Digital marketing is currently one of the most important elements of modern marketing. In fact, in case you have not factored in digital marketing into your business, you are not just missing out on an incredible market, but also stifling the growth potential of your business.

Whether your business model is B2C or B2B, you should be able to get a major presence online, create meaningful conversations and more importantly, generate sales through your efforts. While digital marketing is the in thing, not so many people get it right all the time. We will discuss some strategies and tips that should help you get the results you seek.

Creativity

One of the most important aspects of digital marketing is creativity. You must put in a lot of effort into this. There is stiff competition in virtually all industries at the moment. It gets even worse when you come online. Everyone seems to be clamoring for attention, and it is only the creatives that eventually make the cut.

Whether you are working on your mascot or brand logo, things like the color scheme and font that you choose will go a long way in determining how successful your advertising plan will be. Do not leave it there. Go the extra mile. Focus on designing visual ads and elements that will generate the best organic traffic for your brand.

Heather Wood, Content Marketing Manager at EssayWritingLand, says, “When working on social media ads, you have to invest in some serious creativity. This is the only way you will stay relevant. Users need to see your posts more than once, share them and have people discussing them. Your images and/or videos need to have an aesthetic appeal that will tell a cohesive story, complete with a call to action, which is aligned with your brand objective.”

Social media strategy

Everyone you come across must have at least one social media account active. In digital marketing, social media is an important part of your work. You must, however, be wondering why it is not working for you as yet. Well, the reason for this is because you might be making one of the most common mistakes brands make – having too many social media accounts.

There is nothing wrong with opening accounts on every platform so that you can reach out to as many people as possible. The problem with this is that you might end up diluting the impact or effect of your brand strategy.

With social media, you need to be consistent, especially when it comes to your goals. Consistency online is one of the prerequisites for getting a serious, and loyal following on social media. If you run too many accounts, you might soon struggle to maintain the same objective across the divide, and some of your followers will move along because you no longer seem to be working towards the same goal.

You cannot be everywhere at the same time. Study your market demographics, understand the needs of different people in different social media networks, then see how that aligns with what you want to achieve. With that figured out, go online and push your agenda.

Spend time on research

A brand with good ideas but zero effort on research is bound to fail. We have seen so many such brands online. Impressive campaigns but barely any credible results in the long run. Most companies and brands fail to understand the need and importance of analytics. You need to have an expert view of the market you are investing in.

Conduct research. Make sure you have credible data to back your marketing strategy. The good thing about this is that credible research helps you anticipate certain actions by the customers. Many people have been spending on paid advertising through sponsored posts on social media. More often you will get the numbers, but are you sure you are getting the views and clicks that matter?

When you decide to pay for advertising, you need to make sure you have researched on the target market, so you can target the ads too. Know the client profiles in-depth. Know the people who spend more and the ones who are likely to refer people to you. Research will help you gain meaningful insight into the actions of your target market and use this to your advantage.

Understand social media

More than 80% of the American population own social media accounts. The simple statistics will whet your appetite. The idea of the numbers you are exposing your message to, will get many brand managers excited. Look at these facts and figures, for example:

  • Facebook has 1.9 billion users each month
  • YouTube has 1 billion users each month
  • Instagram has 600 million users each month
  • Twitter has 317 million users each month
  • Pinterest has 317 million users each month

These stats are interesting, but if you follow them blindly, you will fail. While these numbers are amazing, they do not help you much. Look at it this way. More than 50% of the accounts on Twitter, for example, barely ever post updates. The majority of the 317 million users a month on Twitter are between 18 and 29 years old. Imagine spending heavily on a campaign without considering such information.

In similar retrospect, more than 90% of Instagram users are below 35 years old, while barely half of this population pay attention to, and follow brand accounts.

YouTube enjoys up to 2 million video views every single minute. However, you will get a wider reach for users between ages of 18 and 34 than the older generation.

More than 75% of Facebook users are active each day for more than 20 minutes. In fact, Facebook is preferably the best place for your brand to spend on advertising if you plan on interacting with Generation X and Millennials.

You have to go deeper into social media analysis to understand things like the gender divide, for example. This will help you map your online advertising strategy to suit your brand goals. Your brand objectives and the needs of the clients should go together if you are to succeed.

Parting shot

Ultimately, digital marketing is the best way to get your brand the exposure you need. Any company that wants to relate to the audience effectively will have to consider spending on digital advertising. You must work towards reinventing your presence online if you have been using outdated digital advertising tactics or doing the right thing in the wrong way.

What next for your company?

First, you need an audit. Discuss your current strategies with an expert. Review the results you have been getting since you started marketing your brand. A social media audit will help you understand where your efforts have been wasted, and where you need to shift your focus.

Second, invest in analytics. A lot of companies use the basic analytics tools available. While these will help you, you need an expert at analytics to get you to the next level. Analytics is about getting an in-depth view of your advertising goals, objectives and results.

If you carefully employ the tips that have been discussed herein, you should be able to see an improvement in your ROI, not just presently, but also into the future. Most importantly, remember the digital world is about change. You must put in place dynamic measures to change with the time, or you might find your brand and techniques being obsolete very soon.