Whether you’re starting from scratch or simply revamping your current marketing strategy in favor of a new and improved one, there are some must-haves that you can’t afford to ignore. Here are the cornerstones of any successful digital marketing strategy.
Increase Your Online Presence
Having social media accounts, even if you’re on ten of them, just isn’t enough anymore now that every brand joined the social internet. In order to stand out among all the competing brands in your industry, you’ve got to be proactive and engage as much and as often as possible in order to draw new customers and inspire loyalty among those who already follow you.
Through your website and all of your social media accounts, share content frequently, include a call to action in every blog post or email, encourage conversation and sharing in your website or social account comments, and make sure to ask for feedback.
Don’t be afraid to use more of a personal voice when engaging with customers directly–a bit of authenticity here proves that you’re in it for more than just revenue, and customers who feel validated will be much more likely to remain loyal to your brand.
Develop a Content Strategy
It’s more than just firing off a new blog post every day or week. No one is going to read your content if they can’t find it, so you’ve got to make a detailed plan for crafting your content that’s specifically tailored to your current, future, and desired customers.
This means integrating SEO efforts so that you’re matching your content with the terms your customers are searching for in Google. It also means having an organized editorial calendar, which will save you from duplicate or irrelevant posts).
Finally, you’ll have to plan for social media and engagement efforts of your carefully crafted content. How do you want to advertise it, and how often and when? What are your goals and KPIs and how can you create content that will fulfill those? Will you measure content success by Google Analytics factors like time on page or average monthly traffic?
If it’s something more like amount of new users or captured leads, that’s fine too–just make sure you’re recording the numbers for your goals and success either way. If you can’t afford freelance writers to create your content, start out yourself or even offer to trade blog posts with a friendly competitor in your industry for some free and mutual advertising.
Use Marketing Automation Tools
Time is money, and there’s no one who needs to save time more than an entrepreneur with her/his hands full. From building contact lists and email campaigns to social media marketing tools to analyzing the results of your marketing campaigns, there’s plenty of automated tools to save you hours of each day.
Be sure to visit review sites, such as TrustRadius, to gain a clear perspective of the landscape and create a list of potential tools. Dig deep into the review content to discover the pros and cons of each software solution and compare them with your specific needs and use cases.
Implement SEO
As noted before, if no one can find your brand and content, all your hard work is going to waste. That’s why you need to incorporate the following SEO tactics into your digital marketing strategy:
- Keyword research: Find out what terms are driving traffic to your site using a tool like Google Analytics. You can incorporate these terms into your content strategy or use them for paid ads on Google. Search for related keywords as well so that you can also strive to create content around these. For example, if you see a competitor ranking for these and know you can outperform them with more optimized content.
- Link building: Guest blogging is a perfect way to get links to your site for your targeted keywords, both for the SEO juice and the name exposure as well. Find sites relevant to yours and reach out for an opportunity to write content for them in exchange for that valuable link, and do this as often as you can to increase your reach
Track and Analyze Every Step
A solid strategy is the first step for any digital marketer, but it will never be successful without a regular dose of analytics, both for planning new content and optimizing what’s not working. Here’s an idea of certain metrics you’ll want to measure:
- Pages per session/Bounce rate
- Time on page
- Unique visits
- Where your traffic comes from: organic search or referral links?
By tracking and analyzing your efforts on a regular basis, you’ll have a much clearer idea of who your audience is and how to make the most of your communication with your audience—in other words, two ingredients for success!
