Progressive marketers are always willing to test new channels that can initiate conversions. Digital marketing is a continuously evolving and rapidly changing market where marketers need to be innovative and creative in their approach. And whether or not companies recognize the value of this kind of marketing, the trends dictate the need for a digitalization of your marketing efforts.
If you are trying to get a handle on this ever-evolving means of attracting customers, check out these tips to get you started.
Plan an Integrated Marketing Strategy
Brands must understand what digital channels exist and what types of digital content performs the best for their targeted audience. This is the vital first step in “planning.” It is essential to prioritize the cross-channel integration of marketing activities and identify the path the customer takes for a successful conversion. The right channel mix should be adapted creatively by optimizing the conversion path taken by the customer.
Your brand is the most important investment and every digital marketing channel should be aligned to your overall strategy to ensure you are delivering a consistent message and experience for your customers.
Focus on Short Term Strategy Planning
The digital marketing landscape keeps on changing. A better goal is to focus on the short term strategy planning. A long term planning is not a bad idea but instead, your strategies shouldn't be stretched for longer periods of time or else you might lose out. Short and sweet can go a lot longer in conserving resources for budding startups and established companies alike.
Engineer an Audience Centric Content Marketing Strategy
You need to communicate with your customers through blog posts, marketing copy, newsletters, and more. The entire content marketing strategy should be audience centric. The best way is to know your audience, uncover the channels they are using, identify the lingo that resonates with them, and create content pieces that includes their tone of voice, most-used hashtags, etc.
A blog is a great way to present your brand voice before your customers. If you are still missing this channel from your site, I would strongly recommend you change that. To easily create a blog, you can check out TheBloggingBuddha that provides easy tutorials for setting up a WordPress blog easily.
Don't Forget Personalization
Personalization has always been a great way to convert a customer into a sale. It is all about creating channelizing marketing activities based on the user persona. Facilitating 1-to-1 conversations by using content and product recommendations is important, as they provide the same benefits of a salesperson-to-customer relationship.
Personalization also demands that rules-driven content should be segmented and must be mapped to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. One of the crucial elements for the success of personalization is the presence of tight integration between content management, data management and marketing platforms.
Leverage the Power of Data
It is extremely essential to leverage the power of data through attribution modeling, audience segmentation, media mix analysis, and customer and lifetime value modeling. Using tools like Google Analytics and Watson Analytics, you can measure a great deal of data for better results. IBM's Watson Analytics is a great tool for data exploration, automating predictive analytics and enabling effortless dashboard and infographic creation.
Apply a Growth Driven Design
GDD or growth driven design is a fusion or marriage of sorts between site redesign and marketing, where the two goals become one. There is no point redesigning a site having stale content, it simply won't help! Rather, GDD succeeds by making informed performance improvements that is based on the audience behavior. It is an adaptive model where marketers can quickly change it as per the shifting marketing trends.
Find an Authoritative Voice for Your Brand
Your brand voice should be authoritative and expert in his field. A successful brand is one which inspires people both on and off the field. Your brand voice must be genuine, personable and consistent with your product and messaging. The social media has taken the world by storm and brands have the added responsibility of connecting with their customers on a personal level.
Ultimately, the success of your digital marketing efforts depends on how effectively you are able to use all of the digital marketing channels. By having an integrated strategy, you should be able to attract potential customers in all stages of the conversion funnel, and ensuring that your brand voice remains consistent across all the promoted channels will help to create the digital customer experience you need to succeed.