If you are a big fan of digital marketing and the new generation of marketing, sometimes you will get tired of some projects and this work will seem overwhelming to you. Digital marketing is not just an area of content creation or marketing for social networks. To succeed in this job, you need to be trained in SEO, native marketing, PPC and online public relations to inbound marketing. On the other hand, the influence of email, social networks and content marketing in this field cannot be denied.
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The world of digital marketing
Without knowing all these things, you cannot succeed in today’s competitive market and communicate with your audience. As a result, you cannot make good sales. So we must know that digital marketing is a very big deal. You should always look for new ways to succeed and improve in this type of marketing. In the following, we have collected 10 very practical tips for newcomers to the field of digital marketing; by observing these things, you can be several steps ahead of your competitors!
Determine your business goals and objectives.
“Too often, marketers start out with ill-defined or poorly defined goals,” says the folks at Campaign Monitor. This has a very negative impact on marketing activities. Setting goals is directly related to your success.
With this account, we can conclude that the first step for productivity and growth in digital marketing is the clear definition of business goals. The Campaign Monitor team continues their comments about the goal, saying, “Increasing sales or visits is the goal of all Internet businesses, and it’s actually meaningless as a goal setting.” Selling a new product can be an increase in sales for a business, selling 1000 products is also considered an increase.
Therefore, your goals should be clear and measurable. For this reason, the most effective method in this way is to use the SMART method. Chauncey Maddox, in his articles about the calendar, says that SMART actually stands for the characteristics that a business should aim to have. These features include: being specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, setting a vague goal like “I want to lose weight this year” is not likely to get you the desired result. Instead, you could say, “This year I want to lose 10 pounds by eating a basic low-carb diet and exercising 4 days a week.”
Now, how do you think this can be implemented in digital marketing? It is enough to increase the number of social network followers, email subscribers, interaction on social networks and increase sales, implement the SMART strategy well and wait for the result.
Get to know your audience or get to know them again and again.
If you don’t do this, how will you know what content they enjoy and find useful? Or how do you want to find out where they operate so you can interact with them? Or how they use your products and services? What is their problem?
If you don’t know these things, you will most likely be using outdated and useless topics. On the other hand, after the corona pandemic, the whole world has changed.
Julie Reid says about the changes in digital marketing during this period, “In the last 1 year, we have seen many changes in customer behavior. All daily needs such as work, education, shopping for food and clothes are all done through the Internet and online space. This issue reminded the world again of the importance of the Internet and the digital world.”
However, you need to know what kind of people your customers are. What is their main challenge in this era? And can you overcome these challenges? The best way to get answers to these questions is to make useful connections with them. You can gather some of them in an online group and ask their opinions, or you can contact them one by one and learn about their interests and concerns.
For example, ask them:
- As it is, how do they use your products and services?
- What are they doing these days and what do they need that you can provide?
“Once you’ve answered these questions and have the information you need, send a general survey to subscribers via email,” Reed says. This will help you to be sure of their feelings and interests and get to know your customers better.”
Be sure to use the information you have obtained in formulating your sales strategy and content. If you can’t create an online group and ask your audience for their opinion, you can find out what is being said through online polls on social networks and email, or through detailed responses to comments
Collect, analyze and measure available data
It is true that one of the most basic things you should pay attention to is data analysis and collection. To improve the customer experience, create a sales channel, produce and publish attractive content, in addition to targeting and understanding the audience, data analysis is the second most important step.
For this, you need to find tools that provide you with this information and learn to work with them. If you follow these steps, you can achieve the fastest results in the fastest time. On the other hand, you can keep track of changing customer behaviors and learn about them in detail.
Use Smarketing.
Don’t think that we mistakenly put the letter “S” in front of marketing. Not! This word is actually a kind of sales and marketing method. In the business world, the combination of sales and marketing is called smarketing.
“Smarketing is actually a modern way of how marketing and sales work as a single team instead of two separate teams with different goals,” says Martin Louendo in Cleverism. In the past, marketing only involved penetrating the market, creating brand identity, and creating key purchase opportunities. That is, after doing these things, the marketer’s work would be over and the ball would fall into the seller’s court.
By smarketing, marketing work is not limited to the mentioned items. In this type of strategy, marketers are also responsible for sales and support. This method creates a more dynamic and logical relationship; because the two people, the marketer and the seller, belong to the same organization with the same goal. In some businesses, these two activities can be integrated and an experienced marketing and sales team can help to achieve business goals.
In any type of strategy, the integration of these two methods can increase sales and profits by 20% annually. The integration of these two methods, on the other hand, saves time and money and quickly achieves the sales goal.
Step into the world of voice and sound.
Although Google unveiled the possibility of voice search for the first time in 2011; But in the last few years, this method has received a lot of attention and its promise has exploded. The reason for the popularity of this tool is the presence of voice assistants such as Alexa and Google Home. In fact, almost 40% of the population of the United States of America uses voice assistants. It is predicted that this number will increase significantly by 2024 and include 8.4 billion of the world’s population.
This issue has had a great impact on SEO and has somehow changed all the algorithms. If you want to be present in search results, you should also focus on audio optimization. For this, you can observe the following:
- First of all, make sure your site is loading fast.
- Use secure HTTPS websites.
- Create a valid domain.
- Produce valuable and green content.
- The answer snippet should be no more than 29 words.
- Remove duplicate pages.
Use useful digital marketing tools.
A carpenter can still use the old handsaws for his work but imagine how much easier and faster the use of a power saw would make his work. The same thing happens in digital marketing. Without digital marketing software and programs, you can hardly attract the attention of customers. Of course, we must mention that excessiveness in this work may also cause you to face losses. For this, you must use reliable and basic tools.
Tools like:
- Analytics tools like Google Analytics
- Email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Benchmark
- Social media tools allow you to manage and control your channels. such as Buffer, Hootsuite or Sprout Social tools
- Tools for producing and editing content such as Feedly, CoSchedule or Visme
Outsourcing and delegating some powers
The world of digital marketing can change at the speed of light. Likewise, the knowledge, skills, and tactics you rely on may become obsolete over time. Here, you may want to do some things quickly and not think about making up for past mistakes at all.
It is better to get help from professionals. For example, maybe you are familiar with graphic design, but having a professional graphic designer can save you time. On the other hand, a professional will provide you with the best output.
Invest in yourself.
Outsourcing doesn’t mean you’re out of the loop and don’t have any skills. You need to keep improving your skills. If you are good at designing, work on it so that you can pull your rug out of the water when necessary.
Take the “less is more” approach.
In an article on Hubspot, John Hall, the founder of the calendar, says, “Getting out of crises requires doing the fewest things with the most impact.” In crisis situations, everyone especially marketers are under a lot of pressure to focus on their strategy. On the other hand, it is difficult to be sure that their brand will maintain its former importance even in difficult conditions.
John believes that “although quality makes a difference; But marketing in the new digital world is a strategic and scalable game. At the end of all this work, only a small number of people who are attracted to a brand will change their minds and become your fans.
He goes on to say, “All this means that the more marketers reach more people and find more common points, the more people engage with the brand, and this is in the interest of business.” If you have a small audience now, don’t worry, in some cases you don’t need to work much. In other words, less is more. Do basic work. For example, if you have a small audience, it doesn’t matter; A small but ideal audience is much better than an audience that doesn’t care about your brand.
Here, Hall has introduced 5 areas of marketing that you can use to ensure higher efficiency and waste less time and energy in a “less is more” approach:
- Manage your employees and campaigns through specific integration tools.
- Have a plan and calendar for every minute of your day. This program should be flexible and changeable when necessary.
- Short and rich content has a huge contribution in reaching the audience.
- Keep your business meetings short and concise.
- Test different ways and reduce burdensome meetings for employees.
Manage your time.
After doing all these steps, make sure you follow the principles of time management. Why? Because if you do this, over time you will become an idea development machine and you will be able to act faster and more effectively.
If you need updates, the most important thing is to have a good management. To start, you can pay attention to these things:
- Set time limits for certain tasks.
- Remove misleading apps and websites.
- Keep your work environment clean and tidy.
- Check the number of views in each time period.
- Do not multitask.
- Take frequent breaks.
- Use defined and reliable templates and layouts, such as calendar templates or a set of standard hashtags.
- Identify the right channels to attract the audience and prioritize activities in them.
- Use a password manager like LastPass.
In this article, together with you, we reviewed the most important and latest points about developing a digital marketing strategy. In your opinion, what are the challenges facing new businesses and what should be done to face them?