Quick question: what do you do when you need to find a new product or service provider in your area?
You may have a list of trustworthy companies you work with, but whenever you need something for your business or your family, you will probably check the internet to see what options you have available.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a consumer looking for a product or a company representative in search of a business solution, the same concept applies to modern buyers. Most people will whip out their smartphones or laptops and run a quick search on platforms like Google. These users trust that search engines will provide quality results in order to relevance, so they will likely choose a company in the first 10 positions.
This is where online marketing comes in.
If you’re looking to connect with potential customers, you have to target the platforms they use to find products or services. A few decades ago, radio spots, print ads, and television commercials were enough to rake in new business. Now, people conduct extensive research before choosing a business to work with. So, your company needs to have a full-scale digital marketing strategy that puts it in front of your target audience at the right time.
Although it’s a relatively new concept, online marketing has become an essential part of most successful businesses. That said, it’s important to understand how this approach works and learn about the different online marketing channels available to design the best strategy for your company.
Below, we’ll go over the definition of online marketing, discuss the different channels you have available, and explore the benefits that digital strategies bring to the table.
What is Online Marketing?
Before going any deeper, let’s answer the question “what is online marketing?”
As the name suggests, online marketing is the practice of promoting your services through the internet. Also known as e-digital marketing or simply digital marketing, this technique has set a new golden standard and completely transformed the way companies promote their services and products.
Although some companies automatically imagine a specific approach, online marketing is actually an umbrella term that includes different techniques, like search engine advertising, social media promotion, and other forms we’ll discuss in detail later on.
While similar, online marketing and online advertising are slightly different approaches. Both of these allow you to promote your services on the internet. But, online marketing aims to attract leads in a variety of ways, so it focuses heavily on creating awesome resources for the audience.
The online advertising definition is simpler to understand because it revolves around paying for digital ads to reel in more business. For example, whenever users perform a search on Google, they will see a set of ads sitting on top of the organic search results. These ads are a form of digital advertising where companies have to launch a paid campaign to appear in this section.
Online marketing has become the new golden standard for companies to promote their products. The reasons why this practice has gained so much momentum include the ability to:
Reach Local, Regional, National, and International Audiences
Unlike some form of traditional advertising, digital marketing is suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries. The internet is a practical resource used by billions of people around the world, so you can reach potential clients at a local, regional, national, and international level.
Digital marketing can be scaled according to the size and growth rate of your company. In other words, you can pick and choose which techniques you want to implement and run them on the available budget. Once you start seeing results, you can examine what parts of your campaign are working out, invest more in these areas, and continue growing your marketing efforts along with your business.
Engage Through Interactive Resources
Traditional advertising channels don’t offer much in terms of interactive elements. You may be able to run a coupon or promo code-based campaign, but these strategies don’t always attract the ideal audience.
Online marketing is the complete opposite. From the moment they pick up a device and start browsing the web, people are engaged because of the internet’s interactive nature. As a general rule of thumb, engaged users are more receptive to your marketing activities and have a higher chance of contacting your company to ask specific questions.
Digital marketing strategies focus heavily on developing interactive elements designed to improve the customer experience as well as the chances of transforming visitors into paying clients.
Design Resources that Convert
It’s important to have a good website, updated profiles on social media platforms, quality downloadable materials, and other digital marketing resources in place. But, even if they are meant to be informative materials, they should be designed in a way that showcases the quality of your products and services in order to increase the chances of converting users into paying customers.
There are many types of digital techniques you can implement to market your products or services. That said, you need to develop valuable resources based on what your customers need. Not only this, but these materials also need to move your potential buyer down your funnel and prepare them to speak with your sales team.
Types of Digital Marketing
Now that we’ve discussed the online marketing definition, it’s time to explore the different alternatives you have available to run your digital marketing campaign. As you can imagine, there are many different types of online marketing tactics you can use to reel in more business from the internet. Needless to say, not all companies have the budget to run online campaigns through all the platforms available. So, it’s important to do your homework and choose a set of techniques that will yield the best results for your company.
Resources:
Although there are many product-centric approaches in the digital world, the most consistent and cost-effective techniques tend to be customer-centric. In other words, successful marketing online doesn’t focus on your products. Instead, you need to keep your customers at the center of every decision and create a positive experience from all perspectives.
What’s more, most online marketing techniques work together, so you can segment your budget and run multiple campaigns that complement each other. Just remember to design a comprehensive blueprint that details how the different campaigns will work together.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular digital marketing strategies you can employ today.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a promotion philosophy that aims to engage users who are already interested in your services. As you can imagine, this type of marketing is customer-centric and it aims to gently usher users into the sales funnel, slowly transforming them into prospects, then leads, and finally, paying customers. The duration of the sales process is different depending on the industry, so you need to create an inbound strategy specifically designed for your business.
Instead of having one main benefit, inbound marketing brings a range of advantages that improve both the short and long-term performance of your promotion campaigns. Inbound can get you more business from your online channels while also boosting your branding and establishing you as one of the most knowledgeable experts in your field.
It’s important to note that inbound marketing is dynamic, so it can encompass many different techniques. It often includes website elements like blog posts and other resources, but it can also include social media, email marketing, and other forms of online promotion found on this list.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/inbound-marketing-agency/
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing (SEM) is an online promotion strategy that aims to attract more traffic through search engines using both paid and unpaid techniques. Now commonly referred to as search marketing, SEM encompasses both organic approaches like SEO and paid methods like pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, but we’ll discuss these more in-depth in the upcoming sections.
SEM is based on the idea that most internet users rely on search engines to find information. Whether it’s mainstream platforms like Google or more obscure options like DuckDuckGo, the reality is that everyone uses search engines to find pages online. There are more than 1.7 billion websites out there and search engines help determine which ones get the most attention, so developing a promotion plan that targets these platforms can increase exposure and bring a large number of visitors to your site.
Search Engine Optimization
More than 80% of internet users have used the internet to look for a product or service they’re interested in and the majority of these potential buyers rely on search engines to get the best results. Google alone has more than 259 million users in the US, so getting to the top rankings on this search engine can exponentially increase the number of visitors to your site.
Search engine optimization is a marketing technique that focuses on getting the best rankings on platforms like Google. As we mentioned before, the average user will rely on these platforms to find quality products and services in their area. But, only a minimal percentage of users go beyond the first page before making a decision, so the only way to get a significant amount of traffic is to get the best rankings for your site.
Commonly referred to as SEO, search engine optimization is the practice of improving your website and other online variants to improve your chances of getting the best rankings on Google. There are hundreds of variants that Google and other platforms take into consideration to determine your website’s ranking, so you need to ensure that all the elements on your site increase your chances of success.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/
On-Page SEO
The variants that affect your SEO rankings can be divided into on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO encompasses the loading time, content, and other elements that are directly on your website, which means they’re directly under your control. The key to on-site optimization is to understand how different factors affect your ranking and staying up-to-date with any changes that may occur.
In addition to content and loading speed, on-page ranking factors include your website’s architecture, user interface, graphic elements, functionality, and any other variant that affects your visitors’ experience. On-site SEO includes both functional and aesthetic elements, so you should keep it in mind whenever you work on your website.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/on-page-seo/
Off-Page SEO
Not all companies know this, but Google and other engines also take into consideration factors outside of your website when determining your rankings. Off-page SEO can help you address these variants that are not on your page even if you’re not directly in control of them.
Search engines rely on review sites, local directories, and other platforms to figure out the quality of your services and how relevant you are to a specific search. If you have negative reviews, outdated information on local directories, and no social media presence, Google and similar engines will not give you a good score in terms of quality.
Off-page SEO can help ensure that you have positive reviews, updated information on all relevant directories, and backlinks that come from reputable platforms in your industry. Like on-page SEO, knowing which off-site factors affect your ranking is not enough. You need to learn how to take control of your reputation without being able to control these third-party platforms directly.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/services/#What_is_Off_Page_SEO_Optimization?
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Pay-per-click (PPC) is one of the most effective forms of online marketing. This technique allows companies to place ads on Google’s search results. The best part is that businesses that advertise with PPC only have to pay when users click on their ads and get redirected to their website.
PPC allows you to place ads throughout a publisher’s network. Google Ads, the largest and most reliable ads network out there, allows you to place advertisements throughout the search engine’s entire network. But, even though they can produce results immediately, PPC campaigns also require a significant investment, so you need to shorten the learning curve as much as possible or get help from a reliable marketing agency.
As with other types of digital marketing on this list, PPC brings a unique set of metrics that help you measure the success of your campaign. Remember, vanity metrics like click-through-rate give you a false perception, so you’ll have to identify the metrics that hold true value for your campaign, like conversion and leads generated.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/ppc/
Content Marketing
When company owners think about promoting their services online, the first thing that comes to mind is content marketing. This technique has become extremely popular because it doesn’t require a large investment like PPC, but it can transform your website into a predictable leads machine.
Content marketing is a tactic that aims to generate valuable resources for your clients and potential customers in the form of blogs, research papers, and instructional videos, among many others. To be successful, the content you produce must deliver some value to readers, like explaining the different options they have available to solve the problem at hand.
The goal of content marketing is to establish your company as a leader in your field and encourage visitors to contact you. For this reason, you need to avoid being salesly in the early stages as your prospects will want to learn more about your company and the solutions you offer before making a purchase.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/inbound-marketing-agency/#Content_Marketing
Different Types of Content Available
Content is crucial for the success of other types of online marketing like inbound and SEO. But, choosing the materials you need to develop and ensuring that they’re designed to attract customers is not always easy. This varies from company to company, so you need to analyze your needs and determine which formats work best for your business.
As you probably already know, online content comes in a huge variety of formats. It’s important to choose the best type of content for your prospects to make sure you capture their attention. If your content doesn’t come in the right format or isn’t practical enough, they won’t make time to read your resources.
Here are some of the most popular formats you can use in your content marketing campaign.
Blogs
Almost all content marketing campaigns include regular blogging. This is because each blog post you publish can help you deliver valuable content to your readers. Think about your blog as your own personal showroom where you can shine a light on your products, services, knowledge, team members, and other areas that give you more credibility in the eyes of your customers.
Writing a blog post is also a great chance to deliver actionable information, collect user data, and promote other types of content. For example, if you develop downloadable resources, you can create a blog to promote these materials and use a call-to-action (CTA) to collect name, email address, and other pieces of information from interested users.
Every blog post you write needs to have a purpose, even if it’s just informational. It’s important to identify the topics that your audience is interested in. Plus, you also have to develop a publishing schedule that coincides with your audience’s free time to increase exposure.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/blog/how-to-write-a-blog-post/
eBooks
It’s true that ebooks have been around since the early days of the internet, but they have become a valuable marketing tool for companies that want to boost their digital marketing efforts. In its most simple form, an ebook is the electronic version of a printed book designed for a mobile device. Marketing ebooks are similar, with the exception that they are designed to inform customers who are interested in your services or industry as a whole.
The main advantage of developing ebooks is that they can be very detailed, so you can discuss your products, services, industry trends, and other topics that may interest your customers. These are usually offered in downloadable formats, like PDF files, so interested users can download them, review them at their own pace, and use them as an offline resource.
In addition to the above, ebooks can include checklists, specific instructions, or statistics collected through independent research. Developing a quality ebook is necessary for success, but you also need to gate this type of content. This means that you should request name, email address, and other pieces of information before letting users download your ebooks.
Whitepapers
Establishing your website as a leader in your industry will help show your authority in terms of knowledge. Whitepapers are another type of downloadable resource that can show your knowledge and highlight the benefits of your products. Simply put, a whitepaper in an authoritative document that shows your expertise either by analyzing parts of the industry, detailing the benefits of your products, or delivering some form of value to readers.
Whitepapers are known for being technical, so you should stay objective and include a section on how the information was collected. Furthermore, you also need to develop a mechanism to help raise awareness and distribute your research to your target audience. This can include email marketing automation, social media campaigns, and blog posts that send users to your whitepaper download page.
Developing whitepapers is challenging because they require extensive research. Many companies build a team to conduct independent research, which can improve the credibility of your whitepapers. It’s also possible to base the content on research carried out by third parties, but you need to offer a unique point of view that benefits readers in one way or the other.
Training and Solution Videos
Whether you sell a physical good or a software solution, it’s safe to assume that not all customers will know how to use your solutions right away. Creating training videos is a great way to show customers and prospects how to use your product while reducing the number of cases your support team has to handle.
Solution videos are also a great alternative if your product solves a common problem in a specific industry. Not all users understand written instructions, so developing rich media libraries that help potential clients find solutions to their issues can also increase your chances of achieving digital marketing success.
Taking the time to develop quality videos can also bolster your brand awareness and set you up as a leader in your industry. The best part is that YouTube and other channels allow you to distribute your rich media resources without any costs, so your audience can get access to these resources whenever they need them.
Infographics and Other Downloadables
A few years ago, the popularity of infographics grew at an unprecedented level. Infographics are images that help break down large volumes of data into small chunks that are easier to digest. They usually include charts, graphs, statistics, and small amounts of text that highlight the most important element.
Infographics are often used to create awareness and shine a light on an issue that negatively affects your target audience. From a marketing point of view, infographics are attractive to users because they feature an appealing design and provide useful information that’s easy to understand.
Creativity is the key to developing quality infographics. These visual representations feature a unique combination of aesthetic elements and functional data, but both of these carry equal importance. If the graphics aren’t appealing or the data isn’t accurate, there’s a strong chance your audience will not be interested.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/learn/
Social Media Marketing
The first social media platforms were established in the mid-to-late ‘90s, but these networks have changed a lot since. Powered by ultra-fast internet connections and innovative high-tech devices, social networks allow companies to share promotional photos, videos, and live streams with their customers and followers in a natural way. Social media marketing allows you to use the features available on different networks to forge strong bonds with your audience, establish a good reputation, and attract more paying customers.
Most modern networks share similarities, but most of them have a unique selling point that sets them apart from the rest. Some networks revolve around pictures, while others allow you to send short video clips that have been altered through editing software. These features make each platform unique and tend to attract different demographics, so you need to select the right networks based on your target audience.
There are dozens of different networks to choose from, but we’ve found that many of our clients benefit from a combination of three platforms. For companies that target B2C customers, Facebook and Instagram are usually the best options, while B2B companies often find LinkedIn to be the best source of business.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/social-media-marketing-agency/
When you think about social media, it’s hard not to picture Facebook’s logo. Facebook has more than 2.6 billion active users, making it the biggest and most widely used social media platform on the planet. It’s the go-to place for local companies and other businesses in the B2C space, but it also poses an interesting alternative for some B2B companies as well.
Facebook’s popularity is partially due to the fact that it’s a wholesome social network. It doesn’t focus on one type of content. Instead, it allows users to share videos, images, written updates, and pieces of content that friends can react to. And, over the last decade, the platform has also allowed companies to market their products and services through paid social campaigns.
Running paid campaigns on social media is a great alternative because people willingly provide vast amounts of information to these networks. Besides location data, most Facebook users also specify their interests, profession, family members, demographic information, and much more. This allows you to build ultra-targeted campaigns that only show you ads to relevant audiences.
Instagram may not boast of the user base that Facebook has, but it still has 1 billion people actively uploading pictures and interacting with other members on a regular basis. If you’ve ever used or seen pictures of Instagram, you’ve probably noticed that it’s all about uploading entertaining videos and quality images.
As a matter of fact, Instagram is pretty much designed solely for pictures, video, and live stream sharing. People can access this social platform through a computer, but the full set of features is only available to users who download the application to their mobile device. And, because the network focuses heavily on the visual, it’s actually a good choice for both B2C and B2B companies.
There are 2 million companies paying for Instagram marketings every month, which is a relatively low number when compared to Facebook or Google Ads. That said, the network offers the ability to create high-quality videos and place them in front of engaged users, which can be a recipe for success depending on your industry.
The one thing that most social networks don’t have is a space for professionals who want to build connections with other experts. LinkedIn is the top network for professionals because it allows you to find and interact with a wide variety of specialists from around the world, making it a crucial part of B2B social media marketing.
LinkedIn has a large user base at more than 700 million, especially considering that it’s geared towards businesses. A large base of LinkedIn users are decision-makers or high-ranking execs that can influence decisions in their companies. This is the main reason why this network is a must for B2B companies, plus the fact that you can publish long-form posts without the need for integrations or additional steps.
Like Instagram, LinkedIn has a relatively small number of companies advertising their services through the platform’s paid advertising program.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/blog/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/
Email Marketing and Automation
Email marketing was one of the first forms of digital promotion, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not effective. If set up properly, your email marketing campaign can help nurture prospects, promote the content you publish, and move your leads down the sales funnel. With this in mind, you have to dissect the buyer’s journey and craft emails that engage them at the right time.
The best way to learn about the buyer’s journey, which is the process most customers go through before making a purchase, is to learn from your existing clients. You should trace back the steps and identify the key moments as well as the patterns that led to each sale. Talking to customers and asking questions is a good idea, especially if the client has been extremely happy with your product or service.
Once you have a deep understanding of your audience, you have to craft your email marketing sequences and find the best automation tool. Email marketing automation allows you to contact your entire list of prospects without having to complete each action manually. With the right tools, you can even set up time or event-triggered emails, so you only have to monitor the stage of the buyer’s journey to determine how close your leads are to talking to your sales team.
Affiliate Marketing and Native Advertising
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance marketing where advertising companies pay affiliates based on the number of conversions they generate. A conversion can be anything from a newsletter sign up to a sale, so it’s a cost-effective and low-risk technique for advertisers.
The main hurdle in affiliate marketing is that affiliates have full control over the methods used to generate leads and sales. In this scenario, advertisers lose control over the quality of their traffic and may potentially get a bad reputation if the affiliates use unethical advertising techniques.
Moreover, managing an affiliate marketing program takes a lot of time, especially if you want to maintain lasting relationships with the best marketers. Companies that develop their own affiliate marketing strategy also need to implement security precautions to avoid fraud and ensure that every paid conversion is legitimate.
In these cases, partnering with a digital marketing agency that monitors your affiliate marketing campaign can relieve pressure and make sure your program is generating the right results.
Online Reputation Management and Public Relations
You can’t answer the question “how to do online marketing?” without discussing online reputation management and digital public relations. Reputation management has been a key part of building a successful company before the days of digital marketing and this practice remains an important part of the business world today.
The difference is that review sites, business directories, and social media channels have changed the way consumers grade your company, so you need to learn how to adjust and make sure that you have a good reputation on these platforms. In most cases, you won’t be able to delete or edit any negative feedback, but there are different techniques you can implement to maintain a good reputation.
Public relations is connected to reputation management, but it also focuses on getting the attention your company deserves. For example, let’s say you’re creating exceptional content that is getting a decent amount of traffic, but it’s good enough to become a leading resource in your industry. In these cases, public relations can help you garner the attention of your audience and enjoy the fruits of your hard work.
What are the Advantages of Online Marketing?
Now that we’ve answered the question “what does online marketing mean?” in great detail, it’s time to go over some of the benefits this approach has to offer.
The vast majority of people in the US use the internet to find solutions to their immediate needs, so digital marketing is a suitable alternative regardless of the industry you’re in. Unlike traditional advertising, digital channels are extremely flexible and they provide unique features that allow you to measure their success from different perspectives.
There are many online marketing benefits that make this approach a great option for almost all companies. For instance, this approach can help you:
Establish a Comprehensive Plan
The first step of every campaign is to create a detailed digital marketing plan that includes all of the channels you’ll use to promote your services. Your marketing strategy may need to be adjusted depending on the results you get, but it will help you stay focused and keep your long-term objectives in mind.
When developing your marketing plan, you have to be as detailed as possible. For instance, if you’re working on the SEO section, you have to do your research and develop a detailed publishing and optimization schedule in this phase. As a general rule of thumb, the more detailed your marketing strategy, the easier it will be to make tough decisions in the future.
You should also establish a set of achievable goals during your planning process. Similarly to your plan, you should create specific objectives that can be measured and establish a timeframe in which you would like to achieve these goals. It’s important to set up short-term as well as long-term goals to keep you motivated and focused.
Finally, you need to determine your budget and have realistic expectations about the results you’ll get from your digital campaigns. The smaller your budget, the fewer resources you’ll be able to generate, which will reduce the potential number of users you can reach.
Learn About Your Audience
Most companies and business owners have superficial knowledge about their potential clients, but this doesn’t mean they understand their audience. It’s impossible to generate appealing and engaging content on a consistent basis if you don’t have a good understanding of your potential clientele.
Luckily, the internet is a great place to conduct audience research. You can rely on different tools that help you evaluate the industry as a whole, which will help you understand what will drive customers to your company. After examining large sets of industry data through Google Trends and other tools, you should also look at your current client base and reverse-engineer a strategy that helps you close more customers.
Design a Better Website
If you’ve ever heard the expression “your website is your online storefront,” take the time to memorize that mantra. You should always assume that visitors will judge the quality of your service and your company as a whole based on the appearance and performance of your site. If you have an outdated site with zero design elements, you won’t get many leads even if you have a significant amount of traffic.
Your business website is one of the cornerstones of your digital marketing efforts, so this strategy will require you either revamp or completely redesign your site if it doesn’t have the right elements in place. And, as part of developing a better website design, you’ll also focus a lot more on the content you create and how it’s presented to your visitors.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/website-design/
Produce High-Quality Content
Content is every bit as important as web design because it’s the heart and soul of your website. There are different types of content you’ll have on your site, so you should develop your written copy based on the page it will be displayed on.
In addition to the content on your product, service, and about pages, you also have to publish regular blog posts, create white papers, and craft other types of resources for your audience. Digital marketing will help as your guide while you research different ideas, determine what topics you should cover, and produce better content based on your research.
Achieve Better Organic Rankings
Not all companies opt for SEO, but this part of your digital campaign can help you achieve better organic rankings. The closer you are to the top of the rankings, the more exposure your company will get. Plus, if you’re running PPC campaigns and getting top organic rankings, this is a good time to reduce your paid advertising budget and allocate those resources to other parts of your marketing machine.
Companies with the highest organic SEO rankings also attract the most unpaid traffic, so search engines can become a valuable source of leads. High organic rankings combined with conversion-driven web design may be exactly what you need to get started with online lead generation, so contact Fannit and let’s discuss your digital marketing campaign today.
Reel in More Unpaid Traffic
The best type of online traffic consists of people who found your website through organic means, like a quick query on Google. These people are actively looking for answers to their problems and want to learn more about the solutions they have available, including the products you have to offer.
As long as you have strategic pieces of content in place, you should be able to collect information from many of these users and use it to build a predictable sales funnel.
More traffic doesn’t only mean a higher number of potential clients, but it can also improve the SEO performance of your site. Google takes into consideration the amount of time users stay on your pages and website as a whole. If people start spending large chunks of time on your site, you will be rewarded with a higher relevance score and better rankings.
Generate a High Volume of Leads Online
Generating leads is the ultimate goal of almost all marketing campaigns and your digital promotion efforts are no exception. Marketing online can help you transform web visitors into paying customers in a variety of ways.
Your website should take the different stages of the buyer’s journey into consideration. In other words, it should contain content designed for people who just want to learn more, users who are researching different options, and prospects who are on the verge of calling your company.
Focusing on these three different stages will help you build a robust sales funnel that brings more quality leads and allows you to determine when these will become sales.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/lead-generation/
Improve Brand Awareness
A positive brand image is necessary to establish your company as a leader in your space. Digital marketing is extremely efficient for branding, even if your campaign is designed for lead generation and sales. However, you have to pay attention to consistency and ensure that your branding is the same across all platforms.
Keep in mind that your social media channels and website are not the only places your branding should remain consistent. Depending on your business, your audience may rely heavily on local directories or review sites to make a decision. Make sure to identify all platforms that may be of use to your clients and update your logo, color scheme, business name, and other parts of your branding.
Enhance Internal and External Communication
Before the internet, the only ways clients could contact companies were over the phone, via written mail, or in person. In the early 2000s, email was also added to the list, but it was not adopted by most companies until much later. Modern consumers now expect companies to have digital communication channels that allow them to maintain contact without much effort.
Digital marketing aims to capitalize on all external communication channels because they can help close sales and deliver top-notch service. From social media profiles to live chats and support emails, your company should have a system in place to monitor these platforms and reply to any messages in a timely manner.
Additionally, because digital promotion requires the collaboration of different teams within your company, it also enhances internal communications. If you don’t have them already, you’ll have to set up a company-wide chat network and establish an open communication culture that encourages your team to always stay connected with each other.
Calculate Return-On-Income
Figuring out the return-on-income (ROI) of your marketing campaigns before the internet was impossible. Sure, companies knew how much money they would spend on television ads, billboards, and other forms of advertising, but they had to idea how much business they generated through these efforts. Even with the development of coupons and promo codes to help track a certain campaign, it wasn’t a practical approach that generated conclusive numbers.
With digital marketing, calculating the ROI of your campaigns is very easy. In addition to knowing how much money you invest in your marketing campaigns, you can also track the exact number of leads and sales they produce. Whether you’re using SEO, content marketing, PPC, or a combination of techniques, you’ll be able to determine how much it costs to acquire each one of your new customers.
There are variants to the formula that allows you to calculate ROI. In its simplest version, ROI can be calculated by dividing the net profits by the total investment and multiplying the answer by 100. It’s worth noting that some formulas can include variants like final value, initial value, or the number of years if you want to calculate annualized ROI projections.
Reduce Marketing and Promotion Expenses
Conventional marketing like radio spots and print advertising is expensive, especially if you can’t calculate how efficient they are. Many companies have actually avoided investing in their marketing for this same reason, because traditional channels have a high price tag but they don’t offer any reassurance.
Digital marketing is a flexible technique, so it can be a good alternative for companies of all sizes. It’s also affordable when compared to other forms of marketing because you can start with a basic budget and implement more complex techniques as your campaigns grow.
Even if you have a relatively small budget, you’ll be able to invest your resources into developing a comprehensive plan and gradually start improving your website. As your campaign progresses and starts producing results, you can look at the efforts that are producing the best results and allocate more resources into these parts of your campaign. This should not only lower your overall marketing expenses, but also improve efficiency in terms of revenue generation.
Resource: How to Create a Marketing Budget That Brings Results
Showcase the Quality of Your Services and Products
Promoting your services through digital channels is not as straightforward because you have to prove the quality of your products and services using intangible materials. In other words, you have to showcase how good your solutions are without being in front of your potential buyers.
This is far more challenging for companies that provide physical products, but it’s also difficult to achieve for intangible goods. Digital channels are a great option because they allow you to create and publish different types of content that highlight the quality of your solutions.
In addition to extensive blog articles, you can also develop ebooks and different types of videos to illustrate how your services and products work. Some companies have even gone the extra mile and created videos where current customers show potential buyers how to use a specific product, thus encouraging potential clients to give it a try.
Establish Your Company as a Leader in Your Space
It’s one thing to develop content about your products and how they can help solve common challenges. However, this type of content doesn’t always contribute to the overall industry nor does it set you up as a thought leader. Becoming a thought leader is crucial to capture top-of-the-funnel leads, which are prospects that can benefit from your products but are not actively searching for your solutions.
If you implement digital techniques like content marketing and SEO, you’ll produce content that subtly promotes your products, but also answers common industry questions and showcases your knowledge from an informative perspective. This can help establish your company as a thought leader, which means that users will look at your resources as a valuable source of information.
Being a thought leader not only attracts top-of-the-funnel leads. It also helps potential buyers make a decision when evaluating several options. After all, consumers are more likely to contact the companies that can show their expertise, so becoming a leading business in terms of knowledge can also help you close more sales.
Best Tools to Build a Robust Digital Marketing Strategy
The digital marketer’s toolkit is full of amazing resources designed to build robust promotion campaigns. With this in mind, you have to identify the platforms that are essential and determine which ones can be implemented later down the line. There are many different online marketing tools out there, so it’s important to understand how they work and what benefits they bring before making any commitments.
You’ll find a huge list of options whenever you have to choose a piece of marketing software, some of which are free and others are paid. This doesn’t automatically mean that paid platforms offer the best option for your marketing campaign. Google and other reliable companies have developed a wide range of unpaid tools that help monitor and improve your online campaigns without increasing your expenses. But, you have to know which free platforms you can trust and opt for paid tools whenever necessary.
To craft a successful digital marketing plan, you have to research keywords, trends, and engagement indicators on social networks, among other details. You also have to create a centralized client database to ensure that your internal team delivers a consistent experience to your leads and customers. Plus, you also have to identify other tools that can help monitor your campaign and make adjustments that improve its performance.
At Fannit, we’ve spent years scouring the web to find the most effective marketing tools. There are many quality options available for each type of software, so we’ve put together a list of four essential tools you should have at your disposal and provided a few alternatives for each platform.
Customer Relations Management Software
Customer relations management (CRM) is an approach that prioritizes relationships with prospects, leads, and customers. CRM strategies focus on creating a great experience every time a member of your audience interacts with your company, with the goals of improving efficiency, enhancing customer relations, building trust with buyers, and gradually generating more sales.
For customers, interacting with different members of your internal team can be a nightmare, especially if there is no communication between your employees. This is especially true when the marketing department hands off leads to the sales team. If your sales team provides conflicting information, your potential buyers may be discouraged from choosing your products.
CRM tools can help your team create a seamless experience for your audience because all of your team members will be on the same page. It doesn’t matter if a potential client interacts with a marketing or sales agent, a CRM will help your team members answer questions and deliver great service without any disruptions.
Our top picks for the best CRMs you can get for your marketing campaign are:
- Hubspot
- Salesforce
- Freshsales
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/blog/how-to-use-hubspot-help-setting-up/
Keyword Research Tools
How does your target audience find your services? What words do they type into Google? Knowing the answer to these questions will help you create service pages as well as blogs that have higher rankings and cover the right topics. But, if you don’t know how these searches are performed, you won’t be able to connect with customers who are actively trying to find your services.
Keyword research can reveal the terms your potential clients use when looking for companies in your industry. With this information, you can strategically place specific terms throughout your content, increasing your chances of getting higher rankings and attracting interested customers.
There are dozens or maybe hundreds of keyword research tools at your disposal. While Google does have its own keyword research platform that’s available for PPC campaigns, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of flexibility. In most cases, the best choice is to opt for a premium keyword research tool that reveals actionable data, like top competitors, ranking difficulty, and other key metrics.
After extensive testing, we’ve found that the best tools are:
- AHREFS
- SEMrush
- Moz Keyword Explorer
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/keyword-research/
Social Media Management Platforms
Maintaining several profiles up-to-date with offers, promotions, and engagement posts is a full-time job, but not all companies can afford a dedicated social network manager. Updated social profiles are necessary if you want to stay competitive. But, the good news is that social media management platforms can help you automate posts and other updates across multiple platforms.
Social management tools only work if you stay organized. The goal is to create updates in advance through these tools, which they will automatically publish on the selected time and date. Therefore, you have to create your materials as well as a posting schedule weeks and have both available when creating your automated posts.
In our experience, the most reliable set of social management platforms include:
- MeetEdgar
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
Analytics Tools for Monitoring and Optimization
One of the major changes that digital channels made to the marketing industry is the incorporation of big data. Sure, traditional marketing strategies collected large data sets, but many of the calculations were based on assumptions rather than concrete information. In digital marketing, you have a variety of analytics tools that can collect, parse, and present information, which you can use to optimize your campaigns for better performance.
Analytics tools can have a wide variety of features. For instance, platforms like Google Analytics will give you the number of visitors, where they came from, how much time they spent on each page, and similar metrics. Others can help you visualize where your visitors spend the most time and how they react to different elements on your page. Like other parts of your digital marketing campaign, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so you have to evaluate your company and figure out which type of analytics tools will deliver the most value.
The top analytics tools available to track, monitor, and optimize your campaign include:
- Google Analytics
- CrazyEgg
- StatCounter
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/marketing-analytics-services/
How to Develop a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign
Building a successful digital marketing campaign is all about preparation and constant monitoring. If you establish a solid foundation by creating content in advance and developing a detailed plan, you will improve your chances of getting the right results.
Unless you’re working with an experienced agency, remember not to set the bar too high, or else you may be discouraged by your results. Successfully promoting your services on the internet takes time, so you have to be patient or work with an experienced marketing professional that can help you hit the ground running.
It’s imperative to create a tailored marketing plan for your company to increase your chances of achieving your goals. This process can usually be divided into three steps, which are:
Building Your Strategy
For starters, you have to collect as much information as you can about your business as well as your audience. This will help you design a strategy specifically for your company. In addition to customer information, also include your budget and other elements that will help you develop a plan.
During this step, you should identify the different digital channels you’ll implement and create separate approaches for each one.
Creation and Launching Phase
The creation phase may be the most prolonged step, but you have to take the time to craft quality content and produce a detailed schedule that you’ll update on a regular basis. You don’t have to create all the content you’ll use at once. If you’re taking a gradual approach, identifying the pieces of content that have the most potential beforehand can boost the performance of your campaign early on.
Once everything is ready to go, you can officially start making changes to your website, social profiles, and other digital platforms. You can also start publishing content, but remember to also work on future pieces in advance to maintain a good rhythm.
Monitor Performance and Make Improvements
The most notable difference between digital marketing and traditional advertising comes after your campaign is live. Instead of waiting to see what happens, you can access your analytics tool and monitor the performance of your campaign. If your efforts are not producing the results you want, you can test out different variables and figure out which combination can produce the most business.
Contact Fannit and Get Started with Online Marketing Today
In all honesty, learning how to market your company on the internet may take some time, but these digital channels offer unique capacities that we only dreamed of a few decades ago. We hope the article above has helped answer the question “what is an online marketing campaign?” and provided the information you need to start building your digital strategy right away.
At Fannit, we’ve spent the best part of the last decade helping customers develop a winning digital strategy that helps them connect with their audience and transform leads into paying customers. If you’re ready to get started and learn more about online marketing, contact Fannit and our team of experts will be glad to help.
