As a business in today’s competitive times, you need to keep up with the marketing trends to stay ahead of the curve.
The online marketing landscape is more competitive than ever as ad spending continues to rise. The Global digital ad spend is believed to reach $389 billion in 2021.
The fact that online marketing is just as important to the growth of a business as on-the-ground marketing cannot be denied. It may be even more so for smaller brands.
If you are looking for ways to expand your online marketing, this post is for you. We have come up with ways to shake up your existing marketing strategies and breathe new life into them. Read on to know more.
Top 6 Ways to expand your online marketing strategy
With the rise of digital marketing in the past decades, brands rely more on online marketing now as it costs less than traditional marketing but gives just as effective results. More importantly, it yields proactive results. Nearly every brand has an online presence today.
Though it’s easy for it to go stale, or feel obsolete with time. Most companies make the mistake of setting up their online presence and then forgetting about it. You need to be more hands-on with it. That is what your customer sees of you. You need to keep it interesting and relevant at all times.
The first step to developing and expanding your online marketing strategy is to be open to new changes. The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing. Your business needs to embrace what works and discard what doesn’t to grow. If you are looking for tools to help you with your strategy, you can Drive Online Marketing Performance with Perfometrics.
Here are some easy ways to improve your existing digital strategy:
- Integrate video content in your marketing strategy
Around 60%of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
Here is the more interesting data: 94% of the marketers who use video in their marketing efforts plan on continuing. It’s because videos are effective. They attract customers to your content and keep them engaged for longer periods of time.
Try creating short videos to be sprinkled here and there in your posts. Include longer ones in articles to make the reader stay on the page longer. The longer a user stays at your webpage, the higher it will rank on Google.
Don’t forget to add subtitles to YouTube videos you use in your content. It makes them more accessible to users who simply may not understand the content without the help of subtitles. It also helps include the hearing-impaired user base of your audience.
Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook autoplay videos, but on mute to enable smooth surfing for the users. Enclosing subtitles makes sure that the message of the video is conveyed even if it’s muted.
- Optimize your website
Most brands put a lot of effort into creating an attractive website for their business but then they forget about it.
Never treat your website as a one-and-done task. This is what your potential customer will see as a representation of you. If it’s a website that was never updated with new information, it will leave a negative impact on them.
Try to keep your website dynamic to incorporate the new happenings of your business. For example, look at Sony’s website. Not only is their entire homepage filled with the newest products in every category, but they also have a ‘latest news’ segment both at the top and at the bottom.
A strip at the bottom also has new releases of every category i.e., movies, cameras, gaming, etc. On top of everything, they have a large rotating banner featuring the most anticipated new releases, like singer Adele’s new song and the film Uncharted’s first trailer.
Upkeep of your website may take some effort but it’s well worth the payoff. Your customer doesn’t have to look anywhere for information and can find all the necessary information under one roof. They will be more likely to initiate contact in case they don’t find something they were looking for when they know they will hear back from you.
- Communicate and engage with your users
Static marketing is a thing of the past now.
Around 88% of marketers have said that using interactive marketing practices helps distinguish their brand from the competitors. Engaging in two-way communication with your audience is one of the most effective ways to build a connection with them.
This has dual benefits. First, it simply is a better approach to connecting with a customer than static marketing. Secondly, someone interacting with your business acts as great social proof about the efficiency and legitimacy of your business.
Something as simple as putting up polls on social media, as depicted in the example above, can help you take steps toward having meaningful interactions with your audience. It doesn’t even have to be something tactical.
A simple ‘how much did you enjoy using our product?’ poll question will only yield positive results that cannot be meaningfully analyzed. But it will get users to click on them and interact with you for fun.
- Go with the flow
One of the common mistakes marketers commit when it comes to digital marketing is sticking to something even when it’s not getting the results, simply because they have put a lot of effort into it. This approach will only hurt your chances to further connect with your audience.
You can never know what clicks with your audience and part of a marketing strategy is figuring it out with practical experience. Hit and trial is the only way to know how effective your efforts are. This way, when you find something that works, you simply run with it.
Take, for example, the Chinese social media app TikTok. It started out as an App named Musical.ly where users could post short music-related videos. It was later rebranded to TikTok and allowed all sorts of short videos regardless of whether they were related to music or not.
The brand saw that their user base felt restricted with just music content and took the opportunity to branch out and be more inclusive. They were willing to do something as big as changing their entire identity.
Instagram’s newest ad campaign ‘we are in the making’ celebrates how they try a little bit of everything and go with the flow. Had Instagram just stuck to photo sharing, it might have fallen out of prominence long ago. It has continued to stay popular by being dynamic and constantly experimenting with its content.
- Invest in email marketing
Email marketing has continued to be the most preferred approach of marketers because of how effective it has proved to be. It is essentially your chance to advertise to your audience right in their inboxes.
Simply by the virtue of being so personalized in nature, email marketing provides endless possibilities for growing and expanding your businesses.
One of the biggest benefits of using email marketing is that you don’t need to be a big brand to leverage its power.
All you need is an email address to get started with email marketing. You can always learn and get better at drafting them as you go along. Many opportunities are waiting for you with these one-on-one conversations.
You have the option to target potential customers, strengthen your bond with existing customers, and know their opinion on possible future business ventures you may want to undertake. Focus on growing your mailing list to acquire more potential customers.
Keep giving them the option to recommend people who would be interested in your brand. Reward them for such recommendations with offers and discounts. This lets them know that you value their association with you and increases their brand loyalty to you as well.
- Fire up your social media
Similar to setting up a website, almost every brand today has a social media presence as well. Only a few manage to rise above others when it comes to producing great content. People are already apprehensive about following brands on social media. On top of it, the platforms themselves promote the content of the people a user follows over brands they follow.
The only way to overcome this is to create catchy content — something that is attractive and catches the user’s attention enough to make them stop scrolling. Keep your posts more balanced with the right amount of text and images, use little text and when you do, keep the font size bigger. The pictures you use should be simple and vibrant yet unique.
Brands like Wendy’s have made a name for themselves by being sarcastic, but not everyone has to be that way. Cultivate your own tone of voice, and it’s safer to be on the respectful side.
It’s okay to not post content related to your business all the time. Switch it up with whatever is popular at the time, be it memes or something related to the current news.
Conclusion
There you have it. These tips will help you gain new ground with your online marketing strategy.
Start small and keep reviewing the steps you take. Don’t be afraid to drop the practices that fail to bring you results and improve on the ones that work for you. Keep up with the trends to know what’s in vogue and what practices stand to gain the most in the future.
Let us know in the comments section below what you are doing to expand on your online marketing strategy and what works the best for you.