The number of people online is soaring every day, so if you’re still relying on offline marketing strategies to promote your business, it’s time to make the switch to digital!
Ways that Digital Marketing Can Elevate Your Business Success
The internet has transformed nearly every aspect of our lives but perhaps one of its most significant influences has been over the way businesses and organizations thrive — all the more so now due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Offline marketing tactics are no longer sufficient for reaching consumers, supporters and audiences as the number of new internet users soars by nearly one million every day. An estimated 4.5 billion people now use the web around the world.
In this increasingly digital era, it is critical that the marketing strategies implemented by your business, organization or creative enterprise are cutting-edge and up-to-date. This is necessary not only so you can outpace your competitors, but it’s also essential if you wish to be seen at all. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to get your name, brand, product or service out to the masses with the availability of so many digital marketing platforms.
In this article, we’ll briefly review what digital marketing is and why it matters before delving into its numerous benefits and applications for your organization or business.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing refers to all marketing activities, efforts and campaigns carried out on an online platform. Most often, these Internet-based platforms are accessed by way of an electronic device such as a smartphone or a computer, but increasingly, we are seeing more and more web-equipped gadgets hitting the market, from FitBits to Amazon Echos.
Digital marketing exists in a number of realms, encompassing everything from email marketing to social media, online advertising and digital media placement on websites, search engine optimization and website development; virtually anything else you can fit within the parameters of a URL address.
Why Should I Care About Digital Marketing?
With the widespread adoption of an ever increasing number of digital devices, it is evident all marketers need to jump on the digital bandwagon to reach an engaged audience looking for their products or services.
If you hope to reach your target audience and reach them with considerable impact, there is no better option than an integrated digital marketing campaign. Holistic digital marketing funnels steer traffic to your website, allowing you to educate and provide solutions to potential new customers, donors and supporters. We’ll address in more detail how these tools and tactics can be used to your advantage, whether you’re responsible for marketing for a sales-driven company or a grassroots nonprofit organization.
What Can Digital Marketing Do To Enhance My Business or Organization?
The fascination with digital marketing lies to a certain extent in its profound diversity and adaptability. Regardless of industry or area of expertise, there’s a digital marketing angle for everyone. In general, however, the most common and effective tricks of the trade are content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), social media, email marketing and digital advertising. Each strategy can work on its own, but organizations and companies see the best results when using all of them in tandem.
Content marketing is one strategy that may be employed to increase brand awareness and drive conversions. This generally consists of creating organic, original content (copy, visual content and design) in order to generate leads and catalyze interest among audiences. Content marketing specialists perform SEO research so that they can tailor their content to reflect what real-world people are currently searching for online. The more your developed content correlates with the search terms and queries of your audience, the higher your site will rank on the results page, resulting in more traffic to your website. Think about your SEO strategy as helping Google and other search engine algorithms identify what content your brand is an authority on. Those algorithms are trying to help search engine users find what they are looking for. SEO is the process and strategy behind telling the search engine who you are and who you can help.
Social media marketing also falls under the umbrella of digital marketing strategies, and as the name suggests, it relies largely on the use of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. In tandem with a content marketer or independently, a social media marketing specialist will create and post content on social media sites that generate interest in your business or organization and create conversions that bring you closer to your goals. Treat your social media platforms as a way to humanize your brand and grow and interact with your followers. This is not a lead generation channel; it is a branding channel. The goal of social media is to learn more about your target market while adding value to your brand and your audience.
You should also consider implementing an email marketing campaign. With an established site, an SEO-rich blog and an archive of top-quality social media content, you’ll be more than prepared to build up a mailing list of clients and leads, whether they’re preliminary prospects or long-time loyalists. Email marketing campaigns are an especially good way to keep audiences engaged even after an initial sign-up or purchase. By sending out timely newsletters, organizational updates or even entertaining digests, you’ll see a strong return on investment with an extremely valuable digital strategy that most people mistakenly associate with spam.
Only after you have solidified your branding and marketing strategy via content, social media and your website (making sure your messaging is consistent across all platforms) should you consider running paid digital advertising. It is possible to see success with paid ads early on, but if you consider your digital marketing presence a bucket, inconsistent branding and incomplete content or platform creation leaves holes in that bucket. You may be able to get the bucket to hold water, but the holes will increase your cost per customer acquisition. Good marketing and branding allows you to test paid ad channels with a smaller risk and greater likelihood of success. Common platforms that we work with include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google and Bing. Please contact us if you have any questions!
Final Thoughts: Use Digital Marketing To Drive Results
There is no perfect science to the craft of digital marketing, especially since every strategy should be tailored to each individual business or organization and its specific audience. However, search engine optimized content, social media, email marketing and digital advertising have consistently proven themselves effective, especially when combined. If you are failing to see the results you seek, the odds are that a little bit of digital marketing magic, especially as the economy reopens, will take your business or organization in a much more positive direction.
At Awaken PR, we specialize in online and digital marketing including high-quality content creation, search engine optimization, social media management, web development and design and digital advertising. We collaborate with results-driven and socially-conscious businesses, organizations, nonprofits, creatives and entrepreneurs in order to awaken the world to their unique visions, and we achieve this consistently through the implementation of digital marketing strategies.