On their own, digital marketing strategies are powerful. Combined in the perfect proportions? A recipe for success.
Typically, digital marketing components include:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Web design
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Video Marketing
Now that you have an overview, let’s take an in-depth look at each digital marketing components.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
The foundation for successful digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) refers to a number of strategies designed to boost your rankings in online search results. Why do you want to achieve top rankings? A staggering 75 percent of people don’t look past the first page of search results. You can have the best-designed website in the world, but if it doesn’t rank on the first page, most people will never find it.
When your website ranks at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), more qualified leads will find and contact you when searching for products or services related to your business. In other words, higher search rankings translate into more leads, phone calls, and revenue for your company. How do you rank in search results? You can use numerous SEO strategies for your business including:
- Create quality content that answers searchers’ questions
- Clean up your site’s code and increase page speed
- Streamline your site’s design and navigation to improve user experience (UX)
- Earn backlinks from reputable sites
- And more
It’s important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy, so don’t expect to see results overnight. While SEO requires regular upkeep to maintain top rankings, the results are well worth the investment for your business.
There are more than 200 signals these crawlers use to determine what a page is about, but here’s a basic breakdown of what search engines look for:
- Secured sites (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
- Websites that are mobile-friendly
- Schema markup
- Webpage content quality
- Webpage content length
- Page speed
- Social signals
- Quality backlinks
- Optimized images
- Domain age
- User experience (UX)
SEO is one of the best digital marketing channels you can invest in—leads have a 14.6% close rate, compared to only 1.7% for outbound leads like print ads.
2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an excellent strategy for maintaining a presence in search results while you establish organic rankings with SEO. If you’re looking to boost your rankings quickly, PPC can start driving qualified leads to your site the minute your ads go live — and it’s an affordable option for businesses in most industries.
One of the best parts of PPC advertising? You only pay when people click your ads. This means you’ll avoid wasting money trying to reach people who aren’t interested in your products or services. In addition, PPC offers advanced targeting options that allow you to hone in on your target customers. With PPC, you can target people based on demographics, location, and even the type of device they use. These targeting options, coupled with the budget-friendliness of PPC, make PPC a valuable component of successful digital marketing.
You’re not limited to paid search ads if you want PPC ads. Within “pay per click” there are a few different types of ad strategies:
- Paid search campaigns
- Social media campaigns
- Google Local Services ads
- YouTube ads
- Display ads
- Shopping ads (Ecommerce)
So, how effective are PPC ads? Well, businesses make an average of $2 in income for every $1 they spend in Google Ads.
3. Web design
Ultimately, the digital marketing components you use drive leads back to your website — and you want your site to leave a positive impression on potential customers. Nearly 95 percent of a person’s first impression relates to web design, so it’s a crucial factor in your online marketing plan. If your site looks like it’s straight out the ‘90s or takes forever to load, it will likely send visitors searching for the back button. To keep people interested and engaged on your site, you need to implement a custom design that reflects your brand and makes it easy for people to find the information they need. In addition to ensuring your site loads at top speeds, you also want to streamline your navigation to improve the user experience and make it easier for leads to contact you.
YOUR WEBSITE
Your website is the mother of all online real estate, and arguably your best marketing asset. If the web were a shopping mall, it would be your storefront. Having a website for the purpose of driving leads and sales is also known as inbound marketing—a strategy focused on bringing customers to you via company-created content on your website.
So, first, you need a website. Second, your website needs to be five things to be successful:
- It needs to be fast– Your website needs to be fast. While website speed is largely subjective, every single visitor needs to see SOMETHING happen on your website within three seconds. After three seconds, 53% of mobile consumers will click the “back” button.
- It needs to be secure– Your website needs to be HTTPS instead of HTTP. The modern consumer is informed. One side effect of this is that they’re much more aware of the dangers of visiting an unsecured website. Hacks are all too common—and your website visitors know this. If your website has any place where users can fill in personal information (even if it’s just a phone number and email address) it needs to be secure. Heck, even if it’s just a blog with no contact form it should be secure because website security is a search ranking factor.
- It needs to be mobile-friendly– Mobile website traffic (website traffic that happens on either a tablet or a smartphone) now outpaces desktop web traffic, and experts predict that at least 30% of searches will happen without a screen by 2020.
- It needs to have a clean, easy-to-use design featuring your contact info– Your design needs to look good and add value. Key components are: Having contact into in the upper-right corner, clear calls-to-action, clear navigation that can be easily tapped on a mobile device, and an easy way to contact you. This is called having a good user experience (UX).
- It needs to be optimized for SEO– People need to be able to find your website, and most of the time, they find it with a search engine. Learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) below.
4. Content marketing
In order to boost your search rankings and help potential customers learn more about your business, you need to incorporate content into your digital marketing strategy. If you’re looking to earn more leads and revenue, content marketing is a great strategy, considering it generates 3x more leads than traditional marketing.
Quality content is a key component of content marketing. Quality content allows you to target keywords related to your business and address searchers’ questions, which in turn helps you achieve higher rankings. When creating content, it’s important to think about quality and depth. Does your content effectively answer searchers’ questions, or does it leave them with unanswered questions? Do you include calls to action (CTAs) that clearly direct readers to take the next step? Thinking through these questions will help you create content that not only ranks at the top of search results but also provides site visitors with the info they need to take the next steps with your company.
5. Social media marketing
A whopping 2.3 billion people use social media, making it a valuable digital marketing component. Social media allows you to connect with current and potential customers — and develop relationships with them. If they have questions about your products and services, they can connect and ask you directly on social media. In addition, social media listening allows you to uncover key trends and insights into consumers’ thoughts and opinions related to your brand, industry, products, services, and even competitors. You can use this information to inform other strategies.
For example, if you’re a medical device equipment manufacturer and receive a lot of questions or notice frequent conversations about how a specific product works, you can create content on your website (perhaps, even a how-to video) to address that concern. Most social platforms also allow you to run paid ads to target and reach your ideal customers. Social media is also a valuable customer service tool. Today, 70 percent of people have used social media for customer service, whether that be to ask a question or voice concerns about a product or service. Maximize your social media effectiveness by responding to social media comments in a timely manner and in a way that makes your followers feel seen and valued. Ultimately, this will help you establish trust with your audience and encourage them to become loyal customers.
The top platforms for social media marketing are:
- You tube
However, not all platforms are created equal, and picking the wrong ones can tank your social media strategy. At most, you should be on four social media platforms (unless you have a dedicated team devoted to social media marketing). Find out which social platforms are best for your business here.
That being said, organic reach on social media is at an all-time low, thanks to a combination of social media feed algorithms and the rising popularity of using the platforms for business. What that means is you can’t get by with only posting organically. You need to supplement your social media campaign with paid social media ads, or else your message will die on the wind.
6. Email marketing
Another component of successful digital marketing, email marketing can earn you $44 for every $1 invested — an ROI of 4400 percent. Since people opt-in to receive your emails, you know they are interested in the products and services you offer. A great lead-nurturing strategy, email marketing allows you to follow up with potential customers and send custom information about products or services that interest them. Using segmentation, you can personalize your emails based on subscribers’ needs and interests and deliver content that resonates with them. Worried about creating, sending, and monitoring engaging emails.
You can automate your email strategy to email customers when they subscribe, after they purchase, or when they take a specific action on your site. This is a great way to make your marketing work smarter and allow you to focus on running your business.
Consider this:
- The first thing 66%of business leaders do in the morning is check their email
- 61% of consumers enjoy receiving promotional emails weekly, and 28% would like emails to come even more frequently
- Email marketing has a 4,400%ROI, with a return of $44 for every $1 spent
Email marketing is not the same thing as marketing automation. Marketing automation is an umbrella term that can include any form of messaging that is triggered automatically. This can include everything from email marketing to automated texts and messenger marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Here’s an example: Someone visits your website, and enters their email address or phone number to download something. That email address or phone number then goes into an automated system that automatically sends pre-determined emails and messages. We highly recommend incorporating marketing automation into your digital marketing strategy.
7. Video Marketing
Video marketing is exactly what it sounds like—marketing that takes the shape of a video. It’s incredibly effective—take a look at these video marketing statistics:
- A video is 50 times more likely to get organic page ranks in Google than plain text
- Half of the consumers who watch online product videos say it helps them make more confident purchasing decisions.
- People who watch videos stay on a site two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to make a purchase.
- S. consumers now watch up to six hours of digital video per day
- Studies show that web pages with videos have a significantly higher average time on site than those without videos.
- Next to Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine out there.
- Videos allow you to drive branding and build trust. They’re like a TV commercial—for a fraction of the price.
The best marketing videos are under 60 seconds—in fact, they should be under 10 seconds for maximum impact. Because consumers prefer short videos, they are more likely to watch yours if they know you provide quick, succinct details. To get started, we recommend making the following videos into your marketing plan:
- How-to videos of your products and services
- Customer testimonials
- Company culture videos
- Videos that highlight the benefits of using your products or services
Bonus: Marketing analytics
In addition to the key digital marketing elements listed above, you’ll want to make analytics a major component of your digital marketing strategy. To continue earning more leads and revenue, you want to monitor key metrics associated with your campaigns continually. Keeping an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs), like conversion rates and cost per lead, will help you improve your campaigns to reach even more customers. In other words, monitoring your analytics will keep marketing costs low and profitability high. Our digital marketing services include analysis and reporting to help you drive the best possible results.
Metric: A metric is a number
KPI: A KPI is a metric that is most closely tied to the overall business success
While metrics are helpful in forming specific strategies, only certain ones can help you refine and tailor your business strategy.
Bounce rates, page views, time on page, new visitors, and search rankings are all metrics.
These are the KPIs that really matter to your digital marketing strategy:
- Total sales
- Leads
- Revenue
- Return on marketing investment (ROMI)
- Lead-to-sale conversion rate
- Booking rate (from calls)
- Cost per lead (CPL)
