When we say that the digital world is one crowded arena, we are simply saying the obvious truth. More than ever before, competition is fiercer because, on a daily basis, more businesses of all sizes and shapes are fighting to make sure their voice is heard. So, how do you get to survive in the face of this kind of competition?
Everything still boils down to knowing how to stand out of the crowd. Knowing your goals, who your audience is, and how to effectively get their attention are what you need to be successful. Even if you are just starting out, here are five simple digital marketing tips that will help you hit your mark.
#1: Be sure of what you are marketing for
For small and medium scale businesses, it is often a bit tricky for them to decide if they should invest in lead generation or brand awareness. While brand awareness deals with increasing the size of your audience over a particular time frame, lead generation deals with quickly capturing the interest of a specific group of prospective customers.
Both brand awareness and lead generation are essential in creating the overall digital marketing strategy, and so both of them should work together.
However, for startups, it is more important to focus more on brand awareness. It is a great way to lay a good foundation for lead generation. And when you have more quality leads, it means you are inevitably going to have more sales.
#2: Find out what your audience really wants and see how you can come in
In the type of business world, we are today, there is an increase in the push to be customer-centric, making every brand and business focusing more on user experience. This has influenced marketers so much that many now consider ways they could start putting their customers at heart when making vital decisions.
When you know what your audience really wants, it becomes easier for you to create and develop innovative content in the form of videos, articles or quizzes to provide answers to that problem they face. That way, you are shifting from what functionally motivates them to what emotionally motivates them. Then, there is a success around the corner for your business.
#3: Utilize SEO to better understand your audience
Obviously, you should know that SEO is the life of any business that wants to survive in the digital marketing world. It is a cost-effective and long-term investment that makes you more visible to more people. When you get SEO right, it helps build revenue, generate more traffic, increase brand awareness, and ultimately drives sales.
SEO will allow you access into a search engine data to have a good grasp of what your desired customers or clients are searching for. When you are equipped with this kind of information, it becomes easy to create targeted campaigns and maximize your online presence through content marketing, onsite optimization, and link acquisition – which are often referred to as the three pillars of SEO.
#4: Test your options and improve on it daily
The truth is that customers are now in more places than what it used to be in time past – and often at the same time. This is the reason you should know that no one digital marketing strategy fits all. No particular digital marketing is destined to work every time. When you are set to create a digital marketing campaign, there are many options (digital marketing channels) to consider. This ranges from organic social marketing to PPC advertising and SEO.
It will be easier for you to understand your options when you have successfully determined your business goals, audience, budget, and area of expertise. However, regardless of the type of strategy, you decide to choose, you will need to test and measure the results each time. That way, you will be able to identify what works for your business and what doesn’t.
If you are running Facebook ads, for instance, and you are targeting two audiences. If you are getting a better result with one than the other, it will be better you allocate a larger portion of your budget on the one that seems to be performing better. You can even take it a step further by using your data and experience from the ads to create new ads that are similar to the one that is performing better.
#5: Time is very important; learn how to effectively manage it
It is common to see a business just starting out juggling itself through multiple projects daily. From social media to SEO, digital marketing can feel like a whole lot of tasks. However, you should know you are not alone in this, and if you feel you are wearing yourself out, you may want to consider these tips to help you put yourself back in shape:
- Carefully plan out your marketing strategies
Categorize your tasks into urgent vs. important, and prioritized accordingly. To make this easier, you can get some time management tools to help you out.
- Identify your limits and play according to your abilities
You may not be able to do it all. There is no harm in delegating some of the work to your colleagues, partner or employees. Though it might take some time to identify your limits, you need to find it and ensure you stick to it.
- Know when to say “no”
Though it may appear simple, saying “no” when you need to is a unique strength and a difficult one at that. Before you commit yourself to any task, first ask yourself if you are fit to take or if it’s important at that time. If not, politely reject it and say “no” to it. It is better you reject it than taking it without getting it properly done.
Bottom Line
The above-mentioned tips are great tips to consider as a startup, but I have this final tip for you, and that is “use data to monitor the success of your campaign”. It is important you know if you are even making any success with your campaigns.
A very simple method to determine this is by using data! For instance, 88% of Australian above the age of 65 using social media are on Facebook. So, if you are creating a campaign to target this particular group of people, you will do well with Facebook ads than going with email marketing.
With digital marketing, it is easy to extract data from your efforts – be it in the form of the number of social shares or website hits. However, before you look at the data, make sure you have a good understanding of the type of metrics to measure. Digital Marketing Tips which helps you in getting more traffic and generates leads from your business.
