How to Improve Your Digital Marketing

Marketing has always kept pace with the technologies of its time, and has been, at times, hindered by them. This has become much less of an issue today, as we now have the ability to use the Internet and other computing technologies to market in a digital environment, expanding our reach and the knowledge we can glean from our efforts. However, some methods of digital marketing today are more effective than others. In order to be successful, you should focus on doing it the right way.

Give Before You Get

As a general rule, digital marketing relies on value; namely, the value that you provide to your audience as you share your message. Much of digital marketing is an example of what is called inbound marketing, or marketing that draws an audience to it of their own volition. This approach is much different than the traditional method, outbound marketing, which relies on locating an audience and (often aggressively) sharing its message.

Due to the nature of the online medium, a lot of digital marketing tends to sway towards an inbound approach by necessity. People are not nearly as receptive to salesy, pushy marketing as they once were, in no small part thanks to the increase in options to choose from. If we don’t like a commercial on TV, we can hit the mute button or fast forward. If online content we’re trying to read is blocked and interrupted by pop-ups, we simply leave the webpage.

Marketers have taken notice of this and have adjusted their strategies.

It’s no longer enough to simply shout a message at your target until they listen, especially in business-to-business transactions. Instead, there has to be a conversation between you and your audience. In order for them to buy into your product or service, you have to invest in them and their pain points--but how?

Fortunately, there are a few tried-and-true methods for you to incorporate into your digital marketing strategies.

Content

One of the most effective ways to establish a reputation of providing value is to share your knowledge and expertise in the form of content. Posting a blog that provides some great insight, or a video that demonstrates a step-by-step solution to an issue, will not only provide a bit of SEO-friendly content, but also gives your audience a reason to stick around. The more impressions you make, the more opportunities you’ll have to turn a prospect into a client.

Furthermore, if you regularly post high-caliber content, you’ll give your visitors a compelling reason to return. As this process continues, you’ll develop a relationship between your business and your contacts, generating more impressions and drawing these contacts closer to a purchase point. Although, in order to be truly effective, your content strategy will have to meet some criteria. New content needs to be produced on a fairly regular, predictable basis, so setting up a schedule and preemptively preparing content can be helpful.

Reaching Out

Email marketing is a potent tool at a marketer’s disposal--it allows a message to be sent in a more personal context, directly to the targeted individual. To amplify the power of that tool, there is growing tendency to incorporate multimedia (pictures, videos, GIFs) in with text-based messages. This can increase engagement levels, as it allows audience members who might respond better to one form of content over another to still absorb your message.

A marketer’s options certainly don’t stop there. Another excellent avenue through which a message can be spread is social media. By sharing content and interacting with an audience, a relationship may be formed between the marketer and their potential customers. Whether utilizing Facebook, LinkedIn, or other outlets, built-in capabilities designed specifically for marketers can be found.

Of course, that’s not all…

This is just a very brief sampling of the many, many opportunities that digital marketing provides--there are many, many more for you to experiment and succeed with. For more assistance with this, reach out to us at http://jmct.io/letstalk.