The field of digital marketing is expanding rapidly, with new platforms and channels constantly being created to reach and engage with consumers. Traditional marketing methods like newspaper ads and pop-up billboards are being adapted to fit the digital world, with a growing number of marketers now using digital marketing to reach people where they are, when they’re most likely to be interested in what your product or service has to offer.
This means that digital marketers now need to figure ways to reach individuals, whether they’re in a physical or digital space. The most effective way to do this is through content marketing, which allows you to establish the authority of an expert in your industry while building a large community of passionate followers.
5 Tips for Being a Successful Online Digital Marketer
To succeed as a digital marketer, you need to follow a straightforward approach that focuses on providing value to your audience while consistently building your brand. With so much change and uncertainty in the industry, established marketers are finding ways to stand out and continue to grow their businesses, so you can too! Here are five tips for being a successful online digital marketer – get inspired, take note, and get started.
1. Understand the target audience’s needs and wants
The first step to being a successful online digital marketer is understanding your target audience’s needs and wants. Who are you designing your content for? What are they searching for that leads them to your website or app? What are they trying to avoid?
You can use a tool like Hootsuite to gain insight into your target audience’s behaviors. With this platform, you can track your top tweeted topics, identify the people most likely to benefit from your content, and take note of any hot-button issues or topics that your content might spark. You can even measure the success of your various content campaigns in real time, so you can find out what’s working and what needs to be changed to be more effective.
2. Create value for your target audience
Your target audience is the group of people who you intend to provide value to through your content. They’re not (yet) familiar with your brand, so you need to make sure that you’re providing some value before they will be inclined to choose your product or service. To create value, you need to put yourself in their shoes and think of what they need or want. And you need to do this consistently across all of your content.
When developing your value proposition, there are two main points to consider: what makes you different from the competition, and what makes you special? Differentiation is the key to creating value, since your product or service will never be appealing to everyone. Deciding on a niche for your product or service – e.g., productivity tools for busy professionals, or virtual assistant services for business owners – helps you to define your target audience and what you’re offering them.
3. Create content that is shareable
Nowadays, content is everywhere. People are consuming content on their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. If your content isn’t sharable, you’re losing out on the potential to reach a huge audience. Your content needs to be able to be repurposed to reach a wider audience – whether it’s a short video, a graphic, or a written piece. If you want to be able to repurpose your content in future, consider investing in tools like Canva to help you create content that will hold up well against others in their industry. It’s also a great way to keep track of what content you’ve published and what hasn’t performed as well as you would have liked.
4. Use data responsibly
A big part of being a successful online digital marketer is being informed by data. One of the most effective ways to do this is to set up automated email campaigns that will pester your audience with periodic promotions. For example, you could create a series of emails that get sent out to people when they sign up for your product or service, or when they take a specific action (e.g., made a purchase, downloaded a white paper, or filled out a form).
There are several factors that you need to keep in mind when using data in your email marketing campaigns. For example:
- Be sure to have the requisite email opt-in. If you’re sending out periodic emails, make sure that people know that they were asked to provide their email address in order to receive these promotions. This way, everyone feels like they received a good deal and are happy to participate.
- Make sure that you’re not annoying your audience with constant emails. People get annoyed by overly frequent emails, even if the emails are helpful or contain important information. Ensure that you have some variety in your content so that you don’t become repetitive.
- Avoid using email marketing as a replacement for in-person communication. Even though technology has made it possible to have face-to-face interaction over the internet, nothing beats being in the same room as the person you’re corresponding with. It’s more personal, and it allows for a more natural conversation.
- Test different combinations of content and calls-to-action to find what works best for your business.
- Consider what makes your product special and create content around that. For example, if you’re offering software that can help businesses implement marketing strategies, consider creating a series of blog posts focused on marketing trends or best practices. Not only will this make you stand out among your competitors, but more importantly, it will allow you to provide real value to your audience.
- Create content that is easy for others to copy. The key to being a successful professional is establishing your authority while also knowing your limitations. Being overly generous with your content might make you seem less of an expert – people will assume that you’re just taking advantage of their good nature. Instead, make sure that your content is of a high quality that is clearly valuable. This way, you’ll be able to establish yourself as an expert without coming off as a braggart. And you may even learn something from those you’re helping!
- If you’re new to content marketing, focus on quality over quantity. It’s easy to get carried away with the sheer volume of content that you produce and become disheartened by the constant stream of similar writing you have to keep up with. Instead, focus on high-quality content that will engage your audience, and you’ll find that your work will start to speak for itself.
5. Measure the results of your content efforts
The final step to being a successful online digital marketer is measuring the results of your content efforts. You can’t expect to see instant results from content marketing – it takes time for your audience to discover your content, and then they have to actually act on it. To get the most out of your content marketing efforts, you need to track the results of your various content campaigns in real time, so you can find out what’s working and what needs to be changed to be more effective.
There are several tools online that can help you track the performance of your content. For example, you can use Google Analytics to track the traffic coming to your site. And if you decide to use HubSpot to run your digital marketing campaigns, you can track all of the interaction the content has (e.g., form fills, email opens, website traffic, and more) in real time. This helps you to see how individual pieces of content perform, and it allows you to determine what’s working and what needs to be changed to be more effective.
Conclusion
Being a successful online digital marketer is about using a combination of strategy and data-informed execution to grow your business. The field is changing rapidly, with new platforms and channels constantly being created to reach and engage with consumers. Traditional marketing methods like newspaper ads and billboards are being adapted to fit the digital world, with a growing number of marketers now using digital marketing to reach people where they are, when they’re most likely to be interested in what your product or service has to offer.
This means that digital marketers now need to figure ways to reach individuals, whether they’re in a physical or digital space. The most effective way to do this is through content marketing, which allows you to establish the authority of an expert in your industry while building a large community of passionate followers.