A new year calls for new beginnings and fresh starts. This applies to your digital marketing efforts as well. The year 2020 brought along many challenges and uncertainties for businesses across industries. Due to the pandemic all businesses across the globe suffered shutdowns and losses. But gradually businesses began to adapt and slowly started to recover. Many appreciated the power of digital marketing in helping them reach and connect with their potential customers.
As this year ends, businesses should review their marketing strategies and make improvements to help them get better results. Also, if your business does not have a digital marketing strategy in place then now is a good time to get it started. This article will discuss digital marketing best practices to help you create a strong and profitable strategy for your business.
Here are some best digital marketing practices you need to adopt for your business.
Set realistic goals
Setting goals is the first important step to planning any strategy. Goals serve as a roadmap to where you want to go with your digital marketing efforts. It is always a good practice to set goals that are measurable, realistic and time bound. Many marketers set unrealistic goals that become impossible for them to complete. These goals overestimate the potential of your digital marketing strategy. It also causes more stress if these goals are not being met.
Businesses want fast results and more conversions. However, it's important to note that digital strategy takes some time and effort to build. You will start seeing positive results gradually. Hence, businesses should set realistic goals that they can meet, especially if they are just starting out. If you already have a strategy in place, then review your previous goals and see your performance. You can set and update your goals based on your previous year’s performance.
Publish blogs
Blogs are an integral part of any content marketing strategy. You can start building your content with blogs. Create insightful blog articles on topics relevant to your industry. Consumers are always looking for informative content. Blogs are a good way for you to write on the topics that your audience is searching for. A blog can include in-depth information on any topic to help audiences better understand it. With these helpful insights that you provide, your target audience will look at you as an expert. This is a great way to gain the trust of your audience so that they invest in your brand.
Moreover, blogs will help you attract new traffic to your website. With a blog well optimized for search engines, your consumers can find you through various topics they look for. This is why doing a keyword research beforehand is a good idea. Write on topics that your audience is looking for. Also, optimize your blog content in order to be more visible on the search engine results page. This is a great opportunity for your brand to be visible and gain more brand awareness. Be consistent in posting your blogs and write on various topics that are relevant to your industry.
Offer free educational content
Consumers appreciate educational resources that are freely available for them to download. This content can be in the form of eBooks, whitepapers, templates, checklists, case studies and more. These resources should provide them with information that solves their problems or makes their work easier. For example, a marketing agency providing their users a social media calendar template to help them plan their postings. You can also offer informative guides about your products or services. The resources you give your audience should be valuable to them.
The free resources you provide are also good lead magnets. Lead magnets are any resources you offer in exchange for a user’s personal information like name, email, contact number and more. With the help of these resources, you can build an email contact list. The leads interested in your content are potential customers who can be converted when you nurture them. Hence, it is important that you provide your audience with useful and valuable content that encourages them to provide their personal information.
Create email campaigns
There are 3.9 billion daily email users, and this number is expected to grow to 4.3 billion in 2023 (Statista). Many consumers prefer email as a form of communication with any brands. They give permission to businesses to send them marketing emails and they are more likely to engage. Email marketing is a widely used tool by marketers to nurture their leads by sending relevant and useful content. According to Content Marketing Institute, 87% of B2B marketers say that email is one of their top free organic distribution channels.
Emails can help businesses maintain communication with their audience. It is a great way to send the users news and updates about the brand. Businesses also send monthly newsletters to provide their audience with informative content on their brand or industry. These updates keep leads engaged and interested in the brand. You can create email workflows to nurture leads and follow-up with them. Workflows ensure that you send personalized emails to all the leads in your list without missing out on anyone. Follow up emails can also be sent automatically to maintain contact with your audience. This can help you push your leads further along the sales funnel and help them convert.
Use search engine optimization
Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of improving your website’s visibility for relevant searches. There are many different SEO techniques you can use to help you rank better on the search engine results page. SEO is an important element of your digital marketing strategy. Without SEO your website would not be visible to your audiences, which means you will have low website traffic.
There are many SEO techniques you can leverage to help increase your rankings. A good way to start would be by optimizing your website content. Ensure that you have the relevant keywords in your title, headings and meta description. These keywords can make it easier for your target audience to find you.
SEO can be quite challenging at times, here are aome key techniques to create an effective SEO strategy.
Measure ROI
Measuring marketing ROI or return on investment can help you determine how much profit your marketing activities have brought in. This can justify the amount of money you have invested in your marketing efforts. Having these insights can be useful as they show you which activities were a success and which ones failed. With this information you can choose to improve or stop investing in activities that are not generating profit. Conversely, it can also show you where you need to keep investing. You can save a lot of time and resources once you have this data. Accordingly, you can also allocate budget for future marketing activities. Hence, it is a good practice to measure your marketing ROI.
Analyze your website traffic
Data can help you make important business decisions. These decisions should never be made using intuition. Every business should use analytics that can help them track the performance of their website or app. Analytics can give insights into various aspects of a website that can help you improve its performance. One such aspect is website traffic. Through analytics you can find out where your traffic is coming from and how they engage with your website.
Channel report determines which marketing channel is generating more traffic. Moreover, you can also get demographic information of your users. You can track how the users are engaging with your content. Understanding the behavior of users becomes easy as you can see how much time they are spending on each page. Also, numbers on which pages are gaining more traffic and how many goals are being completed. All these insights are useful to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy.
Creating a digital marketing strategy from scratch requires a lot of time and research. Consider your buyer personas before going forward with any strategy. This can help you understand the preferences of your target audience and what they are looking for. Following the simple steps discussed above can make your work a lot easier. It can ensure that you do not make any mistakes in your digital marketing strategy which can cost you your customers.
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