Your business deserves a great digital marketing strategy. Without one, you’ll fall behind your competition. But how do you do digital marketing like a professional? These tips will show you.

The online landscape is changing constantly. If you don’t adapt your digital marketing strategy to change with it, you’ll find yourself falling behind.

This is something that many business owners don’t realise. Though they may understand the role of digital marketing in the modern world, they fail to keep pace with how digital marketing changes. This results in a digital marketing strategy that isn’t fit for its purpose.

So how do you avoid this situation? More importantly, how do you do digital marketing like a pro? These tips will help you to ensure your digital marketing strategy works in the modern online environment.

Tip #1 – Create Compelling Video Content

There’s an old saying in digital marketing that goes “content is king”. It’s as relevant today as it has always been. However, the way you deliver your content to your website’s visitors has changed.

Previously, a good article was all you needed to engage people. However, the introduction of smartphones, alongside faster internet connections, has changed that. Not everybody wants to read a multi-thousand word article. Instead, many people want to consume information through video, and other media.

Many small business owners don’t realise how important a role video plays in the modern landscape. They have a digital marketing strategy that still focuses on the search engine optimisation techniques that worked well five years ago. That doesn’t work anymore.

Instead, you need to focus on filming. Learn how to create videos, and make sure the videos you create deliver your brand’s message effectively. Keep things short and concise, as this will allow you to appeal to those who want to watch your video, but have little time to do so.

Don’t just upload your video to your website. YouTube and Facebook can put your video in front of a much larger audience than your company’s website ever could. Both YouTube and Facebook have more than one billion users each, which is a huge audience. Other brands have realised this already. In fact, video uploads onto Facebook shot up by 75% in 2016. That alone should show you how far behind the game you are if you aren’t using video.

Get your video onto those sites, and promote it in any way you can. In doing so, you’ll put your brand in front of more eyes than written content alone could ever provide.

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Tip #2 – Use Strong Calls to Action

Every business website has a call to action (CTA). It’s what you use to get the visitor to engage with you. This may be something that leads to sale, or encouragement for the visitor to get in touch to ask about your services. Whatever the case may be, your website’s call to action tells your customer about the next step he or she should take.

This means that a bad CTA makes your website less effective.

Many people fall into the trap of creating poor CTAs. Some don’t recognise their importance, while others focus too heavily on different areas of their digital marketing strategy. This leads to unclear CTAs that users don’t follow. At worst, you may not even have a CTA at all.

Creating an effective CTA requires an understanding of the messages your business wants to send out. The CTA should relate to the products or services you sell, while using the same language as the reader would find in your marketing materials. Furthermore, it needs to catch the user’s eye. Having a small contact form tucked away in the corner of your website’s footer isn’t going to do the job. Instead, your CTA needs to be front and centre, so your user knows where to click if they want to find out more.

Finally, try to use unique language. While phrases like “Learn more” are still effective, you’ll often find that the best CTAs encourage users to take the next step without falling back on clichéd phrases.

 

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Tip #3 – Automate Your Emails

Email marketing should already be part of your digital marketing strategy. It’s a low-cost means of communicating with thousands of people. Best of all, email marketing campaigns generate an open rate of approximately 20% across most sectors. This means that one out of every five people you send an email to will read it.

However, email marketing has evolved, so your digital marketing strategy should evolve with it. Integrated CSS and HTML have made it possible to create emails readers can interact with, while staying in their inboxes. Instead of clicking a link to your website, the user can complete whatever action in the email itself.

This new technology presents immense possibilities. For example, an eCommerce store can use interactive emails to encourage recipients to add items to their shopping carts, without them having to click away from the email. This offers a level of convenience that the reader won’t find with other online stores. Other companies use interactive games and similar tricks to keep people engaged with the email for longer periods of time.

A good interactive email will improve engagement. Recipients will see that you offer something different in your marketing, which will encourage them to explore what you have to offer in more detail.

 

Tip #4 – Create Visually Compelling Adverts

Let’s stick with the subject of PPC advertising for a moment. Many of you may use visual adverts, in addition to text-based ads.

This creates another challenge in your digital marketing strategy. Your visual adverts usually end up on other people’s website. As a result, anybody who sees the advert isn’t actually there for the ad. Instead, they’re looking at the website’s primary content.

As a result, you need to ensure that the images you use in your visual adverts stand out. If they don’t, people will skip right past your ads to get to the content they came for.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) adverts must use quality images that communicate your brand’s message to the viewer. Your aim should always be to captivate the viewer. After all, you’re competing against the very website your advert appears on.

Your digital marketing strategy may change slightly when using visual adverts in the business-to-business (B2B) space. In this case, you need to focus more on delivering a clean and bold advert. You’re delivering a message to potential partners, so you need to make your message as clear as possible.

Whichever side of the fence you fall on, you need to focus on creating great visual adverts. Use clear, high-quality images, with a focus on catching the reader’s attention.

 

Tip #5 – Never Forget Mobile

There’s an argument to be made for mobile being more important than desktop in your digital marketing strategy. The statistics bear this out. The number of people using mobile devices to browse the internet increased again in 2016, with 2017 likely to follow the same course. Furthermore, nearly 60% of Google searches now originate from mobile devices.

The point is that your digital marketing strategy must take mobile into account if it is to be effective in the modern online environment.

Focus on your website first. You could create a mobile-optimised website. However, many people now use responsive design when creating websites. This ensures that their websites display consistently, regardless of the user’s device. Responsive design also means that you don’t have to manage both, a desktop and mobile website. It centralises the process, so any website changes you make get reflected across all devices.

As a final point, understand that Google places a great priority on mobile optimisation. In fact, the world’s largest search engine has started to demote websites that don’t optimise their content towards mobile users. As a result, sticking to your desktop-based digital marketing strategy could hurt your search engine rankings.

 

Tip #6 – Don’t Abandon Your Website

You may have evolved your digital marketing strategy already. In fact, many of you may already use Facebook and Google to promote your business.

That’s great, but you must remember that you don’t own those services. If you neglect your website, or any other areas of your digital marketing strategy, to focus on third-party services, you may cause issues for your business. Also, remember that these third-party platforms want to keep users. They don’t want them to click away to your business, because they can’t guarantee that you’ll provide a quality experience. If you’ve neglected your website, you’re proving them right.

If this sounds familiar to you, then it may be time to refocus your strategy back onto your own properties. Update your website, build a great mobile app, and keep communicating with clients through your own channels. This will ensure people keep using your assets, which builds greater brand awareness.

Furthermore, you can collect data from own assets that you won’t get from third parties. This can help you to identify trends that shape your business strategies.

Focus on how you can use your own digital properties to your advantage.

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Your Next Step

Consider how you can apply these tips to your current digital marketing strategy. The odds are that your business isn’t doing something on this list, which could be holding you back. We also recommend that you do the following:

    • Find out more about delivering your brand’s message using social media.

    • Discover how you can save money on Facebook advertising.

    • Chat with one of our digital marketing experts.

 

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