Digital Marketing Strategies that Get Results

Think back to your childhood and remember that one kid. The one who always had the newest toys. The one who seemed to attract the most friends, tempted by the novelty of all those exciting new things.

Welcome to the 21st century, where the 'newest toy' is digital marketing and the 'friends' are potential leads and customers.

Digital marketing promotes brands or products via electronic media, with one crucial twist: instead of interrupting people with targeted advertising the customer finds YOU.  

Repeated exposure to branded content develops familiarity, trust, rapport and most importantly, results. 12 million Australians owned a smartphone as of May 2014, and with digital marketing you can advertise to these people anytime, anywhere and in any way.

Note: These big ideas have been condensed into simple strategies with the beginner in mind.

1) Email

Poorly orchestrated email marketing not only wastes time and resources, it also creates negative rapport with your customers. Effective email communication is crucial for driving customer acquisitions and increasing brand or product awareness.

Email marketing aims to convert leads. You not only need to get your reader to open the email, you also need them to click on your offer or link. Sites like MailChimp allow you to create campaigns with templates and measure the results using metrics such as 'click through rate'.

Creating the perfect email isn't easy. Use these techniques for better results:

Tips:

1. Brainstorm engaging headings or your email will go straight to the trash.
2. Personalise each email with the names of the recipient and the sender.
3. Write engaging copy that is attention-grabbing and skimmable.
4. Include social media sharing links.
5. Create a compelling 'call-to-action' that encourages a response.

2) Website SEO

How user-friendly and effective is your website? Your homepage is often the first contact that customers have with your business, and first impressions count.

'Search Engine Optimisation' (SEO) enhances your ranking on major search engines; determined by 'bots' that crawl websites to find the most relevant suggestions to a user's search.  

The challenge is to create a website that search engines and users alike will both find useful and relevant.

Tips:

1. Perform keyword research with Google Analytics Keyword Planner, to determine which words to include in your content.
2. Ensure your content is relevant to user searches and includes keywords that bots can identify, but avoid 'keyword stuffing'.
3. Evaluate the user experience of your website. Is it easy to navigate? Does it look 'clean'? Is important information easy to find?
4. Get authentic 'backlinks' to your site. These are sources referencing your site as an authority and can be hard to get, but worth the effort.
5. Constantly re-evaluate. Continuous testing and maintenance will ensure your website doesn't become irrelevant.  

3) Social Media

The aim of social media is to attract website traffic and increase brand awareness. Businesses create content that generates attention and encourages readers to share their content across networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The advantages are immense: they allow broad reach, target specific groups and are generally free (or cheap) to set up and run. All of this ensures fast and easy communication with your target audience.

Social media can achieve optimum results by using these tips:

Tips:

1. Choose the right platform. A B2B business is better off establishing a presence on LinkedIn over Instagram, for example.
2. Set goals for your social media platforms and post with those in mind.
3. Post a mix of curated and original content and avoid the 'hard-sell'.
4. Use images effectively. People prefer to engage with pictures or infographics over large slabs of text.
5. Familiarise yourself with the 'Terms of Use', best practices and legal requirements of each platform you choose.

Used effectively, digital marketing is a powerful tool. It enables easy access to a global audience of potential customers with ample opportunities for interaction and feedback, and with easier to measure outcomes than traditional marketing.  

You don't want to become that 'kid with no friends'. Businesses that keep up-to-date with trends in digital marketing are increasingly rewarded with popularity, followers and positive attention: the outcomes for your business are more customers and higher revenue