Digital Marketing Strategies That Businesses Should Consider
Even though the pandemic wreaked havoc in our lives, it also significantly contributed to the expansion of digital channels in our lives and businesses. Individuals and businesses turned to digital channels, first as a convenience and then as a necessity, spurred by the rapid expansion of these channels. Even after the pandemic, the habit has struck.
Business analysts do not expect a reversion to old business models that relied on broadcast and print media for marketing activities. Even businesses that were never expected to take to digital channels are now online and propose to conduct their business online.
With such a sea-change happening in business and personal attitudes, marketing efforts cannot stay aloof from digital channels. Modern businesses cannot exclude digital channels for promoting their offerings as such channels provide benefits in terms of cost, time and overall effectiveness.
Some digital strategies that businesses could consider to stay competitive are:
Content marketing
Content is king in the digital space because they serve to connect with customers in the long term. This means that good content can serve to grow a business while bad content can mar business prospects. Content has the advantage of connecting emotionally with people and therefore the use of effective content in association with other marketing elements can enhance the messages that companies try to put out to their clients. Other add-ons such as animations and memes serve to enhance the content that is pushed across for the consumption of customers and potential customers.
Modern-day content marketing strategies aim to forge relationships with people. Content strategies are no more limited to single-focussed advertisements as in the past. They now serve as a bridge to enhance the experience of users and seek to educate, collaborate and inform customers who are seeking products or services. Modern content empowers customers in the decision-making process
Content strategies have become more customer-focused these days than company-focused and the packing of information has become a very important strategy employed by companies for their clients. Companies can use content within websites, social media etc. to deliver their messages to their clients. Rather than pushing generic content in every channel, businesses can benefit by customising content as per the limits and advantages of each channel.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is, in simple terms, devising strategies that would project businesses first among peers in a web-search result. The strategies involved in SEO are significant and often companies need to devote a significant amount of time and energy to devise proper SEO methods. Even though companies might develop impactful content, their words might not reach customers because their site could remain buried among the heap of results that are reflected in a web search. Therefore effective SEO strategies are needed to promote web rankings in popular search engines.
There are various strategies involved in SEO. For example, companies could resort to on-page SEO to ensure that their pages have a specific keyword density that would rank their website among the top results. Off-page SEO strategies involve references and backlinks from other sites. Creating backlinks is in itself a marketing strategy and involves collaboration with different players.
The importance of SEO comes to the fore when we consider the fact that about 70 per cent of purchases are initiated with a generic search. Therefore, being ranked by top search engines is invariable for companies to reach their potential customers.
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is often resorted to by customers to achieve more visibility when customers conduct a search operation. Compared to SEO, which involves content-management techniques and other strategies, SEM is a paid tactic that appears to show company websites at the top of search results. This strategy is also called pay-per-click (PPC) marketing and involves advertisement management. The difference between SEM and SEO is that SEM gives quick results because it is a paid service. SEO could take some time for results to be visible.
SEM is considered to be one of the most effective marketing strategies in the digital space for companies. This is especially useful when companies launch their marketing campaigns. Further, SEMs allow companies to filter target audiences based on various parameters and lay the foundation for data analytics.
Social Media Marketing
Businesses cannot ignore social media as a medium for dispersing their marketing material. Marketing campaigns involve posting content on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and so on. Strategies for advertising on each channel differ in approach as each channel has various parameters that could be limiting or complementing. For example on Instagram, a picture would suffice as marketing material while on WhatsApp, a video would do the trick. At the same time on Facebook, customers would expect a detailed description of the business.
Content managers and marketing strategies need to identify their audience before they create content for a specific channel. The recent growth of social media has forced businesses to switch the majority of their advertisement efforts from broadcast media to social media platforms. Since interactivity is more on social media, companies can keep track of their advertisements and collect feedback instantly.