Running a business is challenging.
Even with the most innovative idea and availability of cash needed, that is not enough to guarantee a successful business.
And after the COVID crisis, business as usual is a thing of the past.
What you need to grow a profitable business in a post-COVID economy is an effective digital strategy.
But not all digital marketing strategies are effective. You need to know the right strategies that you need to adopt for your business to run efficiently and profitably.
In this post, we will share 10 components that any digital strategy you implement must have in order to be effective.
So whether you’re working with an Agency, or implementing Digital in-house, you can use these 10 components as a benchmark or measure of how effective your strategy will be.
Let’s dive in
Table of contents
1. An Optimised Website
2. Local SEO
3. Search Engine Optimisation
4. Google Search Ads
5. Content marketing
6. Social media engagement
7. Social media marketing
8. Google Display Ads
9. Email Marketing
10. Web analytics and CRM
An Optimized Website
Your website is usually the first impression people will get about your brand. In fact, your website is like a salesperson that works round the clock for your business.
However, studies show that 80% of people are less likely to return to your website. The stats are worse if they have a bad experience on your website.
In order to get the most out of your website, you want a website that is optimized to give visitors and potential customers a great experience and have them come back over and over again and ultimately, do business with you.
(Do you have an Optimised Website? Find out here)
The main goal of an optimized website is to ensure that your website leads your potential customer through a predefined customer journey and take them from visitor to paying customers.
Website optimization is an ongoing process. Month after month, you need to consistently look for ways to improve your website performance and experience.
A Local SEO Strategy
Local SEO is probably one of the most overlooked growth strategies by businesses today yet, it is one of the most powerful.
Local SEO accounts for 35% of all search traffic. This fact alone justifies the importance of implementing a Local SEO strategy.
How do you leverage Local SEO in your business? Through business listings & reviews.
Once you have an optimized website, listing your business online should be at the top of every brand’s local SEO strategy. This is because it is one of the easiest ways to increase brand awareness.
For instance, Google My Business accounts for 25% of local search signals. And that’s just one listing that you could leverage.
(How To Leverage Technology To Improve Your Local SEO Strategy)
Online reviews also help amplify your listings and put them over and above the competition.
Why?
Customers need social proof when choosing a business to work with and having reviews is one of the top deciding factors when they are looking to work with a business.
Search Engine Optimisation
Having a website is critical as we have established. But, if no one knows about your website or can find your website, then it’s not very useful.
If your potential customers do not know you exist, they cannot do business with you.
Think about your customer for a minute. When a problem they are trying to solve arises, one of the first places they go to is Google, looking for the solution to their problem.
Whatever they find is going to inform their decision on how to solve that problem. And this is where you must come in with an SEO Strategy.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most complex aspects of your Digital strategy. Simply put, SEO involves improving the visibility of your website in a search engine like Google or Bing, to make the website more discoverable to potential customers, increase leads and sales.
Here’s an example:
(Insert Google Search Results Image)
A well-crafted SEO strategy helps relevant users find you and boost your business’s credibility.
(Learn more about crafting an SEO Strategy for your business)
Content Marketing
Content marketing focuses on creating and distributing valuable and useful content to attract, engage, convert and retain an audience.
Content marketing establishes your brand as an expert, promotes brand awareness, and keeps the business top of your prospect’s mind so that when they are ready to make a purchase, you would be their number one choice.
The right content geared towards answering your potential customers’ questions combined with the power of SEO would be impactful to your business.
Companies that use content marketing see an approximately 30% higher growth rate than businesses not using it.
Google Search Ads
What are Google Search Ads? These are search engine results that are paid for.
In addition to having SEO and Content Marketing working to make your business more visible, you can amplify those efforts with Google Search Ads.
Google search ads help bridge the gap by bringing in immediate traffic and helping you reach your audience immediately. This puts you in the driver’s seat and allows you to get in front of potential customers while they are searching for your products and/or services.
When you combine SEO, Content Marketing & Google Search Ads, you instantly have an edge over the competition.
Social Media, we can’t talk about Digital Strategy without talking about Social Media. Social Media has become a way of life and a way individuals interact with other people and brands and there is no effective Digital Strategy that does not involve Social Media.
When it comes to social media, you need to be looking at 2 things:
● Social Media Engagement
● Social Media Marketing
Social Media Engagement
Social media engagement focuses on building a relationship with your potential customers even before they do business with you. It goes beyond just accumulating online followers on social media platforms.
It involves intentionally designing and observing how people are paying attention and interacting with your brand messages on daily basis.
Focusing on social media engagement would ensure a better marketing reach, return on marketing investment as well as brand awareness which makes it easy to attract new customers for your business.
Social Media Marketing
On the other hand, social media marketing focuses on getting these potential customers you’ve built a relationship with to take action. Examples of actions they can take are:
● visit your website
● opt in for a free report
● book a consultation
● make a purchase
The benefits of social media marketing for your business can be viewed in many ways depending on what you intend to achieve.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is another component of a Digital Strategy that may businesses miss out on.
Email marketing delivers the highest return on investment out of every other marketing channel: up to $42 on every $1 spent.
About 66% of businesses are using email marketing for their business in one way or the other. Out of these, very few are actually tapping into the returns that can be found in utilizing email.
Google Display Ads
Google Display Ads are a great, very under uterlized resource.
Google Display ads are banner ads shown to internet users across 2 million websites, videos, games and applications.
One of the biggest benefits of Google display ads is brand awareness.
People need to know and be aware of your business before they can think of patronizing your business.
Display ads help them to do just that and keeps your brand at the forefront of their mind as they browse across the internet.
Web Analytics and CRM
Running a business comes with its ups and downs.
However, it is crucial to keep a tab on the business growth each month. If you want to know how your business is doing online, then you need to take advantage of analytics.
Analytics helps you to know and understand:
● How many web visitors you have
● Who your web visitors a
● Where your web visitors are coming from
● What content they are interacting with
… and so much more.
All these metrics will help you better understand your customer behavior and more importantly, how to use what you’ve learned to grow your business and get more customers and sales
Bonus: CRM
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system helps you intentionally and strategically build a relationship with your leads and customers which in turn, increases customer retention and loyalty.
Customer retention loyalty is key to increasing your company’s revenue.
Conclusion
We have found that to successfully implement an effective and profitable digital marketing strategy, you need to have a minimum of 7 of these 10 components done effectively.
Building a successful business is an uphill task but not impossible.
By implementing the right Digital Marketing Strategy with all the components we have shared, you can stand out from the crowd.
Do you want an all-in-one solution that takes care of all your Digital Marketing needs to grow your business? We can help.
Paradox Studio offers a digital marketing service that meets all your needs. We will handle all your digital marketing strategies and implementation while you focus on delivering business value to your customers.
Talk to us today, let’s get started
