With there being so many digital marketing strategies to choose from, it can lead to a spell of decision paralysis for many marketers. The key is to find a marketing strategy that will be effective for the niche that the company or client provides services to.
Creating a successful strategy will take time and testing to adjust to the ebb and flow of an audience’s needs. However, a few winning digital marketing strategies make excellent starting points from where marketers can start to tweak their approach.
Here’s a list of the most effective digital marketing strategies that can help to expand brand reach and generate customer engagement.
Why Having a Good Digital Marketing Strategy is Important
Those KPIs need to look good, and the company or client wants to see a return on their investment sooner rather than later. That means a marketer needs to make sure their approach is as efficient and data-driven as possible.
A good marketing strategy facilitates that objective. It is a detailed plan that dictates how the marketing team will accomplish its goals. So naturally, those goals will have to be outlined first. For example, it could be a content marketing strategy that includes an explainer video campaign to drive prospective leads.
Without a solid digital marketing strategy in place, the marketing team is effectively shooting in the dark, hoping to catch some fish. Marketers may know a company’s marketing goals, but if they don’t have a strategy in place, then they won’t know how to achieve them.
5 of the Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies Used Today
Smart Insights data showed that social media marketing and content marketing were voted the most effective strategies for 2018. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the most-used strategy among B2B marketers in 2019 was email campaigns.
While these are good indicators of what works, keep in mind that things will differ among various audiences and industries. A good marketer knows that an effective strategy requires constant tweaking based on data and trends. Don’t be afraid to redefine goals or even switch strategies.
1. Social Media Marketing
Social media is generally used to increase brand awareness and to generate leads. Around 60% of consumers use social media platforms across the board to make purchasing decisions. That’s a huge point of influence businesses don’t want to miss out on.
Campaigns can focus on one platform or span several – it all depends on the target audience and the company’s goals. Some strategies will tailor different approaches to every platform within the same campaign to capitalize on the strengths of each. Most social media platforms also have dedicated marketing tools to help marketers collect data and fine-tune their approach.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing encompasses any sort of content the company generates to engage and connect with an audience. This can include blog posts, white papers, webinars, videos, and infographics.
The main thing to keep in mind about content marketing is that it should never look like sales copy. Its purpose should be to solve a problem or provide information about something. For example, a shop that supplies gardening tools can create videos about gardening tips and tricks. Naturally, they would feature their own products in those videos, but they should never overtly sell the audience on them.
3. Email Marketing
Email drip campaigns are an effective way to get leads through the sales funnel. It’s also often used to retain existing customers by keeping them informed/coming back for more. Email is similar to content marketing in the sense that it can be used to entertain and inform – but email can also be used for direct advertisement. And it’s a very cost-effective method of doing so.
Keep in mind that email campaigns should generally be personalized according to audience segments. Since people will be at different stages in the sales funnel, marketers need to create different drip campaigns for each segment.
4. SEO
Organic traffic still makes up a huge market segment in most industries, and therefore, SEO is still as important as ever. Almost half of Google users claim to regularly discover new companies/products by searching online. That’s a powerful incentive to focus efforts on SEO.
Proper search engine optimization results in more click-throughs which attracts more potential customers or clients. It should cater to every type of audience the company is targeting and should be able to intercept them all. SEO is mainly used on-page, on a company’s website, and in any blog posts it creates.
5. Influencer Marketing
The adage “there’s no better marketing than word-of-mouth” still holds true where influencers are concerned. These socialites help companies increase their reach and relevance with their audience. Influencers also come in all shapes and forms – while influencers are mainly used in B2C marketing, there is a steady increase in B2B influencer platforms as well.
Conclusion
In today’s technological age, digital marketing is the best way to reach new customers and keep existing ones loyal. That requires a strong strategy backing the marketing team’s initiatives, to know what to do and how to do it.
