As the pandemic proved to us, the digital world is a burning pot of business opportunities. In 2020 alone, global online consumers spent a staggering $900 billion on e-commerce. Yet, due to its promising market, more and more businesses are going online.
So, with the large pool of competition, how will you get people to notice your brand’s presence? The key lies in employing digital marketing strategies. Keep reading to learn more about digital marketing strategies and how you can use them to improve your digital presence.
Understanding Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing strategies show you how you can achieve your business plan. For example, let’s say you want to increase your digital presence. The plan you’ll follow to achieve this specific goal will be your marketing strategy.
Many confuse digital marketing strategy with digital marketing tactics. For reference, a marketing strategy is a general plan. On the other hand, a marketing tactic is a specific step that you’ll take.
For instance, you’re a new company, and you want to increase your product purchases. Your digital marketing strategy will be to use social media platforms. The tactic is to increase your followers on Twitter so more people will notice your products. Why should you use your resources in building a digital marketing strategy?
A common mistake of small businesses is that they often neglect digital marketing and don’t conduct marketing research. This is because, from their viewpoint, they’re too “small” to fund a digital marketing campaign and put efforts into establishing an effective marketing strategy for the target market. Others say that they’d rather grow their business by investing in physical marketing based on the existing customers. However, maintaining this notion can cost your business in the long run.
Of the 7.7 billion people in the world, 4.95 billion use the internet. This means that you’re missing the chance to market to 62.5% of the population if you opt to forego digital marketing.
The Case of Omsom
A good example of digital marketing is one that the Asian food brand Omsom has. Omsom used Tiktok to strengthen its relationship with its audiences. They did so by sharing behind-the-scene content. In their Tiktok videos, Omsom showed how they source their key ingredients. There’s also a video of them showing how they opted to take the difficult route in food preservation. These videos showed the audience the work the company puts into their product. It also gave details to the company and its employees.
Those touched and fascinated by the videos shared them with their friends and followers, widening the audience range. This led to more viewers coming to know of the existence of the company. Those who liked what they watched hyped the company in their own social media profiles. As a result, more and more people were curious about Omsom and started following them. This is only one of the many benefits that digital marketing offers.
Benefits of Having a Digital Marketing Strategy
Another benefit you get from a digital marketing strategy is optimising your cost. When you have a plan, you know exactly where to put your money into. Thus, you can be sure that you’re not spending resources on unnecessary things.
For instance, you opted to use social media platforms to make your presence known online. This means that your resources will be solely used in aiding the tactics you’re using. If you push through without a marketing strategy, you’ll be spending money on a lot of different things. What’s worse is that you might be spending on a tactic that’s not bringing you results. Speaking of results, did you know that digital marketing strategies allow you to track your performance? You can measure things such as views and clicks, for instance. This enables you to analyse how effective your strategy is. Also, digital marketing strategies help in building your brand image. Through visual reinforcement, you can establish a reputation for your brand.
Posting pictures or videos of charity events your company held, for example, will show your viewers how you give back. This, in turn, will make them feel like investing in your products will be worth it. In addition, they’ll develop an emotional attachment to your brand, thus nurturing loyalty.
Digital Marketing Strategies That You Can Leverage to Improve Your Digital Presence
Looking to grow your audience and improve your presence online? One digital marketing strategy that you can use includes social media campaign. Social media has a large and broad user base. 58.4% of the global population uses social media platforms. In New Zealand alone, 82% of New Zealanders use social media to connect with other people.
YouTube and Facebook are the most used social media platforms by a variety of New Zealanders. Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn follow. TikTok is also an emerging platform worthy of exploring.
What does this mean for you and your business?
For one, it proves that there are plenty of fish in this part of the sea. There are a lot of viewers that may see your post, like your content, and share your brand. Just look at how YouTubers became famous. They created content that appealed to users who happened to see them. It starts with a few users wanting to share the fascinating video with their friends. This may lead them to share the video on their other social media accounts, such as Facebook. This not only leads to more audiences watching the video but also hypes the video creator. Due to how news spreads online, a few followers turned to thousands. You can also improve your brand’s online presence in the same way.
Aside from social media campaigns, you can also use email marketing and more! Read on to learn more about these digital marketing strategies!
Content Marketing Strategy Is a Must
Content marketing focuses on creating and publishing valuable and relevant content to attract your target audience. For example, let’s say that your company sells sports shoes. Your target audience is athletic individuals. In this scenario, your company can create a blog post about the top 3 sports shoes for the year 2022. You can also publish an article to help viewers find the best sports shoes for them.
When your audience realises that they need shoes, they’ll likely search for what’s trending. Others might search for what features to look for when choosing sports shoes. Whatever the case, they’ll likely search the web before deciding. You want to be helpful to them during this phase. This is so that they’ll remember you as a reliable source of information. In addition, this will encourage the audience to go back to your profile and learn more about your brand.
Guest Posting
Another way that you can leverage content marketing is to use guest posts. Guest posting is when you create an article for a known website. While the article may be about a specific topic, the rule is to low-key promote your brand. For example, you’ll create a blog post about the must-have sports shoes this 2022. This article will be on the blog of a famous website. Within that article, you can link your website to the most used keyword.
You can also opt to put your brand’s name as one of the must-have sports shoes. However, be gentle in promoting the specs of your product. The main goal is not to get people to buy your product but to get your brand’s name into their heads.
Video Marketing
Did you know that “how-to” videos are among the top 4 contents that users watch on YouTube? In addition, 67% of users also watch YouTube videos to help them decide what to buy! This proves that more and more people are relying on video content. Thus, if you want people to know more about your brand, produce a steady stream of video content. For example, you can make a “how-to” video related to your product, or you can also make a review video. There’s also no harm in posting short but comedic advertisement videos about your brand.
Search Engine Optimisation Will Help You Lots
One digital marketing strategy that goes hand-in-hand with content marketing is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. For example, when a potential customer conducts research online, they almost always click on the first 3-5 results.
As such, you’d want to get the content you made on the first page of Google results. It’ll be better if your content is among the top 3 results. The question is, how will you do this? One way of doing this is to use appropriate keywords. You can also optimise your website to fasten its loading time.
Paid Advertising Is King!
This digital marketing strategy requires you to rent an ad space. In this space, you’ll be placing content such as videos or pictures promoting your brand. Although they cost more, paid ads are an efficient and effective way of exposing your company’s name. Take your experience online as proof. When you browse through your social media account or surf the net, aren’t you bombarded with ads? You become unconsciously familiar with brands you have seen a few times online.
Pay-Per-Click
Pay-per-click is a form of paid advertisement mainly used to drive traffic to your website. However, you can also leverage this to expose your brand to website viewers. Say you paid a popular website $100 following the pay-per-click model. Only those who found the advertisement interesting or useful click on the ads. Others look at the ads and continue what they were doing. Yet even if they didn’t click on your ad, they saw your brand’s name. Say they see your brand 2-3 times a day, and the name will register in their mind. As a result, they’ll know that your brand exists, and should the need arise, they’ll likely look you up.
Email Marketing Still Works!
You might think that email marketing is an outdated marketing strategy. Despite the rise of Facebook Messenger and Snapchat, people still spend 5 hours on Email. This viewing time creates a big opportunity for you to reach out to potential customers. After all, what better way to let people know your brand exists than telling them yourself? So customise newsletters, promotions, and invitations and send them to prospective customers.
Influencer Marketing Strategy
The trend today is to use influencers in your marketing campaign. One reason is that it costs a lot to hire celebrities. Another is because you can likely influence more people with the help of a non-celebrity blogger. This is because people feel closer to non-celebrity bloggers or influencers. Also, from their point of view, celebrities are only advertising the brand because it’s their job. Therefore, if you’re a start-up business looking to spread the word on your brand, work with an influencer. A common way of doing this is to send your product to the influencer and allow them to post a review.
How to Build A Digital Marketing Strategy
Rejoice! You’ve just learned some effective digital marketing strategies that you can use to improve your digital presence. So let’s dig deeper and move on to how to build a digital marketing strategy for your business.
The first step is to know who you want to pitch your business to. There’s no use letting people that won’t need your products or services know that you exist. The key is to pitch your brand to potential customers. As such, research the characteristics of who you want to reach. Get to know what their likes and dislikes are. This will allow you to create effective and more specific marketing content.
After knowing your audience, set a specific goal or aim. This will help clarify what steps you need to take. Then finally, decide on which digital marketing tactic you’ll use and apply. For instance, your goal is to improve your digital presence among teenagers. Your target population is social media users. Thus your strategy should be more centred on social media.
Succeed in Digital Marketing Today!
There are 3 phases that buyers go through; awareness, consideration, and the decision phase. At first, buyers need to realise they have a need, to prompt them to determine ways to meet these needs. Then, finally, the buyer decides to buy products and services that help meet their needs.
Your goal is to get people to remember your brand after the first phase. However, how will you get people to remember your brand if they don’t even know it exists? This is where digital marketing strategies come in. Digital marketing strategies play a vital role not only in sales but also in brand awareness, so it’s always a worthwhile investment to consult marketing experts for help. Reach out to us and experience firsthand the benefits of an effective digital marketing strategy!
