The usage of the internet has increased lately meaning most people now spend more time online and on-the-go than offline. Doing business online has also increased with the prevalence of internet use. Marketing offline is not as effective as it used to be; the reason why businesses must invest in Digital Marketing.
Digital marketing helps you reach a larger audience and also target prospects who are most likely to make a purchase than traditional marketing methods will.
Now, here’s why investing in Digital marketing is imperative;
You can better target a larger audience/only prospective customers of your product/services.
Advertisement using traditional marketing tools (TV, radio, billboard, etc.) has a limitation on those who will see the ads and also not easy targeting the specific audiences for your services. However, with Digital marketing, you can identify and target a highly-specific audience and even send them personalized high –converting marketing messages and also retarget them for other services. Digital Marketing also helps you target subgroups in your larger target market.
It’s better in terms of cost than traditional marketing methods.
Digital Marketing enables you track campaigns on timely basis and adjust budget if it’s not giving the required Return on Marketing Investment (RMI). Same can’t be said about traditional forms of marketing; example, a billboard will cost same amount whether you are obtaining your RMI or not. Also, you have complete control over where to spend your marketing budget at every point in time.
Its cost effective editing the content of a digital marketing campaign but editing a traditional marketing content can be expensive.
Digital marketing can give you a comprehensive end to end view of all the metrics that matter to your company – including impressions, shares, views, clicks and time spent on page. Unlike most offline tools, digital marketing allows you to measure results on a real time basis.
Digital marketing is an effective way of marketing and also cost effective compared to the traditional way of marketing. Digital Marketing when done well, can give a higher RMI compared to the budget invested in. This makes it worthwhile spending on Digital.
Also, there are various Digital tools which can be used at little/no cost and will give much returns if done well.(e.g. Social media marketing, e-mail marketing, etc.).
In addition, based on the analytics of your digital marketing activities, adjustments could be made even on daily basis. This helps in regulating where to spend and where not to spend digitally based on your audience targeting. This helps in savings and channeling your spend to where you are assured of Higher ROI.
To make a lasting impact through your digital marketing efforts, there is a need to measure the success of your strategy regularly, do cross-comparisons and come up with ways to tailor your efforts to the needs of your target audience. How do you measure whether you are being successful or not?
Let’s look at some KPI’s you can look at before how their successes can be measured. Some key KPI’s to consider are; Overall Website Traffic, Traffic Source, New and Returning Visitors, Sessions and Average Sessions per Duration, Page Views and Most Visited Pages, Exit and Bounce Rates, Conversion rates. For social media marketing, some metrics to consider are; Impressions, Social reach, Social engagement, Click-through-rate, etc.
In measuring your Digital Marketing Success, consider these steps.
Establish your campaign objectives. Get the team in alignment with the objectives of your Digital Marketing efforts which must be in alignment with your overall business objectives.
Set clear targets (goals) for the established objectives. Now set specific targets for the various outlined objectives.
Define target segments your strategy should focus on. Now, zero in on your specific target audience your campaign should focus on. This may be a segment of your entire target audience, certain businesses and organisations or perhaps a group with a specific demographic characteristics.
Establish KPI’s to measure success. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for your overall Digital marketing Campaigns. These help you monitor your performance against the goals and objectives set. You will know through them when you are hitting your targets so you keep investing or whether it’s not helping so you re-strategize.
Find a good analytics platform. Monitoring and measuring these metrics would be tedious or impossible to do manually. You need good platforms and applications to help you analyse the successes and failures of your campaigns. There are numerous analytics platforms both free and paid which may be help facilitate these measurements. For web analytics, Google Analytics is widely used. Others include; Spring Metrics, Woopra, Clicky, Mint, etc. With social media analytics tools, you can fall on Sprout Social, Hubspot, Buzzsumo, Keyhole, etc.
Apply real-time solutions to improve performance. Once you have good and substantial analytics and measurement data that can help in deciding on a corrective action, you can make adjustments to your campaign to cater for the insights gathered.
Run your campaign for too long, and you may notice that it no longer has the impact you hoped for. Run it for too short a time and it may not reach the larger audience you look to attract.
What then should be the ideal length of your campaign? Ideally, once you have all the necessary information on when and how to use a marketing campaign of a certain duration, determining how long you should run a regular marketing campaign will be a simpler decision to make since you have the metrics to analyze. Knowing that a marketing campaign needs sufficient time to reach your target audience but it shouldn’t surpass the timespan in which customers might lose interest in your promotions, your analytics will inform you whether to increase the duration, stop the campaign or re-strategize.
There is therefore no clear cut duration for a digital marketing campaign but the duration is determined by your overall objectives, type of campaign, audience needs, channels being used and the analytics report when it is been run.
Yes, digital marketing helps you reach more qualified audiences through which new contacts could be made to market your products and services, which may lead to an increase in sales for your business provided you use the right strategies, the right content, and the right tools for your business.
Additionally, your business operations must be on point.
Social Media marketing is now an important and essential part of every digital marketing strategy and you can be sure of the benefits it accrues to your business. Social media marketing is a sure way to reach customers, gain valuable insights and also grow your brand.
Some benefits of social media marketing are as follows;
Increase brand awareness. With over half the world’s population using social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), it is a sure place to reach new and highly targeted potential customers.
Increase web traffic. Social media posts and ads serves as a prime way to drive traffic to your website. Sharing great content through your blogs or websites to your social media pages is a great way to get readers to engage with your website as soon as you publish.
Generate Leads. Social media offers a better way to draw the attention of potential customers and also gives them the opportunity to express interest in your brand, business and your products.
Boost sales. As the number of people using social media continues to grow and social tools are evolving, social networks are increasingly becoming the go-to point for product search and e-commerce. Aligning your social media efforts to your sales goals will leapfrog your sales.
Reputation Management. You can manage the image of your brand on social media as your customers will be talking about your services/ products through their reviews and recommendations. Social media allows you to respond to their queries on time, address the negative comments and highlight the positives.
Getting your business onto social media is important however, it’s also important to consider which platforms are right for your business.
Not every social media platform is a good fit for every business, so you should invest your time and skills in the platforms where you are most likely to reach and engage with your target audience effectively. Know the mission, purpose and unique audience of every social media platform and access if it best fits your business before investing in them.
Don’t just be on all social media platforms, be on the ones that’s in line with your overall digital marketing strategy.
Your social media marketing will be effective as a business if you maintain engagements in a sustainable and practical way. This calls for dedication, skills and expertise.
As a business grows, your marketing efforts also must increase. A dedicated team or expert (Social Media Manager) must be put in charge of your social media marketing activities to boost your social media reputation by building an effective strategy and bringing up initiatives to help business achieve its marketing goals.
Email marketing is the process of targeting your audience and customers through email. It is a powerful marketing channel, a form of direct marketing that uses email to promote your businesses’ products/services, help make customers aware of your latest items or offers and also play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy with lead generation, brand awareness, building relationships or keeping customers engaged between purchases through different types of marketing emails.
Email is not dead. It’s one of the few marketing channels we can use to build an authentic connection with the customers that keep our businesses alive.
Email can be used to build upon existing relationships with your subscribers and leads by providing relevant, valuable information that will help them take action on their goals.
Email marketing is still relevant in our present age because according to statistics;
There are 3.8 billion email users worldwide and if you are looking for a way to reach a larger audience, email proves to be a place to consider.
For 86% of professionals, email is their preferred communication channel.
Over 90% of consumers check their emails daily.
On average, email generates $38 for every dollar spent, which is a 3,800% return in investment.
Two thirds of customers have made a purchase as a direct result of an email marketing message.
Did you know about 89% of B2B buyers and 81% of online shoppers resort to Google whenever they want to make a purchase? This should tell you how important your presence and visibility on Google’s Search Result Pages is important to the survival of your business in this present age.
This is actually the function of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO focuses on nothing else but expanding a company’s visibility in the organic search results. It helps businesses rank more pages higher in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) which in turn drive more visitors to your site and increasing chances for more conversions.
In its simplest form, SEO as a strategy ensures whenever prospects search for something you have to offer, your website ranks better and is visible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Both SEO and SEM are approaches/ tactics business use to become visible on SERPs. However, they are different approaches.
SEO as an approach makes use of organic methods to make businesses visible in search results whiles SEM as an approach uses paid methods to make businesses visible on search results
Google AdWords is an advertising system Google developed to help businesses reach online target markets through its search engine platform and partner sites.
These ads are hosted in the form of text or image ads that appear on the page after a user searches for keywords and phrases related to a business and its products or services. On Google.com, AdWords typically appear in specific locations at the top and right-hand side of search results page.
You only pay when a user clicks on your ad and visits your website or calls your business using ‘’click to call’’ option.
PPC is a model in online campaigns that helps drive traffic to a website. With PPC, the advertiser only pays when their ads gets clicked on. This prevents the investment into campaigns without quantitative measurement.
The benefits of PPC are as follows;
You only pay for clicks on the ad.
You can decide when and where your ad will be shown.
You can control your budget very precisely. You decide the maximum budget per day.
Your ads reach the right audience. Only users you want to target will see the ad.
You get a lot of information on the performance of the ad. This allows you decide to continue or correct the course of action to make it better.
The business landscape is very competitive and as a result, businesses are always finding ways to keep up with the competition. One way to stay competitive is always keeping your brand visible to your target audience by feeding them with quality content which will result in their loyalty to the brand.
Content Marketing is responsible for this. As an effective method for growing audience engagement, developing your brand presence and driving sales, content marketing is a critical and relevant growth method for most businesses.
These are some reasons to communicate the relevance of Content Marketing;
Content Marketing helps build trust with your audience. Good, quality and consistent content creates a positive experience and reinforces a positive brand impression. In their bid to enjoy more of your content and get answers to their queries, your audience and prospective clients turns to trust and stay loyal to your brand.
Content Marketing helps you generate more and better leads. A good and quality content keeps your brand on top of customers’ mind and increases their engagement with your content. The call-to actions (CTA’s) included in your content are more likely to lead your audience to your landing pages and cause them to perform the various actions intended by the CTA’s.
Quality and original contents improve conversions. Your content influences conversion by connecting with audience and leading them towards website visits, purchases, enquiries, calls, etc. You must include CTA’s in your content to serve as lead magnets towards conversion.
Your business will become more visible on SERP’s. The more consistent you are with providing high-quality contents, the better your business becomes visible online. Quality content marketing helps in establishing your business as an authority and a trusted source for information in your industry. This in the process improves upon your SEO score as search engines rank you higher.
Whether on your business’ social media handle, your website or your blog, pushing contents that gets you results is everything. How do you then curate content that will improve upon your Returns on Marketing Investment (RMI)?
Produce content around topics your audience are interested in. It’s not enough just creating content, but rather have a survey/research to know the exact information your audience are in search of, the questions they are asking and the queries they seeking are answers to. Create content around such topics and your audience will consume such content and even look out for more.
Don’t limit your content to only text. Content comes in various forms/formats and need not be limited to only text. It’s imperative to create an original and relevant content including videos, quality HD pictures, podcasts (audios), e-books, etc. depending on the channels being used. This keeps your content engaging and appealing making your audience always looking out for more. Additionally, it gives a positive effect on your SEO scores as your multimedia contents are optimized and labelled with keywords related to your business and industry.
Curate for humans and not search engines. In attempt to improve upon your SEO scores, don’t be repeating keywords. Your site can be flagged as spam in such process. Make your content interesting, informational and educative, put audience on a journey, allow for interactions by including CTA’s and nurture a real relationship with your audience. This is more likely to increase conversions.
Create Native contents. This goes for the social media contents. Every platform works differently and it becomes boring if same content is blasted on all social media platforms. Know how each platform operates and create content to fit them. The same information can be curated to suit the platform’s nature. Example; YouTube is video based and content shared here must be videos, Instagram is picture based and content here must be created to fit, etc.
In all, content sells if they fit into what consumers are looking for. Know what your audience are in search of, develop content in various forms and formats, and also produce content to fit the various channels.
YES! Content is dynamic – a relevant content now may not necessarily be relevant tomorrow.
As a content creator and an owner of a website, you always have to make sure the content on your page is relevant to what people are searching for so that search engines will pull your content/website up in their search results. This calls for frequent revising of your content to keep up with current information.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. This is a detailed description of a person representing your target audience.
This is based on market research and actual data about your existing customers. In creating your buyer persona, include customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, goals and pain points. The more details, the better.
Creating your buyer persona aids you to craft targeted content to attract your target audience since you understand them better. Also, you can use the best channels to attract them since you know where to get them.
Website design is changing and needs to be planned well before it reaches the designing stage. The planning will help include the most important elements and features into the website which helps people/audiences to find your website, navigate it, connect with you and align with the reason for creating the website.
Some essential elements of a good and modern website are as follows:
Reliable web hosting service.
A Content Management System (CMS).
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Mobile Friendly Layout
Speed Optimisation
High Quality Images
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