It’s no secret that technology changes quickly, and in the never-ending quest for freshness, businesses are finding themselves in a constant state of upgrade. For marketers, this means that existing strategies no longer cut it and they’re constantly having to reinvent themselves. What’s more is that with new marketing platforms, social media, and email marketing software all being developed and improved upon daily, the challenge of figuring out what works and what doesn’t become even more daunting. This is where strategic thinking comes in. It’s essential that marketers take the time to think through all the different platforms they use, as well as those they might consider using in the future. This way, they can develop a clear picture of how different marketing tactics and strategies fit together: a cohesive strategy that is tailored to the specific needs of their company.
Email Marketing
With over two-thirds of the world’s population currently using email, it’s an essential part of any business’ marketing strategy. While traditional mail is still a vital element of a business’ overall communications plan (and we can’t underestimate its power), the ability to target your email audience more accurately using digital marketing methods is invaluable. This way, you can develop a more sophisticated and personal connection with your customers, attracting them to your brand and enticing them to take action.
One of the biggest challenges that marketing departments face is keeping up with the ever-changing digital landscape. The sheer volume of content that businesses have to deal with means that it’s often difficult to know where to start when implementing a digital marketing strategy. This is why it’s essential to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring your marketing success, both online and off. By tracking key metrics relating to your email marketing efforts, such as open rates, engagement, and action taken (e.g. click-throughs, orders, etc.), you can determine the effectiveness of your strategy and make improvements where necessary. The advantage of having a clear picture of your email marketing success is that you can then refine and re-evaluate your strategy, implementing new tactics as soon as they prove successful.
Content Marketing
If there’s one area that’s changed the most over the past year, it’s been content marketing, particularly social content marketing. The reason behind this is pretty clear. With the rise of the “hashtag” and the “trending topics” on social media, users are looking for content that inspires, informs, or entertains them. What’s more is that this content can be shared across multiple platforms, greatly expanding your reach and allowing you to engage with more people.
This sort of content might include anything from short-form articles to full-blown e-books, whitepapers, or blog posts. The important thing is that the content is of good quality and provides value to your audience. You might also consider using tools such as Growthoid to establish benchmarks for measuring the impact of content, both on and off social media.
Traditional Marketing
Although digital marketing is undoubtedly the future of marketing, many businesses are still heavily reliant on traditional marketing. This usually takes the form of advertisements in magazines, newspapers, and on TV stations. The problem with this sort of traditional marketing is that while it might attract attention, it doesn’t necessarily have the desired effect of drawing consumers in and making them interested in your brand or product. For that matter, quite a few studies have shown that consumers become less receptive to advertising as they get to know you and trust your opinion more. So, in the interest of developing a cohesive strategy, it’s important to determine how much weight you’ll give to traditional versus digital marketing, both now and in the future.
Mobile Marketing
The majority of the world’s population now access the internet via a mobile device, and this trend is showing no signs of slowing down. As a result, it’s an essential element of any business’ marketing strategy to ensure web content is mobile-friendly and accessible across all platforms.
This means that you need to review the content of your website and make sure that it’s optimized for mobile devices. You might also want to consider developing a separate mobile website, which can then be accessed via a smartphone or tablet. In any case, having a mobile friendly website means your content will be displayed accurately and quickly, regardless of whether a person is on a mobile device or a conventional one.
Social Media Marketing
If you’re not actively involved in social media, you might be wondering why it’s so important to your business. The answer is that social media is everywhere, and it’s becoming even more so now than it was a year ago. As a result, it’s an essential tool for any business’ marketing strategy. This is because you can target specific audiences based on key demographics or interests, develop and maintain valuable relationships with potential customers, and gain credibility by being active on social media.
The challenge is to utilize social media effectively and for maximum impact. Luckily for you, we’re here to help with five tips on how to do just that.
1. Build a robust social media strategy
Just as with any other aspect of your marketing strategy, you need to establish how you’ll use social media and what will be the key focus of your campaigns. Before you can do this, you need to build a robust social media strategy, which includes determining the goals you’ll set for yourself and the metrics you’ll use to track your progress. To start with, you might want to consider using a tool such as Hootsuite to create and coordinate your entire social media strategy. With Hootsuite, you can create teams of people you can share content with (e.g. your social media audience), schedule content to be published at certain times, and track the success of your campaigns, all from one place.
Once you have a robust social media strategy in place, you can determine how much weight you’ll give to different platforms and how much time you’ll devote to each one.
2. Measure the success of your social media strategy
As we’ve mentioned, keeping up with the ever-changing digital landscape is hard. Thanks to the unrelenting success of social media, however, much of our measuring and evaluation now takes place online, too. This is where tools like Google Analytics and HubSpot come in. With these tools, you can track the success of your social media strategy, both on and off social media.
In particular, Google Analytics can show you the quality and effectiveness of your content, while HubSpot provides you with a complete view of how your social media strategy is performing, both on and off social media. Additionally, these tools provide you with crucial information on who your ideal customer is, allowing you to create more fulfilling and effective marketing content.
3. Identify the right metrics
It’s important to determine which metrics you’ll use to measure the success of your social media strategy, both on and off social media. For example, if you’re publishing content on your website and you want to see how much engagement this content is getting, you can use tools like Google Analytics to track views, clicks, and conversions, resulting from the content. In this way, you can determine the effectiveness of your content and tactics and make improvements where necessary.
4. Use digital marketing to complement your other marketing efforts
As we mentioned above, marketing strategies are continuously changing to fit new marketing technologies and platforms. One of the key things that marketing departments need to keep in mind, however, is that all of their marketing efforts should complement one another. This is vital for developing a cohesive marketing strategy and ensuring that your efforts are getting the results you’re after.
For instance, if you’re using SEO and paid ads to reach your customers on social media, you should make sure that your website content provides valuable and consistent information to your audience. This content can then be used to establish you as an authority in your industry as well as to attract and engage potential customers on social media.
5. Consistent branding and messaging
Regardless of whether you utilize SEO, paid advertisements, or social media to attract potential customers, you’ll still want to make sure that all of your marketing content, including your website, blog posts, and social media, is consistent and cohesive.
This means that instead of simply using different platforms to promote your products, you should consider using the same tactics and strategy across all of your marketing channels.
Additionally, you should make sure that the copy used on all of your marketing materials is consistent and has the same impact as the copy you’d use if you were standing in front of a live audience,