Digital Marketing: 4 Easy, Essentials Checklist
Did you know that around 3 out of 4 of kiwis go online on a daily basis? Not only that, but 43% jump online more than once a day and 26% are online “almost constantly.” These numbers really highlight how important a well tuned and accurate digital marketing strategy really is. “So how can we utilise this huge pool of online traffic?” You might ask; well read on! I’ll be covering 4 easy, digital marketing essentials that’ll give your business an edge.
Digital Marketing?… The whats and whys
In a nut shell, digital marketing is the promotion of your brand or service/product, to connect with potential customers online and other forms of digital communication. This includes your web site, email marketing, social media, Google ads, any web-based advertising. Digital marketing all happens online, whereas “traditional marketing” targets through physical media: Magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail.
A typical digital marketing strategy is designed to reach a specific, target audience based on what you’re selling or offering. Success is often measured in analytics showing customer reach, traffic(number of visitors to a particular page) and of course how many sales or signups are made through the campaign(this is called “conversion”). Often framed by ROI(Return on investment), making the most out of your budget and time.
All this, if executed well, should result in more sales and the eventual growth of your businesses’ online presence.
Company branded marketing campaign for IG, bright and effective. Consistent branding, on trend.
4 Essential Digital Marketing tips you can action today
There’s no question that investing in digital marketing is a vital part of growing your business — as an experienced web designer and digital marketer take it from me, a good digital marketing strategy will directly impact the success of your business. No matter how strong your product or service is or even how savvy you are as an entrepreneur, your digital marketing strategy can make or break your success in relation to your competitors.
Here are some key digital marketing tasks you can action today to get you started,
Optimise your website
Good content is key! It’s important to be precise and accurate, avoid unnecessary lines of text, less is more. Your location and target audience must be clarified within your copy. Using correct and appropriate key words within your content and strong, appropriate title and headings tags (H1) will help Google file your site appropriately for browsers. SEO(search engine optimisation) is VERY important, it directly effects your Google ranking, it’s the difference between making that 1st browser search page… or ending up on page 11.
“On-site SEO” refers to a curated content strategy on your website, accurate keywords, popular search words and phrases, meta descriptions, header tags, alt-tags. “Off-site SEO” involves other people and websites vouching for your content with backlinks, social media marketing(organic and paid), guest blogging and linked brand mentions on other websites and blogs.
Technically, ensure your site loads as fast as possible, watch out for large images that can slow load times. Compressing your images can drastically increase your SEO rating, pulling your Google ranking up with it — high Google ranking = high business visibility.
There’s a lot you can do to optimise your website’s performance and improve SEO — This should be an annual task as SEO standards continuously change and aim to fully reevaluate your target keywords every 3-6 months. Here’s a list of current ⟶ SEO standards for you to check.
Social media posting
Social media marketing is an inexpensive and effective way to reach more people across different platforms. Different social media platforms are more appropriate than others for specific businesses, for example, it wouldn’t make much sense for a company selling dog-treats to focus on a Linkedin marketing campaign, just like it wouldn’t make much sense for a professional medical practice to invest money or time into marketing through Pinterest.
Having a social media presence is mandatory — not only do your customers expect it, but it’s crucial for gaining insight on your audience, connecting with individuals online. With the use of organic social media marketing or paid ads, you can get to know your followers, improve your strategy and find better ways to promote your products and services.
Social media platforms have many options for reaching specific audiences, but it’s up to you to create engaging content that makes prospective customers want to learn more about your business and brand. Effective social media marketing for small businesses gives you the unique opportunity to humanise your brand and drive traffic back to your website — generating more leads and sales while also increasing brand awareness and trust.
It’s as easy as creating a business page on a social media channel, organising a posting schedule and focusing on what works once you gather the returned data with Google Analytics or whatever analytical platform you work with.
Start a blog
I can hear the collective sighs now — Yes, starting a blog seems like a big commitment… I’ll admit it’s something I struggle with myself, but I also know how effective regular posting can be.
Let’s say you own a business selling classic cars. Writing blog posts about classic cars allows you to promote your expertise of the topic and your knowledge of the market, you’re marketing yourself and your business — You can gain trust and reputation if your content is well written and worth a share.
A very underrated point about consistent blogging is the suggestion that you’re an active and up-to-date. Nothing looks quite as bad as a dusty, old blog, with the last post being years ago! You might question whether or not they’re still in business.
Blog posts are versatile forms of content, you can share to your social channels, create back links to other affiliated businesses(rub my back and i’ll rub yours = widen your exposure), promote your brand within the post and create that marketing funnel leading back to your website for sale or signup potential. Sharing blog articles in email campaigns will keep your existing customers up to date, building trust and sustaining that built value.
Upgrade your visual content
The digital environment is overflowing with content and visual pollution, so no matter how effective our marketing strategy looks on paper it’ll fall short if not packaged and delivered in a visually appealing and alluring way. It’s important to grab the attention of your audience and make sure you’re being seen above your competitors — create high quality and market appropriate visuals, spend time investigating brands within your market and competitor research.
According to HubSpot Research, more than 50% of consumers expect to see videos from brands. Additionally, most social media apps, like Facebook and Instagram are embracing more visual layouts. To keep up with these trends, a good strategy would be to start creating videos, reels for social media and EDM campaigns.
It’s important that your brand’s online presence is high quality and consistent, if you roll out a new marketing campaign with lack-luster visuals that fail to impress… expect low traffic back to your site and even lower sale and subscription conversions.
It’s worth working with a designer to manage your brand’s identity, this way you’ll have a better chance of making a splash among your competitors rather than sinking into the crowd.
You can use Social Marketing platforms like Meta Business Suit to create and push multiple social posts out to different channels at the same time. You can also track the success of campaigns with analytics.
There you have it! My 4 fast and easy ways to immediately implement and improve your businesses approach to digital marketing — there’s a lot more you can do to take your business to the next level, the digital marketing rabbit hole is deep but the value it can return when done right can be huge.
