Effective digital marketing can help take your business or organisation to the next level, but to get the most out of your marketing it’s crucial to get the strategy right.
Check out our top five priorities to elevate your digital marketing.
1. Digital Strategy
Standing out from the crowd is increasingly difficult in the competitive digital world, but there are tried and tested techniques you should deploy to give your business a competitive edge. The concept is uncomplicated – create compelling content and share it in a way that will attract and engage your audiences and deliver meaningful benefits for your organisation. It sounds simple, but there are many pitfalls. Before you start posting online and sending emails, it’s critical to get the planning right. That’s why digital strategy is the top of our list.
Why does digital strategy matter?
Getting your digital strategy right, guides everything about your organisation’s online presence including digital marketing. Creating a clear digital strategy will help define who your online marketing should be aimed at, how you want those people to act, and how you will reach them.
No single marketing campaign stands in isolation and getting your strategy right will help guide everything you do and help you achieve success.
A successful campaign may result in more sales or greater revenue, attract more subscribers, encourage more site visits, downloads, or social media followers. Whatever results you hope to achieve should be underpinned by a clear digital strategy that is part of your organisation’s ‘bigger picture’.
Asking the right questions
NB Communication can help you get your digital strategy right, by challenging you to answer four questions.
- WHO do you want to reach?
- HOW are you going to reach them?
- WHAT do you want these people to do?
- HOW will you get them to do it?
Whether you’ve already run many campaigns, or are about to embark on your first it’s essential to consider these questions to inform the decisions you make as part of ongoing marketing.
2. Campaign strategy
If you have completed step one and have a good digital strategy in place, you are ready to start telling the world about your campaign. It doesn’t matter whether you’re planning to raise awareness of your organisation, a product, a special offer, or encourage signups, social media growth, or anything else. The crucial thing is to have a clear plan that sets out your campaign objectives and how to achieve them.
Setting realistic goals
When setting your goals, it is important that you challenge yourself, but you must remain realistic. By setting specific goals and KPIs, you can measure the success of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
A core aspect of planning your activity is understanding your target audience, identifying their needs, and planning your digital marketing efforts accordingly. To be successful you need to know your audience and their interests and think about the kind of content they will find engaging. Look back at previous blog posts, social media content and email campaigns to assess which have resonated with your audience, and use that information to guide your new campaign.
Make the most of audience segmentation
It’s also worth remembering that not all marketing, nor every campaign, has to appeal to your whole customer base. If you’ve not considered audience segmentation, it’s a great way to inspire mini campaigns. That can be a hugely effective tactic, fitting into a higher-level plan.
The most important thing is to have a well-considered strategy, focused on achieving tangible results, to create a pathway for success.
3. Brand and tone of voice
The most successful businesses have a strong and clearly defined brand identity. If your organisation doesn’t have this, it is something to consider. Getting it right at the outset of a new campaign is as good a time as any.
Why your brand should drive all your activity
Having a well-researched and well-developed brand should guide everything you do including your marketing. The brand sets your organisational tone of voice, personality, values, and visual aspects of your corporate identity.
Digital marketing is hugely important for any ambitious organisation, but making your brand stand out requires thought and effort. Establishing a strong brand identity is paramount, and that goes way beyond having a nice logo.
Visual elements such as your logo, corporate colours, fonts, and imagery are all important. However, it is the deeper thinking about your organisational values and aspirations that should inform your brand identity, and help ensure that your digital marketing activity remains consistent across multiple platforms.
How to make your content make a difference
A huge part of all marketing campaigns is written content, whether that’s advert copy, media releases, blog content, social media posts, or emails. What you say and how you say it is crucially important, that’s why you should develop a clear tone of voice that resonates with your target audience and reflects your brand's personality.
You should not be afraid to make your brand distinctive, but it’s crucial to remember that consistency is key.
Get it right and your branding and tone will help create a positive and long-lasting impression for your business.
4. Content marketing
Having the right tone of voice, is the first building block for generating effective content, and developing a comprehensive content marketing strategy. All your content should be informative, engaging and valuable – helping you build brand awareness, encourage dialogue and interaction and develop a community.
Why is content marketing crucial?
You’ll have heard the saying that ‘content is king’. That’s because great content gives your brand authority and builds trust, demonstrating that organisation's credibility.
The content you create might be across various formats and you should consider blog articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, or interactive content to engage users effectively. But always remember the goal is to consistently provide valuable insights and share your expertise.
That helps your business foster trust among customers and potential customers, leading to brand loyalty and advocacy.
Consumers are increasingly savvy, and traditional advertising holds less sway. Content marketing meets that challenge by delivering relevant and valuable information to target audiences, via platforms they trust, helping establish and develop meaningful connections.
How relevant content improves SEO performance
Let’s not forget the importance of SEO and visibility. Part of how search engine algorithms work is by prioritising content's relevance and quality. Therefore, content marketing is core to your organisation’s SEO performance. Optimised content, using keywords and meta descriptions effectively, helps boost digital visibility and attract organic website traffic.
5. Optimised performance
The digital landscape is rapidly changing, and the advent of new technologies continues to transform the way digital marketing is delivered. In this ever-moving world it’s essential that you optimise as much of your digital footprint as possible.
Make sure your digital performance is optimised
If you have a clear digital strategy, robust brand guidelines and a wealth of relevant content, you are on the right track. But there’s always room for improvement and your strategy will almost certainly include a KPI focused on driving more traffic to your website, which is why ensuring your site is optimised and as effective as possible is so important.
That includes focusing on your website's speed, page load times and user experience (UX). As mobile devices continue to dominate, ensuring your website is mobile responsive is a must.
User-friendly website
A user-friendly website is the foundation of successful digital marketing campaigns and as technology advances, optimising website performance will be more important than ever. There are many steps that can be taken to achieve this, with the objective of making life as easy as possible for your website visitors to reduce bounce rates and increase conversions.
As we’ve described above, users demand more content, while at the same time demanding a seamless online experience.
Performance improvements to implement
You can deliver the optimum website performance by improving page load times, compressing images, or implementing caching techniques. Additionally, it’s important to understand how people are likely to use your site to ensure seamless navigation through it.
Developing intuitive menus, easy-to-use forms and search functionality will help visitors find the information they want quickly and intuitively.
If your site doesn’t use breadcrumbs, incorporating them will help improve navigation and reduce bounce rates, while adding clear calls to action will enhance conversion rates.
Keeping your content fresh and updating existing posts will help keep your site current and engaging. It is also wise to optimise your content’s readability, while using relevant keywords in the flow of your copy.
Analytics tools
With so many tools available, you’re able to assess virtually every aspect of your site to gauge how well it is performing. Tools like Google Analytics will help you monitor key metrics and track site visits, page views, bounce rate, and conversion rates. Conducting testing on different elements of your site such as CTA placement, copy readability and design, can help you understand what works well for your audience and why.
By implementing these strategies, optimising your website, analysing, and assessing digital performance and continuously refining your approach based on data and user feedback, you can achieve the best results. An effective strategy which drives traffic to a site with enhanced user experience, will help your business achieve its objectives.
If you’d like to find out more about how NB Communication can help you achieve digital excellence, fill out the form below.