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It seems there is no person on the planet who wouldn’t surf the web pursuing different goals, yet the fact that the number of users is constantly rising shows this is not the case. This suggests that the way we do shopping, cure illnesses, or gain new knowledge has already undergone significant changes and will change even more—meaning online retailers, telehealth services, and web learning platforms will displace traditional shopping malls, hospitals, and educational institutions we’re used to. Billboard ads, pamphlets, and flyers will slowly start to take a backseat to digital marketing tips like web advertising, SEO, and presence on social media channels.
Given that marketing is inextricably linked to customers, businesses should take care of being present in the right place, namely on the web. Though much information is already available on the Internet and every self-respecting education platform has a course that explores digital marketing, there are still gaps in people’s knowledge. This article aims to sort things out and give complete answers regarding digital marketing tips and their key advantages over traditional ones.
Just like marketing in general, digital marketing implies an attraction of new customers and retention of existing ones by means of online channels like pay-per-click advertising (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), affiliate marketing, etc. Although the mere fact that the “living environment of users” has switched from television and radio to the web is sufficient to adjust marketing strategies, some still argue that traditional methods are effective. We’d like to convince you by listing the main advantages of online marketing over offline one.
You probably know that more money and effort are required to broaden a client base with new customers than it does to retain existing ones. It’s definitely great to close deals with customers, but better yet is to maintain their loyalty after that. This is not easy yet it’s definitely worth it, considering that repeat customers are more likely to buy your products again and again. In order to re-engage customers to get them to come back, it’s critical to remain in contact with them, and this is where online marketing—with its effective approaches like email campaigns, retargeting subscribers on social media, and gamification—will come to the rescue.
It’s a sin not to use data-driven technologies such as business intelligence that help marketers to do audience segmentation which is a foundation within analysis required to write a successful marketing strategy. Based on data like demographic, behavioral, and psychographic provided by these numerous services, there is an opportunity to achieve even greater levels of personalization and provide users with tailored content.
It’s nearly impossible to determine a conversion rate when it comes to traditional marketing. That’s because there is no way to track how many people stumbled upon your promo campaign and made a purchase after all. This raises the question: how do you make improvements to the campaign without any data? The answer is obvious—online advertising, in turn, meets this challenge, providing marketers with all the necessary information to optimize the performance of paid ad campaigns. Having analyzed the data, some adjustments might be required, e.g to change the call to action, pause ineffective keywords, or shift the ad schedule. By doing so, marketers will increase the likelihood that occasional website visitors will become customers.
In contrast to costly traditional marketing that includes billboards, printed media, and broadcasting, online channels are far more affordable for many companies, especially small businesses. Judge for yourself—printing paper costs and distribution of flyers don’t compare to a subscription to email apps, let alone TV advertising. Besides that, there is no such thing as a free promotion via offline channels, unlike their digital analogs.
Any business strives to build sales funnels whereby as many prospects as possible reach the bottom and ultimately buy a product. Online marketers have a better chance of achieving the goal, given the great variety of tools that help customers on their way to purchase. For instance, emails informing something like “Looks like you left something behind. Return to your cart to complete the order”? or push notification alerts that your free trial is close to expiration. Provided that the right things get done, all of this will nudge users in a certain direction to prolong their subscription or place their order—in short, to make their purchase.
Online advertising may take more than a little while before yielding the first results, but it still can’t compare to traditional marketing. In addition, it should be noted there are some categories of products whose promotion generates leads in a short period of time. The last thing to add here is that in time, the cost per lead in numerous industries with online ads is getting less expensive.
The list goes on and on, but even these several paragraphs give us some sense of the possibilities that online marketing opens to businesses. All the prospects sound great, but they beg the question—how do you generate, fine-tune, and maintain such digital strategies that will help companies to acquire and retain customers, and as a result, win more sales? We’ve compiled these internet marketing tips that will amp up your web presence.
No matter how interesting and informative your blog and posts on social media are, neglecting search engine optimization (SEO) will entirely negate the work and diligence of copywriters. This is because there is no chance to get targeted traffic and qualified leads without taking top positions in search engines. Certainly, it doesn’t mean all the content on your site should be stuffed with keywords like a turkey on Thanksgiving, as this will put readers off. However, if you don’t abuse keywords and instead use their close variants while removing obstacles to reading, the content will sound natural and, at the same time, work for Google.
We’ve already touched upon the subject of a buyer’s journey, as it’s a vital part of any marketing strategy, each stage of which should be well thought out. Today we’d like to stop at the key element of this path that each consumer goes through before committing to purchasing. We’re referring to elaborate content that helps prospects to transition into the next stage and ultimately leads to its logical conclusion—buying a service or product.
For the purpose of improved relevance at a certain moment of the sales cycle, it’s proposed to create specific content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Much depends on the types of business services and products companies produce, yet the basic principles are the same for all of them. At a certain point, consumers face some issues, then go to Google to look for a solution, consider all the available options, and make their decision. In order for the choice to be made in your favor, it’s critical to satisfying users’ needs by means of content appropriate for the specific stages. Here are a few effective tips on how to do that:
This is where buyers’ journey begins, sensing a problem and the need to address it. For instance, a person who cares about their online protection may decide to start using a password manager that prevents credential stuffing or dictionary attacks. The person understands in general terms what they want and starts surfing the web looking for specific information at this point. At this point, it’s time for relevant content to get in the game and attract the prospect’s attention. Its goal at this stage is to tell readers about the company’s existence and describe the solution it provides for solving this problem. The following types of content are best suited for this purpose: blog posts, whitepapers, videos, infographics, eBooks, and research studies.
When moving into this stage, buyers begin to attentively explore all the options which at first sight seemed suitable. They undertake in-depth research, weighing all the pros and the cons to find a solution that will be able to fix their problems.
How you establish yourself by means of the content you generate here defines whether these readers will go further into the purchase page or close the tab with your site. To prevent the latter, it’s worth remembering that content for the stage should be something more than just a description that could be applied to a number of other competitors. It should catch the attention of your audience with a killer CTA, encouraging them to sign up for your mailing list. The best channels for this are email marketing, popular social networking sites, webinars, product comparison posts, expert guidelines, case studies, and podcasts.
Despite the fact that customers here are almost ready to place their order, you ought to push them to give preference to your brand. So, again, this is worth doing by means of content that should emphasize your unique selling proposition and competitive advantages. Since the aim here is to persuade prospects to vote with their wallet and prevent customers from switching to a rival supplier, be sure your message is compelling, clear, unambiguous, and free of minor mistakes. The following types of content would be relevant here: trials, boot camps, free guides, demos, customer testimonials, discounts, coupons, return policies, professional consultation, and in-depth case studies. A lot of this will depend on the products the business offers.
The thing that all the companies have in common is the importance of instant replies at this stage. Having received the answer from the competitors faster, you will have missed out on your customer.
So, to conclude everything regarding the right content for each stage of the marketing funnel, we’ll leave a heuristic here—don’t be scared of this word, it’s just an equation that enhances the likelihood of converting followers into customers. It consists of five factors and looks like this:
C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) – 2a
Where C is a probability of conversion, m is the motivation that will keep prospects to stay on your site, v is a compelling value proposition, i is an incentive to act, f is friction that pushes customers away, and a is anxiety (for instance, about using data after purchasing). Don’t try to solve it, just keep it in mind when creating content the more you can increase or reduce its variables accordingly, the higher your probability of conversion.
Let’s say you handle content quite well at each stage of the buyer’s journey. What are the next digital marketing tips that should be executed to expand the reach of your business and gain a leg up?
Think about this: almost 56 percent of all internet traffic comes through mobile devices, and this number is still predicted to grow. Since these figures speak for themselves, it’s critical to keep up with the shift from desktop to mobile and make sure your sites are optimized for the change. This highlights the need for the following requirements:
There is so much hype surrounding this, for good reason. For instance, partnering with influencers who have loyal followers ensures a rise in brand awareness and boosts sales, as people tend to believe and heavily rely on the thoughts of celebrities, bloggers, industry experts, or whoever you’re choosing to collaborate with. And at last, one can’t help but speak about powerful backlink opportunities. No matter if it’s an Instagram story or a YouTube video, an influencer will incorporate backlinks into your website, meaning it will be higher on search engine rankings.
The fact that consumers who intentionally click ads are 50% more likely to make a purchase than those coming from organic search speaks for itself. This is why we consider it necessary to get a handle on the most effective ad types:
Have you ever paid attention to the top of Google search results with the hardly-noticeable “Ad” symbol when typing some request? These are exactly what are called search ads that can be run on the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, etc. The type allows you to bypass the nearest rivals by reaching top positions regardless of your organic rankings.
If a site received you as a visitor but you left it without buying anything, retargeting ads will catch up to you in a while with a high probability. These ads can appear when you surf one of Google’s partner sites or social media channels and can provide business with perks, like a significant increase of conversions.
The vast majority of people nowadays scroll their news feeds on social media for hours on end. This proves that there are definitely some among them who are interested in your product no matter what it is. By means of rich customization provided by Facebook, there’s a good chance you can create an ad that will show the right message to the right user at the right time, thus getting more sales.
If you aim to allow more time for generating stunning content and strategies which will move your company forward without spending hours on repetitive actions and not requiring a huge intellect, adopting automation is a must. It will ensure greater personalization (however paradoxical that may seem), increase operational efficiency, and move potential customers down the funnel much faster. Furthermore, if there is some trouble with communication among sales and marketing departments regardless if they work towards a common goal like a demonstration of ROI or retaining existing customers, automation tools will deal with them. For instance, customer relationship management (CRM) systems will help to establish effective internal communication. To make decisions based on real-time analytics and get data-driven insights to measure your ROI, get started with examining automation solutions right away and apply them to your business as soon as possible to stay one step ahead of your competition.
No doubt this is the age of visual perception and information has been seen a lot easier when it’s supported by vibrant graphics. This is especially true when it comes to social media channels that are used to recharge one’s mind but not delve into long-winded paragraphs. Given that, businesses should adjust their content to the needs of users. This would best be done by the creation of videos that will grab visitors attention after a few seconds, provide an impressive ROI, demonstrate brand personality, and much more. If you pore over the matter, you’ll find out that there are different types of videos in social media channels that are worth trying to implement in your marketing strategy and choose those that will work for your product. The best known and widely used ones are demo videos, tutorial videos, behind-the-scenes, promotions and deals, brand awareness videos, user-generated content, events, and announcements of major updates or some big news. In a word, there is plenty of room for creativity, so let your imagination run wild and success will not take long.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and numerous restrictions which were placed on people all over the world, some daily routines and habits were changed. So, when familiar offline shopping was not feasible, online channels became the main way to shop, and it continues to hold its lead position. To satisfy current users’ needs and make life easy for sales reps, companies deploy tools that allow for digital sales. There are a number of them to choose from aimed to find, monitor, and better understand prospects’ and existing customers’ behavior and improve external and internal communications. Let’s consider a one-size-fits-all solution suitable for the vast majority of companies—a tool for combining data into a single system. The large amount of data that we now get thanks to the wide range of different tools available on the market is definitely a godsend for eCommerce teams. Yet to centralize all the information in one place is often a challenge that can be handled by data connectors and integration tools. These will help businesses to increase usability and get quick access to all the data required to perform their analyses.
Among a great number of products available on marketplaces, choosing the best one is quite the task. To help prospects cope with this and save them time, add one more thing to your strategy—asking a customer to leave a review. Lately, people are increasingly looking at the opinion of those who have already made a purchase and trust user feedback as much as friends’ recommendations. This doesn’t mean that only positive reviews can boost trust in a company and convince customers to buy its products. In fact, it’s quite the opposite—a 5-star rating could be questionable and may appear too good to be believed. A lot of studies revealed that customers are markedly more willing to buy products with an average star rating somewhere between 4.2 and 4.5 rather than a 5-star rating.
Apart from the fact that users’ feedback increases sales growth, it helps to strengthen your relations with existing customers as you show interest in providing them with a better experience. There is another hidden benefit of customer reviews, namely SEO. The more feedback you’ll get on top review websites, the greater the chance of maximizing your brand’s presence in the search results for certain keywords.
Have you ever heard about the strategy when a marketing team doesn’t waste time attempting to find potential customers among a whole bunch of disinterested people but focuses on targeting only the best-fit ones? This is what’s called account-based marketing (ABM), and it uses personalized communication totally geared toward the behavior, demographics, preferences, and needs of the particular account. The perks of intelligent personalization are obvious, yet the fact that ABM shortens sales cycles merits consideration. Given that decisions concerning expenditures take up a lot of time until all the executives approve them, messing around with low-value prospects means inhibiting the process even more. By excluding those who don’t share excitement about your product and instead of targeting the right decision-makers, the chances of closing deals faster increase.
Google gets billions of searches each day, most of which are for local searches such as scooter rentals, restaurants, or dry cleaners. That’s why this is critical for businesses to make their websites more visible in their local online communities. Fortunately, this can be done through Google My Business (GMB), a free tool that allows marketing managers to handle what people see when they search for the company on Google. By means of the service, your customers will be able to leave feedback (the benefits of which are discussed by every man and his dog), and you will get access to statistics that will show you where your audience is coming from. Furthermore, reports will be available for you to find out the Google searches in which your site most often appears. There are also other insights GMB provides, and through them you’ll be able to build a profile on your visitors, get more clicks on website links, and increase sales. Give it a try, especially since it’s free of charge and easy to use.
The topic is so extensive that we could write a folio describing the details regarding digital marketing tips, their impact on sales, and possibilities open to businesses. Yet even the ones listed above will definitely help to open up your service to a huge number of internet users and engage with your target audience. Put this theory into practice and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Julia is an experienced IT consultant who helps both large organizations and dynamic startups across domains create software products that meet their specific needs and rise to emerging challenges. She is committed to providing effective solutions that speed up and improve our clients' business processes in the best possible way.
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