A digital marketing strategy is a road map that will determine the online and digital marketing efforts you will make and how you can achieve your goals through them. As a result, you will be able to reach across multiple aspects of your business and easily assess the effectiveness of your efforts. Other perks of having a digital marketing strategy include lower costs, higher online brand awareness, and higher value of company’s website.
If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy but want one, you need to address the following to make it worthwhile.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is an important factor in digital marketing, which is why you need to include it in your strategy. Here are three tips you should especially incorporate in your 2014 strategy.
- Focus on Providing Quality, Buyer-Centric Content – To pull this off, you need to create your buyer personas and create content that addresses them. You should also incorporate variety in your content, i.e. include short and long pieces, images and videos. In addition, update your blog and answer your customers’ questions.
- Add Semantic Search to Your To Do List – Semantic search is a technique that allows users to find keywords as well as determine the meaning of the words people use. One way to ensure a website’s readiness for this is by implementing semantic markup through authorship for your blog. Also incorporate rich snippets formats like reviews, events and products. A great example of a live Google Author Markup shows up below. Great CTR!
- Optimize for Mobile – You need to consider the fact that most of your traffic comes from mobile devices. Therefore, find out how your website visitors are accessing your website and then decide whether to go for a responsive design.
Social Media Marketing
One in three Canadians can’t spend a day without checking their social media feeds . To ensure that your digital marketing strategy satisfies your existing and potential clients’ needs, here is what you should do.
- Brand Your Business – For this, you need to create social network profiles on some of the top social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. Don’t forget to update these regularly with unique content and that from other sources.
- Jump on the Google+ Bandwagon – Google+ is one of the great platforms to ensure maximum exposure online. Create a page for your company and update it regularly. To boost your SEO efforts, connect your Google+ profile with your content to establish Google Authorship.
Paid Media (SEM)
You need to pay a little extra at first to ensure smooth sailing in the future. By advertising through the likes of pay per click (PPC), display ads and retargeting, you can reach unprecedented heights. Simply follow these steps.
- Dabble in Social Media Advertising – If you know your audience, target them through social media ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Promote your posts, offer promotions and track both after integrating with Google Analytics.
- Focus on Existing Clients – Remarket on Google’s Display Network and Remarketing Lists for Search Advertising. Also dabble in Facebook remarketing and Twitter retargeting.
- Create Landing Pages – Test elements and pages to boost your conversion rate. Also experiment with Social Login forms to allow users to sign in with their Facebook accounts for example.
- Target Mobile Users – In addition to creating mobile-friendly landing pages, create specific PPC campaigns for mobile devices and take advantage of ad extensions like Location.
Don’t forget to measure your success through methods like Attribution Modeling and by comparing your progress with your strategy.
