5 ways to make digital marketing work for you
Like any other marketing medium, digital marketing can bring great results, but is often a tricky process full of trial and error. CEO of agencyonnet, Rajesh Menon, gives his five tips to help you get the most out of your digital marketing.
1. Invest in email marketing
You can’t go wrong with email marketing if you do it properly. It’s fast, cheap and lets you reach out to your potential customers directly. The top three considerations to look at when using email marketing are:
Database
You could either invest in building your own or rent it from qualified list builders that provide you with filtered and segmented databases. You could also approach affiliate publishers that allow you to send emails to their opt-in database.
Content
Your email content has to be relevant to the audience and profile that you are broadcasting to. Avoid long email contents – nobody has time to read long emails. Restrict use of images as most email clients block pictures. Become a wordsmith. Let your content do the talking instead of your visuals.
Subject Line
Avoid all references to words such as Free, Gift, and Discount. Your email will be blocked by most servers as spam. Avoid lengthy subject lines too as many read emails today on their phones.
2. Go social
You can’t avoid being on social media today. With 1 out of every 7 human beings on the planet on some form of social media, it’s the single most important digital medium to embrace wholeheartedly.
Social is about relationships
Don’t rush into trying to build a huge follower base. Quality matters on social media. Relationships are built over time and, once you have a loyal fan following, you will realise that they will be your champions across their network.
Social is about networking with the community
Join many relevant groups and communities. Engage with the group, post discussions, and comment on discussions in an effort to begin a dialogue with your network.
3. Use search
Get yourself an SEO expert and have your website optimized for keywords that relate to your business. Regularly investing in SEO will pay good dividends. An alternative to investing in organic search engine optimization is to invest in Google AdWords which allows you to pick keywords that best describe your business. This way whenever someone is searching for you, your company link and descriptor will be shown at the top of the page.
Blogging and publishing is another great way to get your name ranked higher on organic Google searches. So if you have flair for writing, start publishing.
4. Advertise where necessary
Digital advertising can be highly targeted. Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to advertise on almost all parameters that they are capturing. LinkedIn even allows you to send a promotional In-mail. You could also use re-marketing to specifically target those who have visited your site once and use that knowledge to engage with them on social media.
Google Ads is a good advertising platform that offers small businesses an easy way to place advertising communication using several filters. You could target your audience not only by age or gender but also by their interests or by the sites they visit.
5. Create content that engages
Digital marketing unlike television is not a “one-to-many” medium. It’s a “one-to-one” medium, which means that you need to have communication that allows engagement with your audiences.
You want people to share your posts, blog or site so you need to provide for powerful engaging content that makes people want to share. People are unlikely to share promotional posts but they would be perfectly willing to share accomplishments, successes and failures, and “newsy” stuff about your company. The more engaging you make your content, the more it will be shared. As a rule of thumb, visuals and videos enable better sharing. Hence the more visually appealing your content is, the more likely you will have others “advertising” you to their digital friends.