The world is changing. New technologies are emerging and evolving, and traditional ways of doing business are being disrupted. As you may have noticed, traditional methods of getting an education aren’t as relevant today. With the world shifting to a digital sphere, it’s time to revisit how we connect with customers and what methods we can use to attract and retain them. In today’s world, there are countless ways to connect with potential customers, but not all of them are created equal. Sometimes, the simplest and purest way of connecting is through digital marketing and advertising. With search engines like Google determining the popularity of websites and mobile applications, having a functional and reliable website is becoming more important than ever.
To help you determine the viability of this route, we’ve compiled an in-depth list of tips and tricks on how to effectively market your degree online. The following advice will help you design a strategy to attract students to your program and inspire them to earn their degree while pursuing commercial success.
Focus On The Basics
As a beginner in the world of digital marketing, you may be tempted to throw yourself into the deep end and overload your website with high-quality content. But, don’t be fooled by appearances; flashy designs, fun facts, and interesting graphics can all boost traffic to your site, but only if they’re done right. As a general rule of thumb, keep things simple and easy to understand. If you add too much content and complicate things, you risk losing potential customers who are busy scrolling past flashy headlines and appealing art directions. In this way, a little simplification goes a long way.
Pro-Tip: Designing Your Website For Mobile Users
Even if your website is super-duper-extra special and has all the bells and whistles, chances are, your potential customers are going to be accessing it on their smartphones. To ensure that your site is user-friendly on mobile devices, opt for a simple, sleek look with a minimalistic color scheme. Since most people are likely to navigate websites on their phones while checking emails or browsing social media feeds, keep that in mind when designing your site.
Make Sure Your Website Is HTTPS
Unfortunately, not all websites are created equal. Some websites are prone to hacking and have all kinds of glitches and security issues, which is a complete pain for the website owner and a major pain for the customer who is trying to have a pleasant experience. If your site is not secure, your customer’s personal information (credit card details, addresses, and phone numbers) may end up in the wrong hands. To avoid potential issues, make sure that all the pages on your site are secure (have an HTTPS connection). If you’re not sure what this means, learn more about it here.
Some website builders, like WordPress, have come up with an excellent solution to this dilemma, providing both HTTP and HTTPS protocols within their platforms. If you decide to go this route, make sure to switch between the two to test out both possibilities. Doing this is as simple as clicking a switch or button on your site’s settings page.
Avoid Poor Grammar
If you’re writing for an audience, whether it’s blog articles, social media posts, or website content, you’re going to have to write in a way that someone can understand your ideas. While it’s not always possible, avoid using poor grammar and spelling mistakes. Instead of “That’s something,” say “That’s something.” Instead of “It seems to me,” say “It seems.” Keep the language simple and easy to understand. If you want to become a successful digital marketer, you have to be able to communicate effectively and concisely with your audience. Consider investing in a spell checker and a thesaurus. Using these tools will help you avoid careless errors and ensure that your writing is error-free.
Use Keywords Properly
When you’re designing your website, you have a ton of keywords to think about. When search engine bots (aka, Google, Bing, and Yahoo) scan the text of your website, they’re going to see words and phrases that they can use to produce results similar to what you’re offering. To best ensure that your site shows up when someone types in a search term, use those keywords throughout your copy, ideally in the title, description, and h1 tags (headline). If you have more than 500 words of content, you can also use the “keyword” tag inside the content to help the search engine spiders understand the context of your content.
Pro-Tip: Use Your Own Real Name
If your blog or website gets any type of popular or official status, you’ve got a brand to protect. As a rule of thumb, use your real name instead of a pen name (a pen name is used when you’re writing under a pseudonym to avoid potential conflicts of interest). If you’ve been blogging for a while and have developed a nice audience, it’s time to ramp up your brand protection strategy. Why? Your blog or website is now considered “legitimate” and has developed some credibility in the industry. If anything were to happen to your blog or website, you could be risking damage to your brand. To ensure that you’re using your real name, register your blog and/or website with a reliable service like Google.
Guest Blogging Is A Great Way To Gain Credibility
If you’re looking for ways to gain credibility and exposure, consider guest blogging. Essentially, as the name implies, you’ll be contributing to other websites as a guest. In exchange, the site hosts will usually publish a blog post featuring your content somewhere on their website. While this is a great strategy for getting your name out there and building credibility, it’s important to remember that you’re essentially “renting” someone else’s audience. Make sure that you’re comfortable with this type of arrangement before you get started.
Avoid Social Media Spam
Even if you’ve got a great content strategy and a beautiful website, if you’re posting way too much on social media, your audience is likely to lose interest fast. Since people are more likely to follow popular social media accounts, make sure that you’re posting only relevant content to keep your audience interested.
To get started, create a content calendar with posts slated for at least once a week. Using content calendar tools like Schedule A Blog can help you plan out a schedule for your blog that suits your needs while also ensuring that you don’t overuse the platform. Keep regular content flowing by posting on a consistent basis.
Use Analytics
To figureheads of modern digital marketing, like Marichal and Devian, data is everything. And, to be frank, without it, marketing is like trying to navigate without a map or GPS. To put it simply, without the right data, you’re flying blind. Even worse, you may end up in the wrong place or make the wrong decision based on inaccurate information.
Luckily, there are a few tricks and tools that can help digital marketers and website owners track the performance of their websites and mobile applications.
One of the simplest and most effective tools for tracking website traffic and growth is Google Analytics. With this tool, you can see your website’s traffic by month and daily, which can help you identify growth trends and determine which content works best.
Pro-Tip: Use The Content Calendar To Create A Library Of Promotional Content
One of the biggest benefits of using a tool like Google Analytics is that it can help you create a content calendar. Essentially, a content calendar can be used to map out a schedule of content that you’ll publish over the course of a year. You can use this tool to plan out content for any type of device (mobile, desktop, or tablet) with a web address.
Using a content calendar is a great way to ensure that you don’t overuse any one type of content when promoting your site. Instead, you can use the content calendar to see which types of content perform best for your target audience. For instance, if you’re trying to sell clothes to women, you may find that blogging about fashion is a proven way to attract female readers.
Pro-Tip: Use Social Media To Follow Influencers In Your Industry
Since digital marketing is all about data, using social media to follow influential people in your industry is an excellent way to stay abreast of the trends and news in your niche.
By following relevant influencers, you’ll discover content that relates to your niche and can help guide your content strategy. Additionally, you can use social media to connect with other marketers, content creators, and entrepreneurs who can help you grow your business.