Growing your business or brand is vital and in order to do that you need to think in terms of ‘position, target and segment’.
Digital marketing is one route to producing the success you want. Yes, there are many marketing tools and avenues to explore. But, digital marketing is the most effective, and efficient, means of increasing brand awareness and growing your audience to generate interest and sales.
What is more, you don’t need a massive budget to get you off the ground, just a solid digital marketing strategy.
Website
Your website is essentially your shop window: it gives customers their first impressions of your business and should lure them inside. A well designed website should deliver a good user experience and work to encourage and generate sales.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is crucial for getting a high ranking on Google. Therefore, it should be at the top of your marketing agenda. An SEO strategy specifically designed for your business increases visibility and attracts new customers, plus, all search engines reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content, so do make sure you have blog posts that help you achieve higher rankings.
Blogging
Speaking of which, blogs are a great way to support SEO. Writing interesting content that incorporates key words will drive more traffic to your website. This traffic then turns into leads and potential sales. Blogging also establishes you as a credible business by showcasing your knowledge and expertise.
Content marketing
What is content marketing? Basically, it is strategic approach that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content. This may be your own content, or you may use curated content from authoritative voices in your business sector – properly attributed to them, of course. Your aim is to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, prompt profitable customer action.
Content marketing focuses on long-term results. It is true that you may not see immediate result, but what you need to aim for is sustainable growth in site visitors, leads and customers, plus it should increase customer loyalty.
Also, and this is important – your content strategy needs to be in place before you start planning and implementing a social media strategy.
Social Media
Social media is a major part of your marketing strategy. It’s not uncommon to hear the opinion that if something wasn’t posted on social media, it never happened. Perception is everything, which is why you should think of your strategy as being like a theatrical stage. The more you document what is relevant to your brand or your philosophy, the more connections you will gain. And as we know, connections are the building blocks of relationships.
First and foremost, stay relevant with engaging content and visual tools to build your brand presence and audience. And remember, not all social media platforms work for every business. It depends on what your service or product offers and your business objectives. Choose your channels wisely, rather than spreading yourself thinly across all of them.
The most popular and generally useful are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram:
Facebook is widely used for business to consumer companies. Advertising allows you to target a specific audience based on geographical location, interests, age, sex, online behaviour and more.
Twitter is renowned for consuming conversation. It allows you to search for discussions related to your business and be actively involved. Its large user basis could include your potential customers!
LinkedIn has 200 million members and is free to join! It is predominantly used for B2B marketing and for promoting career opportunities.
Instagram is a visual platform. It is ideal for businesses that can use capturing and high quality photography, or high-end graphics. This is a great tool for creating a visual brand story, which boosts audience engagement.
And then there are #hashtags. These are often added to social media posts and help you to reach an audience interested in a particular subject, or in a particular location. They must be used in a consistent way and be relevant to your business.
Google my business
Google is one of the most powerful marketing channels. It helps businesses improve their online presence and helps customers find and review their business in their local area. Essentially, it is the most comprehensive and accessible business directory ever created.
Google Adwords
Google AdWords is Google’s advertising system and it can take a bit of work to figure out how to get the best deal for you from it. Basically, advertisers bid on specific keywords so that their ‘clickable’ ads appear high in Google’s search results. Advertisers have to pay for these clicks and that is how Google makes money from searches. There are a staggering 40,000+ searches on Google every second and no other advertising method can get your business in front of so many people.
Email marketing
Providing you have a quality database, email marketing is a cost effective way to directly reach your already engaged audience. It is an effective method when you want to deliver one clear message and the results can be easily measured.
Benefits of email marketing include:
- Low cost
- Global reach
- Easy automated set up available
- Simple to segment
- Immediate communication
- Easy to optimise and track
We can help your business with a well thought out digital marketing strategy for your business or brand – call us for a chat!
Mint on the Rock– your digital marketing specialists in Gibraltar.
