instead of personally going and checking out a product, buyers prefer to do this online by means of reading product descriptions, reviews, case studies, etc. In many cases, they end up buying the product also online. Businesses need to be where their customers are and that is online. So if a business is not leveraging digital marketing to reach customers, it is sure to be left behind.
What is Digital Marketing?
Before getting into how to use digital marketing to transform businesses, let us understand what is digital marketing in the first place.
Digital Marketing is a set of strategies and tools to promote a business online through use of digital channels like website and social media. It is basically creating a digital presence of a business to connect, inform and engage customers to achieve various marketing goals like creating brand awareness and sales.
Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses
Nowadays more and more businesses are taking to digital marketing. Digital marketing usage is no longer limited to only big business corporations, even small businesses are realizing that it makes sense to be online. There are various digital marketing strategies that businesses can use to promote their brand online, let us look at each one below:
1. Business Branding
How many times have we heard the saying that people prefer to buy/engage with brands that they know, like and trust. Digital marketing helps businesses create a presence online. Day by day the number of internet users is increasing and it is imperative for businesses to showcase themselves by creating a website and/or registering on various social media platforms. Businesses can create an awareness about their brand. By providing valuable information, they can establish themselves are leaders in their field. Creating a relationship and trust with their audience is possible by responding to their reader’s comments.
2. Search Engine Optimization:
Search engine optimization can be defined as the process of increasing the quality and quantity of the visitors to a website by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page on a search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. SEO is aimed at organic or unpaid traffic. SEO takes time to give results but is one of the best and cost effective digital marketing strategies that businesses can employ to improve their profitability. We all realize that we need to be online, but what is more important is that our business is visible to our target audience. Studies have shown that 75% of people searching on the web don’t go to the second page of SERPs. SEO strategies focus on things like optimizing a website architecture, ease of navigation, ease of use on all devices including mobile, decreasing website loading time, optimizing content displayed on websites so that search engines and users alike can access and understand it easily, etc. This is one of the first strategies that businesses can implement in their digital marketing journey.
3. Pay Per Click
With the easier availability of the internet, many people are making use of search engines like Google to find answers to their queries. With paid campaigns, it is possible to target customers who are actively looking for products. There is said to be a 7% chance of your ad being clicked if it is in first position on the search engine results page thereby increasing the chances of conversions. With little imagination and engaging content and creatives, businesses can increase their sales and profitability in the short term using PPC. Whether you want brand awareness, leads or sales, achieving all these goals is possible by making using of this strategy of digital marketing.
4. Social Media To Reach Right Audience:
Social media is very important for businesses to improve their reach and visibility. It is estimated that people spend close to 2 hours on social media every day. There are likely to be 3 billion people who will be using social media by 2021. Various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow businesses to create business pages. Along with the free organic reach, businesses can make use of the paid ads to achieve faster results. There are various advertisement formats available on the different social media platforms. You can pick and choose the one that is suitable to your business goals. By using them, businesses can reach relevant, quality, target audience at a low cost compared to conventional marketing channels.
5. Re-Targeting:
One of the greatest advantages of using digital marketing is businesses can retarget people who have engaged with their brand previously. Suppose a potential customer has visited your website and checked out some products but not bought anything, you can retarget those customers by showing your products on other channels which they visit like Facebook, Instagram, etc. By putting your product in front of people who have engaged previously, there is far more likelihood of them buying the product.
6. Understand Your Business and Create Content in Different Formats:
There are various forms of content which businesses can use from long form text to webinars and videos depending on the digital platform they want to use. All customers might not prefer the same form of content delivery. Some may prefer to receive information through video rather than text. Businesses can make use of different formats of content to reach different segments of customers thereby reaching a broader customer base. The whole idea is to create value for the customer and this can be easily achieved using this strategy of content marketing.
7. Email Marketing a Way To Reach Your Exist Audience:
Another important digital marketing strategy is email marketing. Email marketing can be used for both outbound and inbound marketing. By creating a compelling series of emails, you can take a buyer from the awareness stage to the conversion stage of the buying cycle. People don’t want to be sold to. They buy when they see that a product provides them value or addresses their pain point. Personalized email is a great tool to not only make a customer buy but also create a lasting relationship. Re targeting can also be done using email marketing.
8. Availability of Data for Analysis:
Digital marketing platforms have various metrics available which can give us valuable insights into things like how many people visited our website, what actions they took on our site, where these customers came from, how our ads are performing, etc. A careful and consistent study of these metrics can help us fine tune our digital marketing activities to ensure that we are going in the right direction to achieve our goals.
Final Word:
Today, every business wants to stay profitable and digital marketing can help them in this regard. Traditional marketing efforts need to be complemented with digital marketing strategies to stay ahead of the competition. If you want to stand out as a business, creating a digital presence is of immense importance as there are so many strategies in digital marketing which when properly implemented can take your business to the next level. So what are you waiting for, make use of digital marketing for your business today.
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