Traditional

Traditional marketing is still very much alive and well within the industry, and it’s often the first thing that comes to mind when you think of marketing activities. However, due to the nature of the internet and the growth of online marketing, traditional methods need to be adapted to fit the online world.

The first step is understanding what makes up traditional marketing and why it’s still so relevant today. Simply put, traditional marketing is the act of communicating with potential customers to sell a product or service. This can be done through various forms of advertising (e.g., print, radio, TV, etc.), word-of-mouth recommendations, and salespeople (either in person or online through various social platforms).

To succeed in the online space, you need to understand how to adapt these traditional methods to be more effective and less expensive. One way of doing this is by repurposing content (e.g., blog posts, website pages, and videos) aimed at potential customers to engage with existing customers, potential customers, and other members of the community. Repurposing static content means taking existing material and reshaping it to fit the attention of current audiences. For example, a business blog might repurpose content into a marketing video to reach a broader audience.

Modern

Unlike traditional marketing, modern marketing is focused on creating brand awareness among a target audience and engaging them into action. It’s often referred to as a 360-degree approach because it involves considering all aspects of a customer’s experience, including their awareness, interests, perceptions, and buying behavior. A good rule of thumb is to consider what your target audience wants and needs and then craft marketing strategies to meet these demands.

There are six major components to a successful marketing strategy:

• Audience analysis: To identify your target audience and understand who you’re reaching with your content.
• Product / service analysis: To discover the needs of your target audience and the reasons they’ve turned to your product or service.
• Competitive analysis: To assess the strengths and weaknesses of your current competitors.
• Campaign design: To develop the communication strategy that will lead to customer interactions (e.g., email marketing, social media campaigns, etc.)
• Performance analysis: To measure the success of your efforts and analyze areas for improvement.
• Research: To discover fresh insights and information that will enrich your strategy.

Before you develop your marketing strategy, you need to set some basic objectives. For example, do you want to raise brand awareness among the general public or attract a more specific audience (e.g., decision-makers, influencers, or skeptics) to your product or service? Do you want to grow the overall size of your target audience or engage with current customers to improve their experience? Having clear goals will help you measure your success and determine whether or not your efforts were worthwhile. Once you’ve established these goals, you can develop a plan to achieve them. Start by determining how you’ll measure the success of your strategy and track your progress through various metrics (e.g., web analytics, social metrics, and email open and click-through rates).

Measuring the Success of Your Marketing Strategy

No matter what kind of marketer you are, whether you work in-house or for an agency, understanding the importance of measuring the success of your strategy and tracking metrics is vital. This way, you’ll know whether or not your tactics were effective and determine what worked and what needed to be changed. Without this data, it’s difficult to know whether or not your efforts were worth the time and effort invested in them. In the case of online marketing specifically, there are several platforms that can help you track the success of your strategy. For example, Google Analytics, Bitly, and Hotjar provide you with detailed metrics such as demographic information, the number of website visits, how often people visit specific pages, and more. They also keep track of conversions (e.g., email sign-ups, online store visits, etc.) and allow you to drill down into individual marketing campaigns to get specific KPIs (e.g., CTR, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc.).

To succeed in the online world, you need to fully understand the metrics that matter, especially when it comes to marketing. Knowing which metrics to look out for and how to interpret them can help you gauge the success of your strategy and decide what needs to be changed or improved upon. With these platforms, you can segment your data by viewing it in a graph or chart to get a bird’s eye view of your entire digital marketing strategy.

Attracting & Engaging a Larger Audience

Raising brand awareness among the general public is a good first step towards marketing to the larger audience. Once you’ve established this brand awareness, you can branch out to engage with this audience and eventually turn them into paying customers. This requires a bit of ingenuity and creativity, and it often starts with social media. There are several platforms (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook) that allow you to keep up with relevant news and content, and create the perfect virtual environment for engaging with potential customers. These platforms can also be used to listen to and respond to your audience. For example, if you’ve tweeted about a product or service that suits your target audience, you can use the #hashtagging to engage with other users while also sharing useful information. Your overall goal is to attract, engage, and retain your audience so that they keep coming back for more.

The Importance of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s content and architecture to make it easier for search engines like Google to find and index your site. When a consumer searches for a product or service online, the search engine will display a list of websites that fit the search query. The SEO on your website, whether you develop it yourself or hire an agency to do it for you, will dictate how well your website shows up in search engine results. As a general rule of thumb, the more unique content you have on your site, the better. Having lots of pages with the same content will only hurt your site’s search engine optimization.

There are many different tactics that you can use to improve your site’s SEO. For example, you can use keywords in the titles, descriptions, and headings of your content. You can also create backlinks to your site by getting other websites to link to you. Backlinks are essential because they provide other websites with a signal that you’re a trustworthy and authoritative source for your subject matter. If other websites link to you, it means that they perceive you as an expert in your field and that your content is valuable. In turn, this can lead to more traffic and, ultimately, more sales.

Understand the Differences

Before you start any kind of marketing activity, whether it’s SEO or otherwise, make sure that you understand the differences between the various forms of marketing. Just because one method might work well for one business doesn’t mean that it will work well for your business or that it’s the best route for you to take. For instance, depending on your product or service, traditional marketing might not be the best approach. Instead, you might want to focus on gaining traction through SEO or content marketing.

To succeed in the digital marketing world, you need to understand the differences between various methods of marketing and choose the one that suits your business best. Alternatively, you can use various platforms that can help you find the right niche and find customers who are most likely to purchase your product or service.