It’s easy to get overwhelmed when deciding to expand your brand online. There are so many different options for advertising and ways to reach an audience. The most important thing to realize is, the best digital marketing strategy is the one that fits your target audience. Here are 5 important aspects to consider when starting out.
Do your customers shop online?
Before putting all your time and energy into transitioning to digital marketing, consider the habits of your demographic.
The internet is widely used and will only continue to grow, but many older generations generally still prefer to do their shopping in person. Who are you selling to? Do you see them benefiting from your efforts to move online? In almost all cases, the answer to this will be ‘yes’.
What kind of website are they landing on?
Once you have determined that you need a website for your business, consider what kind of website. First of all, do you need an intricate website that resembles a physical store with all it has to offer, or just a landing page? A landing page is a web page usually with one distinct purpose – perhaps to tell customers about an upcoming sale or to direct them to another website. If you’re running either a full-on website or a landing page, pay close attention to the design and layout of the page.
Give your customers a pleasurable browsing and shopping experience.
Inbound or outbound marketing?
Which digital marketing category will best suit your audience? It helps to sort some of the myriad styles of digital marketing into two categories: inbound and outbound.
Outbound marketing can include physical, live demonstrations such as trade shows and seminars, or it can be digital campaigns like sending emails to purchased lists as well as cold calling campaigns. This works best when the awareness of your product is quite low, so you put on big demonstrations to increase exposure. Inbound marketing is becoming more popular in today’s world. It engages with SEO and content marketing, often taking advantage of search engine algorithms to draw audiences to your website.
Once you’ve set up a home page, reach out with blogs and through social media to attract potential customers and clients.
How are you going to advertise?
Once you’ve decided on your advertising strategy, it’s wise to plan an advertising campaign so you’re not just throwing darts in the dark and hoping for a bullseye. If you’re taking on inbound marketing strategies, reach out to useful blogs, hire content writers and familiarize yourself with Google’s algorithms. If you’re taking the outbound road, look up opportunities to expose your brand to the public, such as a marketing expo.
Do some research on what kinds of email lists you should look into and think about how you want to advertise your product, whether on television, social media or Youtube.
What are you getting back?
One of the huge advantages of digital marketing is, it’s much easier to gather useful data. With many free data analytics platforms, you can keep a close eye on how your digital marketing strategies are paying off. Most of all, digital marketing is about reaching the right audience and connecting with them. All marketing is communication, and digital is no different.
