The most common mistake that digital marketers make is either do things in the wrong order or do too much at the same time. Digital marketing requires a planned approach and as such the approach can be divided into a series of steps as given below:
1. Create an acceptable website while optimizing it for SEO
The very first thing you need to do is create an acceptable website that effectively reflects the customer expectations. Every aspect of user experience, including colors, icons, videos and structure of a website has to be considered. Also, you need to optimize your website for search engines. You can expect more free traffic when you have great content in good UI.
2. Create an awesome mobile environment
The people are increasingly using mobile devices for reaching out to websites and thus, optimizing websites for mobile users has become more essential than ever before. A great mobile experience will bring more free traffic, lowering the need for investment in paid search or advertising to a great extent.
3. Create a brand through email marketing and paid search strategy
When you have built a decent foundation and started getting quite a good amount of free traffic, it’s time to move to email marketing and paid search for building relationships, and creating your brand. A smart email marketing strategy allows you to build an owned audience rather than renting it from media channels or Google. People searching for different keywords with your brand included, are looking out for you; so, you need to make sure that you show up and capture the potential traffic.
4. Display Advertisements
Display ads to create brand awareness and reaching out to new relevant audiences. The most exciting part about display advertising is that brands can be built cost effectively. Moreover, products are introduced to a new audience and it is effective in raising demand. But going crazy for ads is also not recommendable. You just need to focus on your brand and the products and services the website provides.
5. Create micro outcomes on the website
After generating free and paid traffic, the next step is to create micro outcomes for the website. Let us take an example of a hotel and casino website to understand this. Macro outcome would include the number of room reservations i.e. the actual conversion which is done by nearly 2% of the visitors approximately. Micro outcomes, on the other hand, allow you to deliver something of great value to the remaining 98% visitors and establish a useful relationship with them. These include adding reviews and videos on the website, adding information on retail leads, providing options for mobile downloads, deals, packages etc. This step requires working with many people, including chief management staff like Vice Presidents and Directors, but it’s definitely worth it.
6. Create an incredible website and do social media marketing
It’s now time to invest in creating the world’s most beautifully designed, functional, brand-showcasing and customer experience enhancing website. This is essential to beat your competitors and stand out in the competition.
Also, it’s time to invest in social media, particularly Facebook and YouTube. But there should be a pull-in strategy for the same which involves entertaining, informing and providing useful content, rather than a pushing strategy which simply throws promotional stuff to the audience.
7. Follow an effective Search and Display Strategy
Create an incredible category or industry targeting Search and Display strategy. This is really helpful in brand marketing and owning a relatively large audience. The idea is to understand the customer intent and convert it into demand for what needs to be offered.
8. Integrate multiple channels
Integrated multi-channel marketing involves reaching out to customers through many different marketing channels like a retail store, a web site, email marketing campaigns, or direct communication through call centers or text messaging. The main aim is to make the customer buy by whatever way possible. The easiest strategy is to provide them with coupons through newspapers, physical stores, emails etc.
9. Conduct Loyalty Marketing
Loyalty marketing involves creating unique content and targeting customers that have purchased two or more than two times from your website. This is because when people make purchases for one time, they might not have had another choice at that time, but when they make purchases for the second time, they preferably chose us.
Given, all the nine steps to the ultimate success, the exact order in which the efforts are to be prioritized is quite clear now. Also, every step holds a significant position in the process and should not be left out.
