If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy for your business, it’s high time you did. Seventy-two percent of consumers are connecting with their favorite brands online. You don’t want your business to be left behind.
It’s not too late to develop an effective digital marketing strategy for 2018. Start by assessing your current online presence and digital marketing strategy, if you have one. Then you can start developing important components of your digital marketing strategy to make it a success next year.
Assess Your Social Media Presence
First, you’ll need to assess your current online presence. Is your company on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites? Are you already engaging with customers, addressing their concerns, and answering their complaints? Are you using social media to communicate important information to your customers? If you’re not on social media, or you’re not using it to its full advantage, it’s time to change that.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of social media platforms out there today, but thankfully, your business doesn’t have to be active on all of them. Research the social media channels where your customers are most active. For many businesses, engaging with customers and Facebook and Twitter is sufficient; others might want to branch out into Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, or other platforms, depending on their industry and customer interests.
Update Your Website
Now, let’s talk about your website. You do have a website, right? Is it optimized for search? Does it have a built-in customer relationship management (CRM) system? Is it mobile-ready? Make sure your website possesses all of the marketing elements it needs to be effective today, including share buttons, blog capabilities, and internal site search options. If you don’t have a website or the one you do have doesn’t have essential functions for 2018 like mobile readiness and a built-in CRM, then website development should be at the top of your list of e-commerce purchases for your business next year. You don’t necessarily need to spend a bundle on it, either. Many website builders for small business allow you to put together a fully-functional and visually-impressive website, no coding skills required.
Beef Up Your SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is what helps search engines find your page. The stronger your SEO, the more likely it is that customers will find your business’s website when they search for your products and services on popular search engines like Google. SEO is just one part of a multi-pronged marketing approach, but these days, it’s essential to helping customers find you.
There are two kinds of SEO – on-page and off-page. On-page SEO uses search keywords, social sharing, outbound links, internal links, mobile responsiveness, and other aspects of website design and content creation to make pages appear closer to the top of search rankings. Off-page SEO refers to building a strong brand reputation through great customer service, relationships with influencers, social media responsiveness, inbound links, high page rankings, and an active online community. By strengthening your SEO on and off-page, you’ll draw more customers to your website, and that means higher conversion rates and more sales.
Don’t Forget Content Marketing
Content marketing is the new holy grail of the digital marketing world. It’s a strategic approach that involves distributing valuable online content to attract a specific target audience and to drive that audience to websites relevant to their interests. Content marketing can help you find good, brand-loyal customers. It’s a great way to increase sales, and it can be cost-effective compared to traditional forms of advertising.
Solid content that offers value to users is the cornerstone of driving traffic to a website, so content marketing can be great for your SEO strategy, too. If your site consistently offers high-quality content, search engines will reward that by bumping you up in the search rankings. Placing high-quality content on other sites can also help you bump up page ranks by generating inbound links.
Offer Video Content
Much online content is text-based, but video content is gaining steam, and for good reason. Video content is more likely than any other medium to lead to strong conversion rates. People who find videos on your website will also stick around longer than those who find only text; if you think about all the people you know who hate to read, this makes sense. Lots of people would rather watch a video than read a wall of text, and even dedicated readers often prefer not to read at length from a computer, tablet, or phone screen. Plan to add pre-recorded and live videos to your digital marketing strategy in 2018. Share videos on your website’s blog, on your social media platforms, or both.
If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy for 2018, it’s not too late. With a strong digital marketing strategy, 2018 can be the best year yet for your business.
