Last month, a poll conducted by Adzooma found that 40% of small to medium sized UK businesses don’t know the best way to market themselves. Whether it’s a lack of time, manpower, or just knowledge, confidence, and ability, for many the resources just aren’t there to know how to successfully utilise digital marketing. But that’s okay – Minto are here! Among our many unique and personal talents and party tricks, understanding and finding the right digital marketing strategy for your business is up there. So let’s get to work – here are the things you have to consider when looking for the right strategy.
We’ve said this 100 times before and we’ll say it 100 times more, but the need for digital marketing – and a digital marketing strategy – has only become more necessary in the past year due to COVID-19. Wherein the past companies have had time to plan and prepare their marketing strategies, that too is now changing. A recent survey from DMEXCO found that 70% of worldwide executives believe that the pandemic is going to accelerate the pace of digital transformation, meaning businesses may just have to outline, plan, AND implement their digital strategy in a short space of time or else they risk falling behind. Whilst that sounds incredibly stressful, with the right backing and planning, you will be able to adapt and control rapidly changing environments or circumstances.
Before you can think about the strategy, there are a couple of things to consider first and foremost. Budget, and buyer personas. It’s very likely that you already know your budget, you’ll know how much you have ready to spend and what you feel comfortable spending. It is entirely up to you, just expect results and expectations to vary accordingly. As well as budget, you should know who your target market is. This is what you can base the buyer persona on. Building a buyer persona can help to better market your business when you know the specifics of who you’re marketing to. Taking into consideration what the fictional characters representing the buyer do for a living, what their age is, what they like and crucially for a digital strategy – which social platforms they use the most. It is within these parameters in which you can build your digital strategy on - with the help of knowing your goals.
Chances are, you know what you’re trying to achieve which is great – that means you can iron out your strategy and base it around the goals you have set. From that, everything else should slide into place. Let’s say you are looking to raise brand awareness. You are struggling to get the name out there because the consumer keeps going to the competition even though you know you are better; it's just unfortunate that the customer doesn’t know you’re better… yet. As consumers, we tend to stick to what we know, and we don’t always take risks (especially when you aren’t even aware a brand exists) because we go with what we trust. A place to start to help build up a trust could be digital display marketing. This allows you to get in front of a targeted demographic and display your brand to as many people as possible through graphic advertising on social media channels and websites with flashy imagery and video content. Whilst the ROI may be difficult to measure, it can deliver an impactful first impression in style, building a foundation to turn brand awareness into a larger customer base. Similarly, social media marketing can be a brilliant way to raise brand awareness. Social media marketing is all about building brand awareness and increasing conversions through campaigns and targeting demographics across channels and platforms. This is where your buyer persona’s come in handy. If you know what platforms your consumers are likely to be active on, then you know how and where to best reach them. Social media marketing is about putting your best foot forward and sharing the best content you have to offer and interacting with consumers and users on their own turf, building up your business’s reputation - as well as awareness - in the process. We’re big fans of social media marketing and we’ve done plenty of shouting about it already.
Now let’s say your goals are all about increasing traffic, or increasing sales for that matter, what then? Within digital marketing, traffic has often been seen as a key performance indicator, with high levels of traffic usually resulting in more leads or direct sales. After all, you can’t sell anything if there is nobody around to sell to. It is because of this that many business owners see traffic as a priority. Rather than aiming and hoping for hit viral content through social media, PPC and SEO may be your best bet when it comes to increasing traffic. With pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, your budget is taken into consideration - the clue is in the name after all. This is a paid form of online advertising that relies on an auction-based system where you bid on selected keywords that you want your business ads to show up under. These ads will then appear at the top of the search results, above the organic results so when these ads are clicked on, only then will you be charged - resulting in the name, pay-per-click. Although it is dependent on budget, it is a cost-effective method due to the nature of only paying for results. Just remember that if you’re looking up your own business, don’t click on the ad… The alternative to PPC is search engine optimisation (SEO). This is all about improving your websites ranking in search results through the use of keywords and phrases relating to your business. SEO aims to direct traffic to your website from within your target audience – those who are looking for products or services that are similar to what you have to offer. SEO is often a long-term investment, where you may have to do some waiting – as well as plenty of testing and readjusting – to get the keywords and phrases right to deliver a return.
Increasing traffic is great, but at the end of the day, it’s sales that pay the bills. Whilst everything we have covered so far can lead to an increase in sales through brand awareness and more web traffic, if you throw in email marketing on top then you’re onto a winner. The potential ROI in email marketing is massive – we have seen the results ourselves in our work with our clients - and it’s cost-effective. Email marketing is all about retaining existing customers that you have the details of, as well as targeting new customers who have signed up for your mailing list. Like many of the strategies we have covered, email marketing is great too for brand awareness by keeping your business in the minds of consumers through targeted emails. When you use email marketing, you’re going to run campaigns that include useful information, exciting news, product offers and advertising to keep the consumer involved with your brand. The idea is that whilst they might not always make a purchase, they will think of you when or if the time comes to make one. The fact that you have their details means you can reach them, and the great thing is if it doesn’t lead to a direct sale the first time you can always retarget those who are interested to get them over the finish line in purchasing. Increasing brand awareness and the ability to directly contact consumers is a winning formula that will encourage them to finally choose your brand and not the competition.
Now, this has just been a crash course in finding the right digital marketing strategy for you. But, if you want to find out more on how we can help your business with its digital marketing strategy, then get in touch today.
