From sales to customer services, promotions to marketshare - a comprehensive digital presence is vital!
With so many options available, it can be challenging to prioritise resources and budget across digital channels. For many businesses, at some point each one needs some attention. But the focuses for your business are unique to you, and a number of factors will contribute to your approach.
Key considerations:
Business objectives
Digital objectives
Budget
Resources and skills required - to launch and to maintain on-going
Your core audiences
Upcoming marketing and business strategy
Your competition
When we work with clients who are creating or overhauling their digital strategy, we work through the business and digital objectives first before moving on to anything else.
For example, the primary business objectives this year might include increasing revenue, maintaining customer base through retention and loyalty, launching a new subscription service.
The digital objectives might be to offer customer service through owned social channels, to increase the ROAS, to increase traffic to the site.
I now know:
We want to invest a minimal amount
We want to make existing channels work harder for us
We want to focus on existing audiences
We need to focus on SEM and SEO, and website optimisation
And we need to focus on customer service friendly social channels first above content channels
This is a great starting point for creating a digital strategy and proposal.
If you're keen to brush up your knowledge on each channel, here is a run down of the most common digital marketing channels.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is an in-bound channel that focuses on achieving higher organic (none-paid) search rankings in search browser results. SEO is driven by applying best-practice across a number of key areas - including through website content housed on your site, the technical elements running through your site infrastructure, and external influences such as referring sites, and your site's SEO health score given by the browser (such as Google). If one of these areas isn't up to scratch, there is a high chance you will receive low quality scores and you will not be able to tap into your organic search opportunities.
The beauty of SEO is that once the investment has been made and it is working well for your site, the on-going costs are minimal. But the revenue and traffic possibilities are endless. Users who visit your site through organic means are actively seeking out the content that you have on your site, they are already a hot lead.
SEO is a time-consuming and complex channel to master, and it is always recommended to seek out specialist support if SEO is a priority for your businesses.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is a paid media / performance marketing channel, that involves buying search results on search engines such as Google, Bing and Ecosia.
SEM is a scientific skill and one of the most complex of all digital marketing skills. It can be used to buy advertising space in the top search results through Pay Per Click (PPC), for shopping ads (CPA or ROAS targets as well as PPC), for display ads, and for video ads.
It is a great tool for ecommerce businesses, local businesses, and for any business who needs to improve their page ranking performance.
It can be costly, but when done right and when it's right for the business, it can also be the most cost-efficient channel with an ability to drive incredibly high Return On Ad Spends (ROAS) and Conversion Rates.
As with SEO, if SEM is a priority for your business, we would always recommend you seek out an SEM specialist before spending any money on it.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media marketing has grown from being used predominantly for brand-building and communication, to now being a vital marketing channel for many businesses.
There are now advanced ecommerce, performance marketing, lead generation, influencer/partnership, and customer research opportunities for small to large sized businesses.
Brands can flex their creative muscles across most platforms and showcase a different or more informal side than with other communications.
For any business with a social presence, we recommend ensuring there is a solid content strategy in-place and that thought is given to tailoring the strategy to suit the platform, and to delivering a considered content plan filled with relevant, up-to-date and diverse content.
Another vital consideration is resources for managing your growing communities. It can have a negative impact on your review scores and reputation if you do not consistently respond to followers, who show no sign of slowing down when it comes to interacting with organic and paid content on social platforms.
Content Marketing
As the saying goes, "content is king!". And for many marketing strategies, it really is.
Content drives results whilst increasing trust. Content can change perceptions, increase perceived value, be authoritative, gain you market share, help you cut through the clutter and yield fantastic results.
As it encompasses many forms of content including blogs, videos, FAQs, social media posts, e-books, brochures, PR campaigns, partnerships, infographics, case studies, industry content, and templates, content marketing isn't attached to one channel or platform, it really underpins and builds on them all. And it can have a seriously positive impact on your website performance and SEO quality score as backlinks from content contribute to this.
Email / SMS Marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most popular and effective types of digital marketing. HubSpot estimates that the average ROI for email marketing is $38 for every dollar you spend – a whopping 3,800% return for something as simple and easy to execute as email.
A few years ago it was predicted that email marketing would take a downward turn with the introduction of social channels and other digital opportunities. However it has continued to evolve and can now be used for many things including promoting your products and services, staying in contact with your customers or followers, executing a loyalty and retention strategy which for many businesses ends up being one of the most lucrative revenue streams, and for executing a review campaign to gain valuable feedback from your customers.
With the right program, you can easily prepare many different automated email campaigns that work to rules, and will continue to target the right recipients with the right message when you want them to receive it. Meaning you have to do the hard work once, and then just continually review and optimise from thereon. There are so many creative ways to use these features - the standard 'welcome', cart dropout, up-sell and cross-sell emails continue to deliver fantastic results, plus you can segment your database so thoroughly you can tailor communications down to the smallest subsets. For example, emailing your entire database offering for them to opt out of Father's Day email campaigns, so you're only left with an email group who actually want to receive those emails and will hopefully read them and respond to them.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing involves a partnership with an online retailer, where the affiliate earns commission for every single successful lead. This is usually done through:
Offering a unique discount code to their readers/followers
Linking to your website from their content website
Affiliate networks are often used, such as Amazon Associates, and programs are also offered through eBay, Shopify, and specialist affiliate businesses.
Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation and can help businesses to reach a new target audience or consumers in niche communities whilst only paying for actual conversions.
Influencer Marketing
In today's marketing worlds, Influencer Marketing refers to a content creator who has a large following within a certain niche or community, and is a trusted source for information or guidance in some way.
This is a rapidly growing area of marketing in the social and performance space, and can be greatly successful for businesses.
Followers often trust and admire the influencer, which makes them much more likely to buy a product recommended by one.
There are different levels of influencers, and who you may choose to engage with depends purely on your brand and budget. They include:
• Micro-influencers are people with thousands of followers, but usually not more than 100,000. More affordable, greatly influential, often relevant for more niche industries.
• Macro-influencers are people who have anywhere from 100,000 to a million followers. If you want expertise and reach and you have a bit of budget behind you, these guys could be for you.
• Mega-influencers are people with millions of followers. Celebraties, media stars, cost per post can reach the millions. Potentially not as genuine as the above two..
If you are keen to try influencer marketing, as with any marketing campaign it begins with a plan. And we recommend working with experienced marketers who can assist you and ensure you engage the right partners for your campaign.
Video Marketing
96% of people turn to videos to learn more about a product or service, and a whopping 82% of global internet traffic came from either video streaming or video downloads in 2022. It is so important for businesses to continually adjust and invest more into their video marketing strategies to suit the ever-evolving digital landscape.
As with any form of marketing, successful video marketing must start with a great plan.
In this post, we share some tips on how to create a great video marketing plan for social media and digital - including the importance of a platform-first approach, how to create a video strategy that suits your business and budget, and how to plan for video production including tool recommendations for in-house (or in-home!) video recording and editing.