To have a good marketing plan requires strategic thinking. Follow these 8 ways to improve your existing online marketing strategy.
As a good entrepreneur you need to capitalize on every effort you put into the business, especially in terms of budget allocation for marketing. That is why it is vital that you focus only on the most profitable marketing channels that have a positive impact on your digital bottom line, and mainly, using it under the Inbound approach, since it is one of those channels that offer results, and According to our studies in Latin America, they allow you to save up to 60% in the acquisition of leads, and double the generation of business opportunities.
Marketing in the digital channel has also been shown to deliver higher conversion rates resulting in revenue growth of up to 2.8x. With these growth expectations, many small and medium-sized companies are generating up to 3.3 times better opportunities for business expansion.
It is not surprising that due to this, many business owners are migrating their budgets from traditional to digital, but it is also true that many, due to bad advice or thinking that doing digital marketing following the same laws as the traditional channel , fail and end up disappointed, so to avoid that, I set out to develop these 8 steps that you should not lose sight of if you want to succeed with your internet marketing strategy.
1. Update your digital marketing strategy
I know many businesses that year after year repeat the same wrong pattern within their digital marketing strategies. There are also others who, despite reaching their growth objectives, do not review how to improve performance and other indicators that they should measure in their digital strategy.
Remember that the digital world is constantly evolving and what worked last year may not produce the same results now or in the future.
To get good results you can’t put a strategy on “autopilot” as it simply won’t lead anywhere. You must be constantly measuring, improving and learning. So my first recommendation is to get a fresh perspective on your current digital marketing strategy, as there is always opportunity to improve or change – and get the marketing results you want.
2. Build your own team or hire a specialized marketing agency
Revamping your online marketing strategy can also mean creating your own digital marketing team, or hiring a specialized company to help you execute new strategies.
If you are looking for an agency specialized in new methodology, such as Inbound Marketing, that refreshes your way of doing marketing and sales on the Internet, I recommend that you review these considerations before hiring one.
Or if you are looking to build your own team, these are some of the new key functions that you must have when hiring an Inbound Marketing agency.
Storytellers
A vital element for the success of a digital strategy is content, all kinds of compelling, high-quality and original content that tells stories and is oriented to accompany the journey of your consumers.
Therefore, in your team you should consider a good content editor and a team of creative writers who let their imagination fly to produce the content with which you will attract, fall in love with and convert prospects into clients.
Data Analyst
That interprets the data from your website, your sales pages, social media pages and other digital marketing channels that can give you valuable information about your leads, customers; and use to optimize the results. Hire someone who is analytical but who at the same time knows how to tell stories through the data and manage the information in order to always improve the conversions of your digital assets.
Social Media Manager
Social media is an important channel of communication between your brand and the community and should be treated as a separate area of marketing on its own, working closely with the other members of your digital team and efficiently managed by a social media specialist. social media.
Liaison with customer service
Customer service and engagement is important if you want your business to be sustained over time. The person in charge of being the liaison with your customer service department will be responsible for all communications and interactions with the target audience. Make sure your comments and questions are answered correctly, and you should always be on the lookout for negative comments or even attacks on your online reputation – so your team can act on it.
3. Make your brand more social, local and mobile
It is not enough to have a digital presence with a website and a profile on social networks, you must drive and maximize your efforts to make your brand as social, local and mobile as possible to obtain the best results. With the rise of smartphones, it has become an extension of our body, the first shopping assistant and the gateway to the Internet, and your consumers are looking for products and services by geolocation.
Make sure you have a website optimized for mobile users and also master local SEO strategies.
Social adoption goes beyond having profiles on major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google +, but must include an active social presence to make your business more enjoyable and engaging.
4. Implement Multichannel Digital Marketing campaigns
To maximize results, your business must learn to implement a multi-channel digital marketing strategy to be more effective and generate favorable responses from your target audience on whatever channel they are on. Connecting and engaging with your target audience is crucial to the success and survival of your business, so it is vital to start a multi-channel campaign now.
Studies show that consumers go through at least six channels before making the final decision to purchase a product or service. Because of this, more and more brands are increasing their multi-channel digital marketing strategies by up to 137%, integrating display, mobile, social and video marketing into their digital mix, with up to 500% increase in brand advertising on these channels.
5. Diversify your digital strategies
A multichannel digital marketing strategy will give you good results, but if you do it on various channels at the same time, it will give you even better results. Remember that not all of your ideal customers connect through search engines or social networks, so focusing only on those channels to drive traffic to your website will make you lose sight of channels and new opportunities to capture more leads.
With the wide variety of information channels available virtually at their fingertips, today’s consumers are more empowered and have more freedom to choose their purchasing options. With more than 80% of consumers doing their own research process using all the channels available online, successfully generating leads through all the channels your audiences use will give you more business opportunities.
6. Develop a memorable content strategy
A memorable content strategy should be the gasoline of your digital strategy, and even more so if you are using the Inbound Marketing methodology to attract, convert, sell, and delight your customers.
With so many competitors out there, it’s not enough to just produce content. Instead, you should focus on creating epic content that your specific audiences definitely want to read, watch and then like, share it with your entire network of contacts until it goes viral.
Both B2B and B2C businesses are creating content marketing strategies to obtain the following benefits:
- Deeper engagement and higher conversions
- 83% more traffic
- Twice as many readers in a matter of 2 weeks
- Attract up to 200 thousand page views in 7 months
- Generate hundreds of shares and thousands of visitors
7. Enrich your content with videos, images and links
The future of digital marketing is visual and converging video, images and graphic elements in your content can generate up to 94% increase in interaction. A press release that includes images can generate 14% more views, and if it includes both audio and video it can increase up to 48% more views.
Content with visual elements generates not only views, but also manages to increase up to 180% more engagement from your target audience. The greater the number of times your content is liked and shared, the more relevance your pages will acquire and that is one of the SEO factors that will help you to be found in search engines.
8. Embrace a continuous improvement mindset
Lastly, you need to have a continuous improvement mindset regarding your digital marketing strategies. It is forbidden to be satisfied with the status quo and instead constantly perform A/B tests, scenarios to improve ROI, obtain insights from Analytics, formulate improvement actions, and execute them systematically.