Marketing is a lifeline for almost all types of business, irrespective of their nature and size. The most ideal and efficient way to grow a startup is to deploy a robust digital marketing strategy. However, this is not something you can achieve overnight. Depending on the competition in your niche, you have to work out different strategies and find the one that fits your goals. Read on to discover best practices in digital marketing and the ways to get the most out of it.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a method of augmenting business presence by inviting traffic (free or paid) from several sources such as the web, social media platforms, etc.
SEO, paid campaign, social media marketing, and email marketing falls under the scope of digital marketing. You can choose one of them or all of them, depending on what your business goals are.
Content marketing is an essential pillar of digital marketing. Whether you want to entice your clients with attention-grabbing ad copies or enlighten them with new information, you will always need content to connect with your audience.
Why Digital Marketing?
- Digital marketing has the potential to reach a wider audience with a minimal budget.
- Unlike outbound marketing, digital marketing is more affordable and ensures better ROI.
- Digital marketing ensures level field playing within the given niche.
- Digital marketing provides a variety of performance metrics that allow for better control over the marketing campaign.
- Altering a digital marketing strategy is relatively easy, quick, and affordable.
- Streamlined Digital marketing can drive quality leads and customers.
- It allows for better control over the sale funnels.
How to get started with Digital Marketing?
You can follow the given blueprint as a checklist for getting started with digital marketing:
- Create an impactful business logo
- Create a self-expressive brand logo that can lure the customers’ eyeballs. The impactful logos are instantly acknowledgeable. The color scheme, design, artwork, and legibility- everything matters when it comes to logo design.
- Speaking of the legal aspect, make sure the selected logo doesn’t coincide with someone else’s logo as it could incur legal trouble in the future.
- Your logo must have the potential to instantly connect with your audience. That is why it is vital to take the customer’s persona into account.
- Start a user-friendly website
- Creating an impactful and user-friendly website should be your next step. But website creation is not as easy as it seems.
- Your website will serve as the first point of contact for your customers. So, it should be impressive on all fronts, including UI, navigation, product menus, speed, and so on.
- Here are some pointers that you must consider to get the most out of your website
- Get rid of blank spaces
- Your website is a reflection of your brand so it should look professional and eye-catching.
- Make sure your website doesn’t have too many blank spaces- use meaningful images wherever possible that drive customers’ attention.
- Aim for a clean and logical interface
- Let’s face it, most customers are time-conscious and there is no wonder if they skip your site in hurry. Do not test their patience with illogical navigation and cluttered layout.
- Make sure the UX – User Experience is on point. Your website should embrace a clean and logical interface. Employ visual cues and consistent layouts to ensure seamless functionality across the site.
Mobile compatibility is a must
- Mobile compatibility is a must-have feature for any product or service-based website. The number of mobile devices and their users is increasing every passing day.
- Therefore, you must take mobile users into account besides desktop users to meet your goals.
- Optimizing the website for mobile users is a need for an hour and it will help you with web traffic and customer engagement.
- Implement the best SEO strategies
- Creating a website and inviting as much traffic as you want are two different things. Although you have an assortment of paid options to drive desirable traffic to your site, using them on regular basis can adversely impact your ROI. This is where SEO comes into play.
- With a streamlined SEO strategy, you will be able to drive sheer organic or free traffic to your site. SEO is a boon for budget-conscious businesses.
- Generally, SEO is categorized under two different heads – On-page optimization and off-page optimization.
- The on-page optimization involves content creation, keyword identification, internal link building, etc. All these efforts lead to a better page experience for the audience.
- On the contrary, off-page optimization refers to a tactic you undertake to advocate the site and its content on third-party sites. It also involves backlink creation that helps with the SERP ranking and domain authority.
Noteworthy SEO practices
While there are numerous tactics you can employ under SEO, here are some ideal ones that are worth considering in the status quo.
- Optimize site speed across all platforms. Ideally, your website should get open in under 4 seconds.
- Create logical content with the audience’s persona in mind. Content should not be necessarily wordy unless there is a scope for that.
- Identify the intent behind every keyword.
- Use of schema or structured data to make your web pages search engine-friendly.
- Use Breadcrumbs to provide users with a quality page experience
- Go for quality backlinks. Prefer guest posting for this purpose.
- Get rid of pages showing error 401. Apply redirect wherever possible.
Note: Google My Business (GMB) can help local businesses shine in the local search. Make sure to list your business profile and contacts on GMB for increased traffic and brand exposure.
Use PPC (if budget is not a constraint)
PPC is a reliable online advertising method in which business owners pay a fee whenever their ads are clicked by visitors. It is an ideal option for various B2C, B2B, NGOs, and entities looking for quality leads and conversion.
What makes PPC stand out?
- It can help achieve short and long-term business goals.
- Precise audience targeting is possible with PPC
- Make products and brands instantly recognizable
- Performance tracking is easy with PPC
- Comprehensive control over the ad placement
- PPC also provides for Retargeting and Remarketing
Use social media platforms
Content sharing is an important part of SEO and it should not be without a purpose. Through optimized social media campaigns, businesses can drive sheer traffic to their site. But it all depends on what you post, how you post, and when you post. Social media have no direct connection with SEO ranking. But the contents you post on social platforms augment brand presence. In a nutshell, promoting your business on social media platforms is a need for an hour because it provides for:
- Widespread content sharing
- Better longevity of the share contents
- Improve the online presence and organic traffic
- Increased brand recognition and credibility.
Even though social sharing does not necessarily contribute to SERP ranking, it generates signals that imply your contents are valuable to your audience.
Role of content in digital marketing
Content marketing is the foundation of any digital marketing campaign. Depending on what type of products you offer and your niche, you can tweak your content creation strategy accordingly and attract the right audience.
The user-centric content strategy enables businesses to access uncharted audience bases and drive healthy traffic.
Content marketing enables potential customers to easily understand the products and services, leading to prompt decision-making.
With the right content, you can make the audience craving for more information, which leads to a long-lasting relationship.
The written form of content is the most widely-used content from among the rest. But you can opt for video and podcasts depending on your marketing needs.
Also Read: Digital Marketing for Startups: Know All About It
