How to Ace Digital Marketing in 2019

Digital marketing is any marketing of a service or product that involves electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets or a desktop. To succeed, you need both an offline and online strategy. New Zealanders spend over 11 hours a day on an electronic device. 9% of drivers on the road are either texting or making a call on their phone. What about the passengers in the car? You guessed right. They are also looking at their phone. No one glances at the billboards or takes note of what’s written outside their immediate environment.

 

The strategies we’ve listed here will help you win at digital marketing before Google and Apple release their self-driven cars, at which point we expect digital marketing to be the only marketing that matters.

Optimise your website

Remember when you first built your website? The hard work, customisation and effort that went into creating a user-friendly website complemented by engaging copywriting? Now, think back to the last time you tweaked your About Me page, looked through your website for redundant pages, security risks or elements that needed changing. A long time ago right?

A good digital marketing strategy begins with your website. Your social media, PPC, email, and even offline marketing campaigns, all redirect to your website. It’s easy to be so focused on getting traffic that you lose sight of the landing pages that should convert. Regularly conducting an SEO site audit to ensure that the content on your website matches what viewers in your audience want to see.

Conduct keyword research to find long tail keywords and phrases your audience is using to find content specific to you. There are affordable content writers who will create good website copy around the keywords and phrases you have found.

Collective marketing is the way to go

If you’re a digital marketer who creates and distributes content on their own, you’ll have noticed that the current system demands more. It has become easier to produce content. Statistics show that a huge percentage of marketers in New Zealand prefer to work with external content creators to boost their campaigns. The slots are limited to get your voice heard but the reward is huge.

Collaboration is also on the increase. It gives your content the chance to be seen by twice as many people. Influencer marketing is another option you could consider. Their huge following ensures your message is heard by thousands, even millions, of people and also attracts potential customers back to your website.

Create interactive content

For many digital marketers, great content is the key to success. Articles and blog posts are especially easy and cheap to create when compared to video, slideshows, infographics and podcasts.

Acknowledge that your audience is bombarded with thousands of articles every day – from posts, shared content on social media, emails, web articles and more. They are jostling back and forth from the cute video of the German Shepherd protecting the little baby to a well-written piece on converting clients through social media. Do you see the issue? Short attention span.

Only the marketer who publishes the most engaging articles get the most attention, backlinks, customer interaction and conversion.

If you can’t create such interactive content, engage a freelancer, copywriting agency or employ a copywriter to help.

Grow your brand awareness and visibility

We’re going to assume that you’ve done your audience research and built customer avatars. A few tips to help you grow brand awareness for the long-term include:

• Invest in assets that yield returns today and in the future. Assets include email subscribers, social media followers and SEO ranking. These assets continuously drive traffic to your website. The free traffic turns into sales if you have a valuable product or service to sell.
• Develop trust with your followers on social media. A poll result shows that consumers are more likely to purchase from brands they follow on social media. Developing trust with your social media followers is the bedrock of a lasting relationship. Paid advertising is the fastest, efficient and most targeted way to complete this task (especially Facebook).
• Post shareable content guaranteed to interest your audience. Hire a digital copywriter to help you create relevant content.
• Use relevant hashtags to amplify your message.
• Create and join an industry-specific group that adds value to the lives of your members.

Prioritise the customer experience

Brands who overcomplicate the customer experience do not achieve long-term success. Why? The customer is king and everything you do should be for their benefit. The core elements that make up a positive experience are little things you probably didn’t even know mattered.

Focus on removing any friction that might prevent the prospect from completing the sales funnel. The success of a sales journey is dependent on your ability to eliminate this friction.

Friction begins with your website. The content on your website should be persuasive, compelling, concise and targeted to your audience. CTAs should be appropriately placed and navigation should be easy, not tedious. Get in touch with a professional writing service to ensure the language, style, tone and grammar of your content is right.

Use blogging as your primary lead generation tool

You already know the importance of SEO and how good content can drive a massive amount of traffic to your website. It all boils down to giving Google many pages to index and rank you for. The more top-quality blog posts you create, the higher your following and SERP ranking.

Figures from Entrepreneur show that marketers who blog are 13x more likely to get a higher ROI than those don’t. A content writing company could help to improve your content marketing strategy and generate engaging blog posts that feed your lead generation efforts.

Re-access your email distribution efforts

Email remains one of the best ways to reach your target audience in 2018. Open rates have increased by 180% on mobile devices and most users open the email on their phone, not desktop. It doesn’t cost a penny to the audience, unlike text message. Work with an email copywriter to create messages that keep your audience engaged and your brand at the front of their mind.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is not easy, both in New Zealand and across the globe. You’re competing with thousands of brands and trying to get your voice heard above all the noise. It’s harder for small businesses to stand out in a sea of similar marketing strategies which is why you need to increase the effectiveness of your online marketing strategy for success. Whether you’re a startup or a household name, these tips will help you get more conversions.