With over four billion internet users worldwide and over 3.4 billion active social media users, digital marketing is critical for reaching a wider audience than traditional means alone. Furthermore, digital marketing can assist you in better engaging prospects and converting leads into devoted, happy consumers.
However, going on a digital marketing journey, especially as a start-up or small business with a minimal online presence, may be confusing and frustrating. At Smarketors, we have compiled a comprehensive list of digital marketing tips to inspire your marketing team and kick-start your 2023 digital marketing plan.
Continue reading to discover 12 digital marketing tips to employ in 2023 and beyond.
Understanding your target demographic is a critical first step in digital marketing. Who exactly are they? What are their wants, needs, and interests? What do they do with their free time? You may need to perform market research to identify and understand your customers; this can be as basic as surveying some of your existing customers.
1. Understand Your Customer
This information will help you create several buyer personas and a customer journey, which will map the steps a prospective customer takes to progress from an anonymous shopper to a loyal purchaser. It also assists you in defining consumer segments based on characteristics such as age, gender, occupation, income, geography, and interests.
You can design customized marketing initiatives that speak to your target customer’s interests once you have a good image of them.
2. Personalize The Content For Better Engagement
Content is king, and nowhere is this more true than in digital marketing. It is one of the most important differentiators for your digital marketing strategy and may determine how effectively the end user perceives your efforts. This is why tailoring your content to the goals and needs of diverse target groups is critical, even if you’re promoting the same product or service.
You can’t expect a content message that worked well with new-age urban consumers under the age of 35—likely to be trendy digital natives—to work as well with someone from a semi-urban or tier II or III region. Therefore, it is also critical to tailor the content format to the device utilized.
3. Use Analytics-Driven Marketing Campaigns
Data is today’s digital-first oil, quickly becoming a critical growth driver and differentiator for the digital marketing value chain. Using data analytics to develop marketing insights can give you intelligent recommendations that can help you sell, upsell, or cross-sell more effectively.
Data also improves the accuracy of attribution across traffic sources and can be used to provide push notifications on mobile devices, whether through owned marketing initiatives or affiliate-driven campaigns. This allows you to reach the appropriate customer at the right moment with the right message.
4. Build a Presence on Relevant Social Media Platforms
Being visible online is critical to the success of any business, especially in today’s world, where nearly all enterprises have gone digital. It is one method of standing out from the crowd.
As a result, you must establish an online presence on relevant social media networks. There are numerous social networks available, but you must determine where your clients spend most of their time and target them there. Choose those relevant to your company and prospects and establish an internet presence there.
5. Create Mobile-friendly Content
Did you know mobile devices account for 65% of all traffic to the top 1000 North American-based online retailers? So if your website is not mobile-friendly, you will likely lose new clients (and maybe even some loyal ones as well.)
Ensure your website looks excellent, loads quickly, and is easy to use on all devices. Optimize your site to be responsive on all digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers. Check your page speed because it is essential in attracting customers to your website. If your online pages load slowly, your clients are likely to depart.
6. Create and Grow an Email List
Email is still a powerful driver of ROI in digital marketing. Email generates a $36 return on investment for every dollar spent! However, you must do it correctly.
Make sure your website has a sign-up form for email newsletters. Provide your subscribers with valuable content rather than just promotion. Tell a story. You may also utilize your email lists to publish content or execute email nurturing with your leads, converting many people.
The secret is to balance content, stories, and calls to action. For example, your first nurture email may include a personal story about yourself, followed by an explanation of what you sell and a request for individuals to contact you.
7. Invest in Digital Advertising
Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most efficient digital marketing tactics for reaching your target demographic and increasing traffic to your website. Spending money on digital ads can feel like taking a gamble, but in the highly competitive ecommerce business, PPC ads are standard practice.
PPC advertisements can be valuable for experimenting with your message and brand, learning what generates the most clicks, and always improving your ROI. PPC advertising includes Google Ads and YouTube Ads, as well as social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
8. Create Visual Content
A picture is worth a thousand words, and people will share them more frequently than text-based information. We like videos because they may be visually appealing, engaging, and informative.
According to research, including a video in your email can raise your click-through rate by up to 300% while decreasing your unsubscribe rate by 75%. Moreover, eight out of ten people have purchased a software after watching the brand’s video.
On a tight budget? You can make professional-looking videos with your smartphone, a microphone, and natural lighting. Do you need actors? Ask your colleagues to help, or utilize tools like Lumen5 to provide descriptive subtitles.
9. Include SEO As Part Of Your Content Strategy
While pitching a blog as a part of your marketing funnel or a pure thought leadership publication has its advantages, adding an SEO strategy to your topic selection and content creation is one of the most effective methods to increase long-term traffic.
As a first step toward maximizing the potential of your blog, use services like Ahrefs or SEMRush to discover what people in your sector and potential clients are searching for and discussing. If you want to increase the visibility of your brand and content across multiple channels and platforms, your website SEO and content must collaborate.
10. Tap Into Online Local Search
If your company relies on local clients, an online local search might be a game changer – and it can be less expensive than targeted media like TV, radio, or billboards. In addition, online local search marketing ensures that your company appears in search engine results for your geographic location.
For example, if you own a carpet cleaning company in Texas, you would ideally like your company to appear when someone searches for “carpet cleaners in Texas” on Google. Anyone conducting that search could be a potential customer; therefore, it makes sense to have your company featured.
There are two primary approaches:
- Local search engine optimization (SEO) entails optimizing your website’s content to target those keywords.
- Local search engine marketing (SEM) is using paid advertising to ensure that your local businesses and businesses appear in relevant local searches.
11. Prioritize The Customer Experience
Digital marketing is the most efficient approach to communicating with potential clients on a large scale. It allows you to provide different types of clients with customized experiences and control where your target audience interacts with your business. However, it is vital to remember that consumers want a smooth digital experience – digital expectations have risen as people have spent more time online in recent years.
To get the best out of your digital marketing campaign, you should consider making it simple for customers to receive service and purchase from your company. Also, and this is sometimes forgotten but crucial, make sure you solicit reviews.
Reviews are a valuable tool for understanding your customer’s experiences with your company and providing future consumers with the social proof they require to feel comfortable purchasing from you.
12. Standardize Your Brand Voice
Every brand has a personality related to its market category, target audience, and values. This brand voice is required to develop, strengthen, and sustain your brand’s perception among consumers. Effective digital communication incorporates this brand voice into web copy, email newsletters, company blog content, and social media posts.
It’s vital to be true to your brand’s voice and values, especially during digital marketing campaigns. A distinct brand voice and values will also influence how you connect with your audience to guarantee that you meet their requirements and your overall business goals.
In Conclusion: Put These Digital Marketing Tips to Use
It should be no surprise that digital marketing is critical for expanding your business in the ‘digital age.’ Digital marketing done the right way can expose your company and product offerings to many internet users while keeping your brand image fresh in customers’ eyes.
Now that you’ve learned about the above-listed digital marketing tips, it’s time to put them to use to increase online sales and build your business in 2023 and beyond. Want to learn more about digital marketing? Click here to get started.