Have you ever asked yourself why you need digital marketing? Does the idea of going digital scare you? Whatever your reasoning is, digital marketing is a must-have tool to help you pave your way to brand success. You should jump on the bandwagon not because everyone’s doing it but do it for yourself and watch it bloom into something beautiful.
Listen, when I first started digital marketing, I thought it was pointless. My initial thought was, “How on Earth am I going to compete with all these established brands that have been around since the Triassic Period?” After working in the industry, I discovered you need it; what’s the point of creating a brand when no one knows about it other than yourself and your close associates?
You get my drift. Here are my reasons why you should invest in digital marketing and make it your bestie!
Brand Recognition
Brand recognition comes to no surprise digital marketing is an asset that helps amplify your brand to the masses. In a digital world, it’s essential to make a splash utilizing every possible channel such as a website and social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). While you won’t dominate every channel from the get-go, the idea is to create pages for your products that allow people to find you.
Cost-Effective
Digital marketing is cost-effective. How so? You don’t need separate budgets for physical advertisements. Instead, use those budgets on creatives or hiring digital marketing specialists to give you a drill down of actionable steps to take. You’re paying for their brain power, human resources, and creatives (Shutterstock, etc.)
Better Than Traditional Marketing
In the past, traditional marketing was the answer to spread the word about your brand. While this type of marketing remains relevant, it’s not as effective as going digital. How come? With traditional marketing, you can’t control who sees you your ad. However, by going digital, you can. Plus, it’s great for the environment, too. No need to print out ads, pamphlets, and brochures. Isn’t that great?
Targeting Your Audience
Ask yourself: Who is your audience? You can better optimize your content and strategies. Additionally, by understanding who your audience is, you can better craft your brand’s persona to suit them.
For example, Facebook allows you to target your desired demographic down to the desired age group, location, and gender. It’s a better way to make sure your posts get noticed by the right people. If you’re unsure who you’re targeting, set up a Google Analytics account and implement a tracking code on your website. If this sounds too overwhelming, get in touch with a digital specialist! *Wink, wink*
Optimization
Content optimization is vital for spreading the word about you and what you offer. You can optimize your content. How do you maximize your content in a sea of competitors? Let’s look:
Content Optimization: Content is king. It applies to every channel, more so in the digital sphere. To get started, understand the 4 pillars of content marketing (also known as the content marketing matrixes): educate, inspire, entertain, and persuade. Your content should follow these four rules regardless of industry. People use the internet to gain information. Thus your content should answer their queries.
Image Optimization: Optimize your title and alt tags for images. Furthermore, if you want to cut down on your website load speed, use jpg for pictures and png for vectors.
Website Optimization: The speed of your website plays a factor in retaining your audience or not. Sites that don’t load within 3 seconds see a higher bounce rate of 60-80%. Furthermore, it’s imperative that your site doesn’t contain messy codes or excess javascript; these factors contribute to website deceleration.
Website speeds and load times relate to Technical SEO, by the way.
Video Optimization: 90% of information transmitted to your brain is visual, and roughly 70-75% of people respond better to visual. The video is a type of content as many audiences prefer visual information and stimuli to help them decide on a purchase. How do you optimize this? Optimize its title, description, and transcribe the video and post it where needed. If you have a video posted on YouTube, embed its code on your website, and publish transcriptions there.
Does that mean visual works all the time? Nope. Using visuals stimulates the brain and makes you ‘feel’ things.
SEO Optimization
Yes, you need SEO in today’s world. Google favors a website with content that appears natural, engaging, and answers questions. In 2010, the powerhouse launched Hummingbird, an algorithm that focuses on website’s ability to answer questions. It’s also dubbed as conversational search. Also, let’s not forget the use of keywords.
How do you optimize keywords? Try long tail SEO keywords and generic keywords. Long tail SEO keywords have a better chance of being caught by Google’s spiders and showing up on the first page. Oh, and let’s not keyword stuff, okay? That’s bad.
Caters to Mobile Users
Did you know that cell phone usage exceeded desktop usage back in 2015? If you need to revamp your website, now’s the time to do it. Make sure your site features a responsive or adaptive design.
You may not know this, but it’s only recent Google pays close attention to search results on mobile phones. Websites made for mobile rank better than their desktop counterparts.
Better ROI
Digital marketing is measurable. There are tools on the internet that helps you measure your efforts.
Boost Your Creativity
Creativity shouldn’t be limited to just articles and blogs; you can do so much more! Go crazy with podcasts, infographics, video graphics, and videos. Get those creative juices flowing! Of course, if you can’t do them in-house, hire graphics gurus to get the job done.
However, before you hand it off to them, you must establish your brand’s tone of voice, color (Pantone), and persona.
Super Engagement
And what better way than to retain your customers by talking with them? Pages with a higher response rate see more customer engagement, and it shows that you care about them. Make sure to respond to any inquiries within 24-hours.
I hope this gives you an idea of digital marketing. And I’ll be honest with you; it will start out slow from the beginning. You might not see immediate leads and conversions, and that’s okay. Digital marketing takes time to work, and expect a ton of trial and errors to find out what strategy works for you. Digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all model.
Still not sure what to do? Talk to one of our experts and let us enable you to achieve digital freedom!
Sincerely,
Narisa (The Wordsmith)