comfortable with: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), mobile marketing, email marketing, social media, content management and analytics. SEO is an especially important component of your digital marketing strategy because it drives traffic to your website through organic search engine results. SEO should be weaved into your overall strategy.
Begin with the Website
Digital marketing begins with a good website. The website provides basic information about the good or service you provide and can start as a jumping off point for gathering information about people interested in your product or service. A good website represents your business and your brand, is kept up-to-date with the latest information, is easy to read and easy to navigate, and has different kinds of content and channels for you to communicate with potential customers – whether that’s blogs, videos, e-books, newsletter subscriptions, or even games. It should also be optimized for SEO. In order to optimize your website for high search engine rankings, you should use a SEO tool like KW Finder.
The Different Ways to Use Digital Marketing
Okay, so you know your buyer’s persona, you’ve got the necessary skills and you’ve set up your website. Now, how do you use digital marketing to successfully promote your business? There are a lot of different approaches you can take, including using content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, digital advertising, and mobile marketing. But what do these different kinds of digital marketing look like?
Content marketing is about creating content that potential customers find useful. When you create content for content marketing, you’re not trying to get potential customers or clients to make a purchase as quickly as possible, you’re thinking long term. Content allows you to establish your business as an expert in a field – maybe you’re a tech company and you want to be seen as an expert in cyber security or maybe you run a pet store and you want to be seen as an expert in dog care. There are lots of different ways to build content that people find useful including creating a blog, producing videos, writing case studies or white papers that people download. Content is a great way to collect information about potential customers because you can ask them to share information like their email address before downloading content, letting you gain a greater understanding of what they’re interested in and how you can speak to their needs. Good content keeps you top of people’s mind and it builds trust in your business because you become a familiar name.
Social media marketing is exactly what it sounds like—marketing through social media platforms. You might be using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram to promote your business and to build a community around it. There are a lot of different ways you can do this, whether by providing insight on current events, running contests on this platform or even partnering with an influencer to promote your product or service.
Email marketing is also what it sounds like – cultivating customers through emails. You can do this by setting up a newsletter people can subscribe to or sending email reminders if they’ve left something in the cart. However, email marketing can be tricky. Make sure to send emails that are compelling to customers and avoid the temptation to send too many—people don’t like to feel like they’re being spammed!
Digital advertising is a cheap and effective way to advertise your business online and drive traffic to it. Think Google ads, Twitter ads, Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads. Be sure to include strong calls to actions in your ads.
Mobile Marketing is another way to quickly and affordably reach potential customers through mobile apps. Depending on your needs that could mean creating your own app for your business or it could mean using WhatsApp, Snapchat, or other instant messaging options to reach out to customers.
Figure Out What Works for You
When it’s all said and done there are a lot of different options for how you can use digital marketing to promote your business. As you consider the different methods, build a strategy that reaches the buyers you imagined when you built your buyer’s persona. Certain methods like mobile marketing might work better with a younger crowd but the older generation might respond more positively to email marketing. Professionals might be on LinkedIn but you’re more likely to find the average coffee enthusiast on Instagram. Go where your potential customers are and build content that meets their interests and needs. As you build your digital marketing strategy, keep an eye on analytics and be responsive to what works and doesn’t work. By being alert, flexible, and thoughtful in your approach to digital marketing, you can drive a lot of people to your business.