When you think of digital marketing, what comes to mind? Many people start and stop with social media marketing, but there’s so much more to it. While social media is an important piece of the digital marketing puzzle, it is far from being the most important or most effective piece. Brands should use social media (if their audience does), but we also believe they should focus on building up all digital marketing channels. In this article, we’ll be talking about the main components of a digital marketing strategy and explaining what they contribute to your digital presence.
360 Marketing
Flylight Creative offers 360 Digital Marketing so that our clients can not only meet their audiences where they’re at but also convert followers into customers. We build marketing strategies that are firmly rooted in research about your audience. What separates good marketing plans from great marketing plans is the depth of understanding your audience. A great marketing plan goes deeper than just knowing the average age, gender, and income of your audience. Great brands collect as much information as possible about their target audience. They believe that the more information, the better. While some information is more relevant to certain industries than others, it can be helpful to know as much as possible when considering how you would like your business to expand later.
Understanding your audience should inform how you appear on each digital marketing channel. Once you know who your target audience is, you know where to find them, and how to communicate with them once you get there. If your messages don’t resonate with your audience, then you are wasting your time and your money. Plain and simple. This is why the most important thing any brand can do is learn who its audience is, where they are, and why they would even want to support your product or service. Otherwise, it’s nearly impossible to succeed. That being said, while it’s important to use these digital marketing channels, showing up on all platforms will not work in your favor unless your messaging is consistent with your audience.
Social Media Management
While Social Media isn’t the most important piece of the puzzle, it’s still important. The purpose of social media is to help brand your business, share information, connect with your audience, and of course, maintain relevance. The purpose of social media for brands is to ensure that your audience is thinking about/ seeing you regularly. Since social media is a platform audiences will use even if they’re not necessarily buying anything, it’s a great way to stay at the top of their mind.
How to Manage your Social Media Accounts
Since Social Media’s primary purpose is maintaining relevance to your audience, you must post relevant branded content consistently, but not too much. Your audience should be able to recognize your posts at first glance based on the colors, fonts, design, and logo. The pace of these posts can vary depending on your audience or your capacity, but your branding should remain consistent. If you’re confused about how to brand your business or need help building your branding for it, we can help. Learn more here.
Social Media Post Ideas
Your posts should be related to the services and products you provide. If your posts are all over the place, you’ll confuse your audience.
Educate your Audience
Share relevant information with your audience to ensure that you’re seen as an expert in your field. When you effectively position yourself as an authoritative figure to your audience, you will become their go-to. You need your audience’s trust to thrive in business, so it’s important that you fact-check before you share. Here are some post ideas to educate your audience:
- Highlight a problem
- Why is it a problem?
- How are you working to solve it?
- How can your audience help you solve it?
- Highlight a successful case study
- Why was it successful?
- What did you do differently from other brands?
- Who is your typical client? How does your product/service benefit them?
- Share industry knowledge
- What are some misconceptions about your industry?
- What are some things your audience should know about your industry?
- Share updates or news.
Entertain your Audience
- Make a joke about your industry
- What is something your audience has in common?
- Share a funny gif
Inspire your Audience
- Share a motivational quote
- What is your audience struggling with now? What do they need to hear or know to get them through it?
- Share a motivational story
- Do you know any stories of people overcoming a relevant battle or struggle after some time? How did they do it?
Social Media Channels
The major social media channels used by audiences include:
- Snapchat
Earned/Paid Media
Paid ads help you to reach a specific audience in a way that organic marketing doesn’t. You can pay a platform, usually Meta for Facebook and Instagram, to promote your post to a specific audience defined by you. You can segment this audience based on gender, age, location, and interests which can help you narrow down your audience. This can also help you gain valuable insights about your audience because they collect the data on who responds to what. While this can guarantee you a certain amount of views, it can’t guarantee a certain amount of conversions. Your content must still be high quality and deemed worthy by the audience to make an ROI or return on your investment.
How to Make Effective Paid Ads
There are a few ways to effectively use paid advertising. Some of these methods include:
Have a set goal/ purpose
When you already have an idea of what you would like to achieve with your paid ads, it is much easier to measure your success. You should never dump money into anything without understanding its purpose. Have an idea of how many conversions you’d like to make or what goal you’d like to achieve so that you can set an appropriate budget and audience for your campaign.
A/B testing
A/B Testing helps you gather information about your audience. A/B Testing consists of creating multiple versions of a campaign to determine what resonates with your audience based on which version converts more people. Some examples of what someone might A/B test includes static picture ad vs video ad, stock image vs cartoon, text heavy ad vs no text ad, and more.
Website Marketing
Although social media marketing gets all the credit, website marketing is the real star of the show. Your website allows you to sell your product or service, showcase your authority, establish credibility, showcase your branding, and highlight your other channels for the audience to stay in touch with you.
How to Maintain Your Website
Brand it!
Your website should be filled with your branding elements. As aforementioned, your branding elements should be consistent throughout your website and all other communication channels with your audience.
Keep it Organized & Informative
Your website should highlight everything about your brand. Your audience should not have to contact you every time they have a question, they should be able to find the answers to most common questions very easily. If you lack information on your website, the audience will begin to doubt your abilities and decide to look at a competitor instead. Your website should draw customers in, not chase them away. Some information that should be highlighted on your website includes:
- Details about your products and services
- Features and benefits of your product or service
- How customers can stay in touch with you
- Project timelines (if applicable)
- Evidence of your authority and establish credibility
- Testimonials
- Case Studies
- Share Industry Knowledge
- Informative Blog Posts
Update it regularly
Information about your business is probably going to change regularly, so it’s important to reflect them on your website immediately. Keep your website up to date at all times. To learn more about maintaining your website, read more here.
Website SEO
Your website should be filled with keywords that your audience will help your audience find you. You can use these keywords in your business description, blog, and anywhere else on your website, but don’t overdo it! Use the words where natural instead of forcing them to fit where they don’t. You still want your copy to be effective and resonate with your audience in a way that doesn’t feel gimmicky.
Tools to use – Should I even include tools?
E-Mail Marketing
E-Mail Marketing is the only platform that can’t just be taken away from you. While social media websites like Twitter could disappear tomorrow, leaving you back at square one, you’ll always have your e-mail list.
Not only is e-mail marketing reliable, but it also allows you to personalize the messages your audience receives. This offers the perfect opportunity to segment your audience and give them very specific messages in a way that you wouldn’t be able to on any other platform.
Managing Your E-Mail Campaigns
Build your List
If you’re a fresh business owner or you just haven’t gotten started on building your list yet, the best way to do so is to incentivize your audience to sign up. Here are some incentives that you may be able to offer:
- A discount code
- A freebie
- Free downloadable resources
- Ebooks
- Articles
- Videos
- Infographics
Nurture your list
Just because someone signs up for your list doesn’t mean that they’re there to stay. They can choose to unsubscribe anytime, and they will if they feel like it’s no longer serving them or if your emails annoy them.
That being said, it’s super important to make sure you make the people on your list feel important. Don’t send them 15 nonsense emails a day. Instead, send them emails that make them feel like they’re part of an exclusive community at a reasonable pace. For example, let them know about things before they’re officially announced or even give out special discounts to build brand loyalty and community.
Final Thoughts
Social Media Management is NOT enough! You need full digital marketing services to see the effect on your brand; however, just showing up on these platforms isn’t enough. You need to show up strategically on these platforms. We know business owners don’t always have the time to work on each digital marketing platform. As experts, we take the time to build solid strategies based on our expertise, input from business owners, and thorough audience research. Hire an expert so you can focus on perfecting your products and services. Learn more about how we can take your brand to the next level here.