From websites to webinars, digital marketing encompasses a wide range of online channels and platforms that can be used to enhance your advertising efforts and fortify your brand — presuming it’s done correctly, that is. So when it comes to increasing the sales and success of your own business, how can you make sure that you’re getting digital marketing right?
In this guide, we’ll cover seven of the best practices and industry-insider tips for crushing your digital marketing strategy — and getting the results you really want.
1. Create quality content
Not everyone enjoys reading, but most people are fond of at least one book, magazine, blog, or other content stream. Why? When it comes to digital marketing, the appeal for readers and audiences boils down to quality of production. The same should be true for your business website or e-commerce hub.
Focus on writing engaging, authentic, and original content that provides relevant and useful information to your target audience, whether you’re aiming to establish your brand through blogs, or you’re simply hoping to craft a compelling “About Us” page on your startup’s site.
2. Use video to drive engagement
Consumer research suggests that adding video to a landing page can increase your number of conversions by three to four times the normal rate. To put it more plainly: most potential customers will be more swayed by marketing assets including video content than by nearly any other digital medium.
If you don’t have easy access to filming and recording equipment, or if you aren’t well-versed in post-production editing softwares like Adobe Premiere, it’s well worth the time and investment to hire a professional video team to create these pieces of content. At the very least, you should have a video on the main homepage of your website. Social media is also a great avenue for reels, live streams, webinars, and other audiovisual assets.
3. Nurture leads with email marketing
In addition to video, email marketing is one of the most effective and affordable ways to do right by your digital marketing strategy. There’s tons of ways to do this, so it’s important to consider what you might hope to achieve through an email marketing campaign.
For instance, if you’re hoping to drive long-term growth and gain a following of loyal clients, you may want to develop a mailing list and content collections for a recurring monthly newsletter. Alternatively, if you own a retail store or an e-commerce site, you may want to build an automated reply email that prompts site visitors not to “abandon cart” and instead complete their online checkout.
4. Know your audience and value proposition
It sounds simple, but it bears repeating: when you know what your customers want, you become better equipped to brand and market your products and services in an effective way. Many companies and commercial enterprises today are focusing on and refining what is called a value proposition, or one or more primary points of customer appeal.
You can get information about what your target market may be interested in by looking at trending social media topics, annual and quarterly industry reports, or by engaging with your audience across digital channels and prompting them with questions such as “What do you want to see?”
When you make your business appear to be about the customer more than the company, you’re likely on your way to a compelling value proposition — and a considerable amount of new leads.
5. Embrace dynamic digital marketing strategies
If anything is universally true about the internet, it’s that the state of affairs is always changing. In the same way that the world wide web is constantly shifting, your digital marketing strategy should be able to roll with the punches too. That being said, you still want to have a pretty solid game plan to see the most results from digital marketing.
Dynamic strategies are more effective than static ones when you’re operating within a digital environment, so don’t get discouraged if something doesn’t work. Just reassess your methods, look at the facts, and keep moving forward.
6. Drive long-term success with an SEO strategy
SEO, short for search engine optimization, is one of the most important elements of any complete digital marketing strategy.
What it is
According to Moz, SEO can be defined as “the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.” Usually, the goal is to get one or more pages from your website onto the first page of the search engine results.
How to implement an SEO strategy
There are different theories regarding the best way to go about developing an SEO strategy, but in general, there are certain tasks you’ll want to knock out and research you’ll need to do. Some of the best ways to get started with finding your pathway to a supreme SEO strategy include, but are not limited to:
- Keyword Research
- Geotargeting (Local SEO)
- Schema Markup (Backend HTML Code That Tells The Search Engine What Your Webpage, Blog, Or Digital Marketing Asset Includes)
- Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
- Tagging And Optimized Meta Text Elements
- Hashtags (Pro Tip: Use 3 to 6 per post/page — be intentional!)
- Inbound & Outbound Linking
- And More!
Want to learn more about SEO and how it fits into your strategy? Contact Brand Iron here.
7. Invest in Google Ads and online advertising
It may feel like you’re “giving up” or succumbing to capitalist pressure by paying for ads to market your business, but there’s no shame in it — there’s actually quite a bit to be gained from a very minimal cost investment.
Getting digital marketing right occasionally means you may have to spend a few dollars here and there on paid promotions and advertising, whether it’s just to get the ball rolling on site traffic, or you’re pushing a particular campaign especially hard to drive home the profits. The good thing is that you get some serious bang for your buck, even if you don’t have a ton of extra capital to throw around.
Getting Digital Marketing Right: Final Thoughts
Digital marketing is a complex area of any business strategy, but with the right information and knowledge of best practices, you can dramatically increase your odds of achieving your objectives and reaching your success benchmarks much sooner than you would otherwise.
Stay up to date with the most timely, interesting, and informative articles about digital marketing by visiting our blog library. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, or you can make it even simpler — get some pro tips directly from the source by contacting Brand Iron today.
CEO | Brand Champion
Michael Doyle has been changing the face of Brand Marketing for over two decades. He built a tech-based advertising agency, DNA Advertising, into a multi-million dollar company. Michael sold the company as part of a national IPO in 2000. Michael founded Brand Iron in 2002 and has since lent his expertise to hundreds of other businesses in dozens of industries around the world.
