Digital marketing is not straightforward. No matter the size of your business, navigating through the online digital space, which is in a constant state of flux, is tricky. What might work for some businesses and some industries won’t necessarily work for others; what worked for you this year won’t necessarily work for you next year.
The digital era requires forward thinking and adaptability, and if you want to stay competitive you must remain abreast of all the best digital marketing tips, trends and know-how.
Depending on the size and nature of your business, you may choose to enlist the help of professional marketers to push you in the right direction. However, there are some really beneficial changes you can make on your own without professional assistance.
To yield the results you’ve always dreamed of, take note of the below 5 tips for enhancing and accelerating your digital marketing endeavours today.
1. Get on board with content marketing
Content is the future of marketing. Through a good content marketing strategy, you can improve your SEO so that your business becomes more visible and discoverable online. You can also increase brand awareness, improve brand reputation, attract a wider audience, drive more traffic to your website, generate more leads and boost your sales.
Content marketing is essentially the digital distribution of engaging and “shareable” content to inform, educate and provide value to consumers. It can be created in various forms: news articles, blog posts, white papers, eBooks, videos, images, podcasts, email newsletters and more.
Because content is being produced at such an enormous rate and is emerging from all corners of the internet, it has become harder and harder for businesses to stand out and outrank their competitors on the SERPs (search engine results pages). The key to content marketing is to stay up to date with the latest algorithms and requirements from search engine giants like Google.
Nowadays, Google will only recognise and “reward” content that is of the utmost quality. When it comes to written content, latest trends suggest that algorithms now favour long-form, evergreen content that is well-researched, informative, SEO-optimised and has a degree of authority over the subject matter. If content ticks these boxes it will receive a higher ranking position on the SERPs and in turn more discoverability. This will mean that more people will stumble across it, and thus become aware of the business.
If you have not adopted a strong content marketing strategy, don’t wait any longer – you’re missing a trick
2. Optimise for your competitors’ keywords
You may not realise when curating your own SEO strategy, but you can (and should) optimise your website and ads for your competitors’ keywords. This may not seem ethically sound, but it is a clever marketing tactic that yields impressive results.
To do this, you should conduct a competitor analysis to uncover which keywords and phrases have the highest volume of traffic. You will find in your analysis that many of the high performing keywords include your competitors’ brand name. Rather than avoid these, include them cleverly where you deem appropriate. Ranking for your competitors’ keywords will greatly increase your own ranking in the SERPs because your metadata and ads will be capturing a larger amount of search queries.
While driving more traffic to your website is key, you still need to convert these new leads. This is where you should ensure you have a designated landing page to guide customers down your sales funnel.
3. Create designated landing pages
Leading on from the above point, it is integral for the marketing endeavours that you create designated landing pages in conjunction with your ad campaigns so that you can, crucially, convert visitors on your site.
The purpose of a landing page is to guide a lead down the sales funnel by presenting them with exactly what they are looking for and making it easy for them to invest in your products or services. For example, if an online user typed “Nike white running shoes” into a search engine and was presented with your ad (because it is well-optimised for those particular keywords), the landing page’s job is to make the user’s buying journey seamless and enjoyable.
This is done through clever page design and call-to-actions that lead the customer to take action (not leave the page) and through offering incentives (discounts, deals and offers) in exchange for their contact information (at least
4. Utilise specific ad targeting
Another thing you should be doing to enhance your digital marketing is taking advantage of specific ad targeting features on Facebook.
You may not realise it, but Facebook ads are totally customisable, meaning that you can target specific audiences. This is important because the ad will only be shown to people who want to see it and are therefore more likely to convert. This will mean that your ads are more cost-effective.
You can customise Facebook ads according to age, location, gender, relationship status, interests, education, etc. Better yet, you can alter the targeting of every individual ad, which means that even seasonal offers or niche products only target the people applicable.
For example, if your business offers string quartet for hire at weddings, you could target your ad so that it reaches couples who have recently got engaged, as they will most likely be planning their wedding and beginning to shop around for musical entertainment for their big day. To do this, go to “Detailed Targeting” and select people who are “Engaged”. It’s that simple!
5. Retargeting
Retargeting your ads is crucial if you want to accelerate your digital marketing and the performance of your ads. Say your website is experiencing good traffic, but not actually converting, retargeting your ads is often that last push that results in conversion.
Retargeting is when you present the people who have previously engaged with your ads or your website with your ads again. This means that your business stays top of mind, and for those who were tempted by your products or services before are all the more likely to invest a second time around.
Retargeting your Facebooks is simple. Place a Facebook code on your website, and this code will then add a cookie onto the browser of your visitors. You will then be able to retarget your ads to them which will gently guide them down your sales funnel. You can then enjoy a surge in conversions!
Conclusion
Harnessing the above tips is crucial for getting the most out of your digital marketing endeavours and expenses. Don’t waste any more time – get to work now and reap the rewards!