Digital Marketing is often referred to as ‘online marketing, ‘internet marketing, or ‘modern marketing. It includes all marketing initiatives that require the use of digital devices or the internet. Considering the high number of digital devices connected to the internet in today’s world, digital marketing has become business-critical.

Along with the progress and strides made in the field of technology, digital media has also gained widespread acceptance allowing everyone to access information whenever they want and wherever they are. This has provided marketers with the opportunity to promote products and services through blogs, websites, and social media platforms.

Using the numerous analytical tools now available, marketers can monitor marketing trends, competitors’ strategies, and the psyche behind searches and purchase decisions in order to improve targeted marketing.

It is essential for digital marketers to have an in-depth understanding of their audience, in order to achieve success. There is a multitude of tools available to digital marketers that can help achieve their goals.

These tools can help digital marketers monitor what people are reading or looking at, how long they’re reading or looking at those things, and the total number of people are engaged in the process. The data gathered is then used to form digital strategies that can be used to convert interest to purchases.

Table of Contents

SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES INCLUDE THESE THREE TYPES OF MEDIA: 

Earned Media: Refers to the web traffic you get for free, through backlinks to your web page, media, and analyst mentions, and customer reviews and recommendations. This helps strengthen your brand authority and your domain authority in search engines. 

Paid Media: Paid advertising is all about driving leads to the content on your website, and increasing conversions. These strategies include search ads, social media promotions, and display ads. 

Owned Media: This is the content you create and control that creates the opportunity to drive earned media. Your blogs, social media feeds, videos, websites, and mobile sites all fall into this category.

When earned, paid, and owned media are combined in a well-balanced way, marketers can achieve above par user experiences satisfaction. Not only can marketers reach the target audience more accurately, but they can also do it in ways that are more effective. 

DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN

Here’s the bottom line; there are products and services you need to sell and there are people who’re interested in buying these products and services. The common factor between you two (seller and buyer) is the internet.

Constructing a digital marketing plan that will help create awareness for your brand, build a solid brand identity, and increase your sales may involve:

1. Constructing a keyword strategy

2. Optimizing the website for its visibility

3. Creating a blog and marketing offers

4. Promoting content through social media

5. Converting website traffic into leads

6. Nurturing leads with targeted messages

7. Optimizing the marketing for mobile devices

8. Analyzing and refining strategies

1. CONSTRUCTING A KEYWORD STRATEGY

– UNDERSTANDING KEYWORDS

A keyword in the context of digital marketing is a word or phrase used by a person to search for a topic online. Usually, people input the keywords in search engines like Google or on social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others to search for desired information.

– CREATING A KEYWORD STRATEGY

The number of people finding companies online through keyword search is increasing rapidly. This is a major opportunity for those who want to expand their business and increase conversions. They can optimize their website and social media profiles to include the keywords people are using to search for similar businesses.

Once the most used keywords are properly utilized, their chances of being discovered online are amplified significantly. Moreover, an increase in website discovery had the potential to translate into increased traffic and conversions.

Researching keywords to find the optimal mix is definitely challenging but there are some amazing tools out there that can simplify this task for you. These tools will provide you with all the relevant information required to analyze different keywords. Furthermore, you can also experiment with different keywords to see which ones are driving the most traffic to your website. 

Marketers should ensure that their company or business is easy to find online and that they are not wasting money on unqualified clicks.

Keyword research and optimization is a never-ending process that provides you with meaningful information on product demand and industry trends. By properly executing this process you can increase organic traffic which will eventually reduce your spending on Pay-per-click campaigns.

– HOW TO CONSTRUCT A KEYWORD STRATEGY?

Here are some essential steps for developing an effective keyword strategy:

• Create a short list of 4-5 keywords related to your product offerings

It’s highly recommended to avoid using your company’s name as among your keywords at this stage. You should make a list of keywords that are related to the products and services you are offering.

Understanding things from the consumers’ perspective may help come up with the keywords they are likely to use.

• Choose keywords based on relevance and complexity

Avoid using highly complex and competitive words or phrases in your keywords as they will make it harder to rank well on search engine result pages. Instead, try using keywords that are simpler, less competitive, and distinctly related to your business.

Remember that the competitiveness of a keyword increases with its search volume. The greater the search volume on a keyword, the more competitive it is. To check the competitiveness of a particular keyword, you can use multiple tools including the Google Keyword Planner. 

• Optimize your website by using relevant keywords

The strategy should not be to find keywords and force them into your content. Instead, your focus should be on finding and using keywords that work well with your business, content, and goals.

Let’s take the images on your website as an example; they should include alt text that reveals your keyword strategy.

2. OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR VISIBILITY

Once you have the relevant keywords, you need to increase your visibility for those keywords on search engines. This is where SEO or Search Engine Optimization comes in.

– WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization includes the techniques and practices that allow a site to get more traffic from search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

– TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

There are two types of SEO:

1. ON-PAGE SEO

On-Page SEO includes the text and content on your website pages. 

2. OFF PAGE SEO

Off-page SEO is all about optimization strategies excluding your website’s content and design such as link building with genuine websites through relevant content. 

Eight Components of On-page SEO optimization element

1. Page Title

Page titles refer to the text at the beginning of the browser window on a web page. Here are some rules to optimize page titles:

  • Include Keywords
  • Keep it precise 
  • Try placing keywords close to the beginning of the title starting from the left.
  • Avoid stuffing page titles with numbers and characters.
  • Use different page titles for each page
2. Meta description and Meta Data

When you enter a keyword in the search engine, the text that you see as the description of the website is called MetaData. It’s good to include the keywords in Metadata as they may be the first impression that users have and can attract or discourage clicks.

3. Headings

Search engines consider the text in the headings as the keywords. Furthermore, as far as the importance of the headings as per the keywords are concerned, you need to follow ascending order first h1 tags, then h2 tags, and so on. 

4. Images

Images can increase engagement. However, you should consider a few things in this regard:

  • Use keywords in the file name of your image in order to bring relevant traffic from image searches. 
  • While images can increase engagement, too many images can increase page loading time, negatively affecting both the user experience as well as the search engine optimization.
5. Domain Info

The older your domain is, the more important your website is to search engines.

6. Stay away from keyword stuffing

Keywords are no doubt important however it does not mean you stuff your entire content unnecessarily with keywords as this not only creates an undesirable experience for your website visitors but also negatively affects SEO.

– HOW TO IMPROVE OFF-PAGE SEO

Off-page SEO refers to the overall credibility of your website. Websites with higher credibility are supposed to rank higher than the others.

Website credibility is positively correlated with inbound links. Linking a page on your website with any other website is called an inbound link. The more inbound links you have with high credibility websites, the better it is.

3. CREATING A BLOG AND OTHER MARKETING TACTICS

– APPROACH TOWARDS BLOGGING

While writing a blog, you should try to give your readers information that creates genuine value for them by disseminating authentic information. Although you can always include your keywords in your blogging, it can, sometimes, be more important to prioritize the quality and content of the blog over its SEO.

– BEFORE YOU START BLOGGING!

Your blog must be a part of your business website. By creating fresh and new content on your website, blogs can help keep your website fresh. Even search engines prefer to give a higher ranking to websites that constantly add fresh and new content. 

– KEY COMPONENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL BLOG POST

There are numerous things that need to be considered while creating a blog post including:

  • A gripping title for the post
  • Suitable content and proper formatting
  • Add multimedia content
  • Include links
  • Call-To-Action

4. HOW TO PROMOTE CONTENT THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media has tremendous potential to increase, both, brand awareness and conversions. It provides a common platform for everybody in the marketplace to communicate directly with each other. This includes existing and potential customers, businesses, or employees. 

Today, the social media landscape is dominated by Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and TikTok. These are also the most used digital marketing platforms.

 Platforms that offer the widest reach can be crucial for success. When planning a campaign, the first thing an advertiser thinks about should be to ensure that their launch and monitoring strategy is highly optimized for optimal results.

– HOW TO GO ABOUT TWITTER FOR BUSINESS

Twitter is an online social networking and micro blogging platform which lets you send and receive tweets of up to 140 characters. Here’s what you need to consider when using Twitter:

  • Your twitter’s username should be the name of your business.
  • Use your business logo as the profile image for your account.
  • Create a custom twitter background that provides additional information about your Business.
  • Use tools like TweetDeck to find out potential customers that your business should follow.

– HOW TO GO ABOUT FACEBOOK FOR BUSINESS

Facebook is a great platform for building and engaging with a community of brand proponents. In order to maximize Facebook’s utility, the first thing that you need to do is to set up a business page.

– HOW TO GO ABOUT LINKEDIN FOR BUSINESS

Since it is specifically aimed towards professionals, LinkedIn happens to be the best network to rely on when it comes to generating B2B leads. The first thing you need to do is to set up and complete your personal and company profile with LinkedIn for your Business.

You must not forget to optimize your information while setting up these profiles by adding links to your website and blog. Here are five main features of LinkedIn that will help you with lead generation and customer acquisition.

– LinkedIn Groups

Joining Groups on LinkedIn helps you in generating potential leads not only within your industry but even outside it.

– LinkedIn Advanced Search

It is an amazing tool to search for B2B leads. 

– LinkedIn Direct Ads

You can drive prospects to various destinations including your website or landing pages, LinkedIn groups and so on through LinkedIn direct ads – an advertising program by LinkedIn. 

5. HOW TO CONVERT WEBSITE TRAFFIC INTO LEADS

Once you’ve successfully brought in traffic to your website, you will need to ensure that the bulk of this traffic becomes paying customers.

When a lead comes to your website, they are at the top of the sales funnel. We need to move them down and eventually convert them. For this you need:

  • a solid offer for your prospects
  • a relevant call-to-action to promote it
  • Landing page with a form where visitors will submit their information. 

Let’s discuss the conversion process in detail:

– Pick the offer

This should be something that initially attracts the attention of the visitor and encourages them to fill out the form on your landing page. There is no given rule for offers. You can experiment and see what’s working. 

– Create Calls-to-action

Calls-to-action are actually a button or links that grabs the user’s attention and sends the visitors to the landing page. An effective call-to-action helps you convert a large number of your website visitors into leads.

– Create a landing page

By clicking the call-to-action button or link, visitors will be redirected to the landing page where they fill in their information. It is this place where visitors are converted to leads for your sales team to follow up with. 

6. LEAD CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION WITH TARGETED MESSAGES

Imagine this scenario – You have put in a great deal of effort to generate the leads but due lack of a proper follow up strategy these leads are not converting to paying customers. If you fail to build a proper relationship with your leads you are just wasting your effort and resources.

That is why it’s crucial to follow up with the leads through targeted messages. Lead nurturing is all about solidifying your relationship with your potential customer by sending targeted and well thought out, messages to them from time to time. The idea here is to stay on top of the mind of your customers and let them come to you themselves.

Lead nurturing helps you gently nudge your leads towards buying your product or service. An example could be sending out an automated series of emails to gently convert them. In essence, it is a process through which you make your leads feel the need for your product and incite their buying decisions.

Once you have the lead nurturing strategy ready, you need to execute and consistently monitor. Always ask yourself, how long a lead takes to convert and after how many touch points. Having answers to such questions will help you optimize strategy. 

– EMAIL MARKETING AS A BUSINESS TOOL

Email marketing not only helps you nurture the leads but also helps you increase your lead base. Here’s how you can put this into action.

– BUILD A LIST OF EMAIL RECEIVERS

By giving prospective leads an option to subscribe by providing their contact information, you will actively be able to build your lead base. Be sure to give them an incentive to subscribe for receiving emails. Be clear about what it is about your offer that makes it so valuable, and what unique and interesting information they will be receiving through your email newsletter. 

– CONTENT OF THE EMAILS

Emails should be personalized as much as possible, and also stay relevant to the interests of your recipients. Your email should not seem as if you are talking about your product instead it should communicate real value to the readers in an attempt to inform and educate them.

Ensure consistency while sending the emails and adhere to the cadence in which you have been sending emails whether daily, weekly or monthly, to set the right expectations. 

– CONVERT POTENTIAL LEADS TO POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS VIA EMAIL

Make sure your message is clearly linked to the end goal you want to achieve. Be very clear in guiding the email recipient about what is expected of them. Do you want them to download your new eBook or are you asking them to share a special offer on social media.

On the other hand, if your goal is lead generation then include a call-to-action in your email that takes the recipient straight to a landing page which captures the user’s information.

– MEASURE YOUR EMAIL PERFORMANCE

There are many metrics that can tell you about the performance of your email marketing campaigns such as delivery rate, unsubscribe rate, click rate, open rate, conversion rate etc. 

7. HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR MARKETING FOR MOBILE

Knowing the fact that the number of mobile devices is increasing rapidly, we can understand the importance of mobile marketing from a marketing perspective. As such, marketers need to pay particular attention to optimizing marketing strategy for mobile devices.

 Marketing campaigns need to be mobile-friendly to enable users to have the ultimate experience while interacting with a brand or company.

Keep the following pointers in mind while making your website mobile friendly!

 – Enable Mobile Redirect

The great thing about mobile marketing is that you can enable mobile redirect by creating a separate version of your website meant for mobile viewers only. Using this feature, a line of code is inserted on your website’s homepage to assess the size of a visitor’s browser screen. Based on the screen size, the visitor is redirected to the site meant for their device.

– Using Mobile CSS

In addition to redirecting users, you have another option which is the use of mobile CSS to make your website mobile friendly. CSS helps you optimize your website with respect to mobile devices.

SIGNIFICANT ELEMENTS TO BE OPTIMIZED FOR MOBILE

After optimizing your website for mobile friendliness, you also need to optimize other elements for optimal mobile experience such as:

• emails

• call-to-action

• landing page

• downloads

• videos

8. HOW TO ANALYZE AND REFINE STRATEGIES

Now when you are at the bottom of the sales and marketing funnel you should analyze the performance of your marketing campaigns, identify those that performed well and discontinue those which performed poorly. For example, what are the successes metric for an advertiser focused on branding?

These would include:

  • Reach and frequency
  • Clicks and Impressions
  • Cost-per-conversions
  • Conversion Rate

Based on this document, you can now create, launch, optimize and evaluate your marketing campaigns to take your business to even greater heights.

LEARN DIGITAL MARKETING

To succeed in digital marketing, you need to develop the skill-set required to work with digital marketing technologies.

In addition, you need to build a diverse knowledge base so you can combine multiple learnings to achieve the best possible results.

To build up your digital marketing skills, you need to become an expert in the following areas:

  • Search engine marketing (includes SEO and PPC)
  • Content Marketing
  • Inbound Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Digital Marketing Analytics Tools

Summarizing the above tricks. These tools can help digital marketers monitor what people are reading or looking at, how long they’re reading or looking at those things, and the total number of people are engaged in the process. The data gathered is then used to form digital strategies that can be used to convert interest to purchases.