Effective Digital Marketing Techniques
While “Go-to-Market” concept is still a thing in our countries, digital marketing techniques through digital technologies continues to develop and improve. Digital marketers and advertisers got powerful tools in their hands that keep getting better everyday. Tools and platforms such as social media, search engines and big data provide endless opportunities to reach more customers and increase revenues.
There are many digital marketing tools available, and they are all relatively easy-to-use but the trick is to select or mix-and-match the one’s that best suits your business goals.
Here is an info-graph highlighting the most common digital marketing channels:
Industry News
Have you started a blog for your business? If not, you should probably start right now, blog posts with content of most recent industry updates will demonstrate how on-trend your business is, increase your organic search presence and definitely drives more customers. Content creation is the key, blog posts needs to contain relevant information, a certain level of copy writing and experienced content. If done right, the business could become an industry source of information and opinions. As for the tools, WordPress is the most powerful blogging tool out there, among others.
Social Media Marketing
This is a widely known method, and it is based on sharing of information and direct communication with consumers, followers, partners and the competition on social media sites with the aim of marketing products and services. Social media is already considered to be a powerful marketing platform and most companies would have a presence already established there.
In general, social media is now an essential part of any marketing campaign and one that won’t be going away anytime soon, it is here to stay. In effect, it is currently one of the most effective, focused methods of targeting a specific demography. A social media marketing campaign can be quite simple, yet, so effective.
Here is an info-graph highlighting some of the social media marketing benefits.
Comment and Opinion Pieces
These provide great opportunities for ‘link bait’ and can attract a large amount of attention for a digital marketing campaign. Opinion pieces can be used to offer individual comments on recent news releases or trends. An eye-catching, provoking headline that includes important catch phrases is a strong method of creating better link bait. You can use sites such as “Quora” to answer users question and direct users to your business.
Content Marketing
Digital marketing through content marketing makes use of strong subject matter to entice customers to your online site. The content can be any subject and method of delivery, from blogs, forums, instructional guides, Q&A sessions, news articles, pictures, banners, podcasts, webinars, gifs and links to social media sites.
Here is an info-graph highlighting some of the content marketing benefits.
Email Marketing
Email campaigns are usually carried out once a list of target consumers has been compiled. The list is then contacted with a cleverly designed email advertisement, relevant to the target audience. This can take the format of newsletters, product release date launches, online only announcements and are all instantaneous and relatively inexpensive. To strengthen this method, it can be used in collaboration with other strategies, include linking social media, websites and customer service contacts to the email campaign.
Here is an info-graph highlighting some of Email Campaigns benefits.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Digital Marketing through search engine optimization is one of the most popular methods used to boost your online presence by increasing your pages ranking on search engines such as Google. This involves building SEO friendly website with proper keywords and back links. Google trends serves as a good tool to check what keywords are trending in web searches and use them as keywords on your website.
Here is an info-graph highlighting some of SEO benefits.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Another type of PPC advertising method as the company pays per every single click to link to a website. The majority of social networks offer this method of advertising, not just search engines, and the ads are shown in the targeted user’s feed as a pay per click advertisement.
Here is an info-graph highlighting some of PPC benefits.
Search Engine Marketing
SEO and PPC together with SERM (Search Engine reputation management) forms the technical term Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Think about it as the big umbrella with all the three mentioned techniques lies underneath it.
In some cases, instead of just including certain keywords or phrases, a company may opt to pay for advertisements to feature on the result pages of search engines. This is known as Search Engine Marketing or SEM and it works by companies bidding on keywords that feature frequently on Google or Bing from users entering specific words. This means that the company can advertise its products by having their advertisement pop up beside the results for those specific words or phrases.
The greatest benefit from search engine marketing is that it places products exactly where they need to be at the exact moment that a potential customer wants to buy that product. This is not available with any other advertising method, which explains why this method of marketing is so popular and valuable and provides quick returns on investments.
Here is an info-graph highlighting some of SEM benefits.
Mobile Marketing
Traditionally, mobile marketing was limited to targeting your potential customers through SMS, which is still widely used up till now. But with the increased popularity of Smart Phones the term “Mobile Marketing” might also include social media marketing and other forms of digital marketing mentioned above. However, if we want to specify a scope for mobile marketing we would limit to three areas:
- SMS marketing, obviously.
- Mobile Apps such as Whatsapp Business.
- Responsive Website for your business that loads perfectly on a mobile device.
Conclusion
The importance of digital marketing options and methods cannot be understated. Quite simply, it provides companies with opportunities for competitive advantages. It is a relatively low-cost option and it is an instant, targeted method of linking a company with a large interested field of potential consumers. It is also an opportunity for companies to deliver real-time customer services, which improves customer satisfaction, increasing loyalty and profits. It enables companies to compete on a global basis and gives them an online presence worldwide.
In summary, the digital world is now an integral reality of our everyday lives. It is our first port of call when we need information or if we want to buy a product. This shows the absolute necessity for a strategic business plan to guide and secure this crucial competitive business advantage.
Did we miss anything?
Please share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Ciatec is a digital marketing agency providing services to clients in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Beirut and other areas. At Ciatec, we can assist you in your digital marketing campaigns either through our consulting service, or through training your staff with our Digital Marketing Training program. Contact us today to get a quote.
