Digital Marketing: Take A More Blended Approach – #WednesdayWisdom
Category: Development
Published: 11/07/2018
With so many different types of Digital Marketing, it can be hard to decide how to proceed.
It's exhausting just thinking about it, isn't it? No wonder some companies end up taking the 'do nothing' approach. Inactivity gets you nowhere, so here is how to find the right blend of digital services for you.
Step 1: Ask Yourself What You Want To Achieve?
The starting place for any successful marketing campaign is to consider the end result and to set realistic targets. We all want to get more people on to our website, but what do we want them to do when they get there?
It could be any of the following types of conversion:
There are many more conversion types to consider. Whichever one, or combination, is right for you it should undoubtedly generate a return. In other words, your website needs to be set up to drive potential revenue through your business, not to merely impart information like a traditional company brochure used to. It is a highly powerful selling tool - and it should be maintained as such.
Step 2: Assess Your Budget Against Potential Return
You need set aside a realistic monthly investment budget for your digital marketing campaign. Ask yourself what the additional business generated would mean to you.
For example, it wouldn't be unrealistic to consider;
“What would an extra 25% in online sales mean to my business over the next 12 months”,
“What kind of business could my sales team generate from an extra 40 inbound enquiries each month”,
“How would a 70% increase in traffic to my website affect my online revenue”
Once you begin to consider a realistic return, then you will get a feel for what what kind of investment seems realistic. If you are working with a professional customer-led digital agency such as Big Red Digital, they will always consider your return and check on what budget you have available before they recommend any of their services.
Step 3: Find A Professional Partner
Successful digital marketing is not easy. It takes sustained effort, constant analysis and an agile approach. If you do not have a professional resource in-house and you aren't an experienced digital marketing expert yourself, don't decide to go it alone. If you do, you'll quickly waste valuable time that you don't have, and money that you can't afford to lose. You will most probably also lose all faith in the true potential of Digital Marketing and will more than likely join the 'do nothing' club. We have come across and helped many small business owners who have tried the DIY approach and failed.
You need to speak to a professional Digital Agency that can get behind your vision of success, get to know your business and work to your budget. They should have a demonstrable track record of success. You need an agency like Big Red on your team.
Step 4: Blend The Services Most Likely to Provide Success
Once you know what you have to spend and your digital partner has taken your vision into consideration they will have an idea of what blend of their services will work for you, and which ones you can afford.
Example 1: Company A
Company A have set a maximum monthly budget of between £1,500 and £2,000. They have an active and sizeable social media presence. They also have a large database of existing and target customers. However, they have invested in a brand new website that has no traffic and they need to see results right away.
The right blend of services may look like this:
PPC - Google Ads
Instant traffic to their website, leading people to key products or service pages. A sniper's rifle approach.
Content Marketing
Writing & publishing regular, highly relevant and key word rich articles that can be distributed to social media pages and drive regular, repeat traffic to the site and stimulate search engine rankings.
eMarketing
Their Digital partner sets them up with a professional business email marketing automation platform such as MailChimp. They send well designed, highly relevant email updates and offers that drive traffic to the website and increase brand awareness.
Reporting
A combined monthly report showing the results of the above activity, recommending actions to take.
Example 2: Company B
Company B have set a maximum monthly budget of between £400 and £1,000. They have a good website that converts traffic into enquiries readily. They are beginning to lose out to their competitors in the search engine rankings however, and have noticed a drop in enquiries as a result. They want a long term strategy to regain and maintain higher rankings. They already have a Facebook presence that isn't being maintained and has low engagement. They have a small database of customers that isn't properly organised.
The budget is more limited here, so the right blend of services may look like this:
SEO Set Up & Support
Initial keyword research and set up of existing page content to ensure accurate indexing. Ongoing SEO set up of new content, continuous analysis and improvement to increase performance.
Social Media Set Up
Although there is no budget available to run a full social strategy at this stage. The digital partner can set up further social pages for them on Twitter and LinkedIn, producing professional graphics and adding accurate page descriptions. They should also connect the website blog to automatically feed new articles out to the social pages to stimulate these pages.
Content Marketing
Writing & publishing regular, highly relevant and key word rich articles that can be distributed to social media pages and drive regular, repeat traffic to the site and stimulate search engine rankings.
Reporting
A combined monthly report showing the results of the above activity, recommending actions to take.
Step 5: Measure Success
Only once they can demonstrate a return for you on this level, should you consider increasing your budget or adding more services. This is why the reports that are produced are important. Once you get a feel for which activity is having the right effect, you can become more active with it. Find what works, and do more.
Step 6: Get Started
Our professional Digital Marketing and Web Design team are ready to get behind your vision. Any campaign that we undertake will be completely focussed on what return we can get for your budget.
It all starts with a conversation. Give us a call now on 0141 771 724 or send us a few details and we'll do the rest.
by Steven Blood