11 types of digital marketing strategy.
1. Inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing refers to the whole ecosystem of strategies, tools, and tactics that a marketer uses to convert a website visitor into a paying customer. It includes:
-> Content marketing
-> Email marketing
-> Lead nurturing
-> SEO
-> Marketing automation
-> Website optimization
-> Website analytics.
Inbound marketing is an overall approach to attracting, qualifying, nurturing, and delighting customers and prospects. It is not a one-off or something that is deployed quickly or temporarily; rather, it is focused on a long-term relationship with customers.
Why use inbound marketing?
It's affordable. Inbound marketing can save you money while leaving you with a higher ROI. You’ll target a specific group of people rather than anyone and everyone with the hope that you’ll be successful.
Trust and credibility. When prospects and customers do their own research and discover that your content answers their questions, your business is positioned as a trustworthy industry expert rather than just a sales-hungry entity.
Relationship focus. Through inbound marketing, you can build trusted relationships that not only turn into sales but create repeat customers. Inbound marketing content drives quality traffic to your website and provides visitors with valuable content that encourages them to convert in every phase of the marketing funnel.
2. Content marketing.
Content marketing is focused on answering people’s questions and truly helping them through content rather than interrupting them with unsolicited promotions. It includes content such as blog posts, landing pages, videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers, eBooks, case studies, and more.
In most cases, content marketing has several goals. You may use it to:
Increase brand awareness
Improve brand loyalty
Educate your target audience
Convert and nurture leads.
Savvy marketers create content that’s ideal for multiple user personas in all stages of the sales funnel. For example, a user who is unaware of your brand and found your website through organic search needs different content than a prospect who is almost ready to buy. You’ll need to understand your buyers' journeys and come up with unique content that addresses their needs every step of the way.
Why use content marketing?
Strong relationships with customers. Content marketing gives you the chance to build a relationship with prospects and customers over time. It also nudges them toward the finish line, making it more likely that they'll choose you over your competitors when they're ready to purchase.
Better SEO. Quality content will significantly improve your website SEO, so you can enjoy more organic website traffic that turns visitors into buyers.
Increased brand authority. When you produce interesting, educational content, you’ll be able to position yourself as an authoritative source in your industry. Your target audience will then turn to you for solutions to any problems they may have.
3. ABM.
Account based marketing (ABM) is a powerful B2B marketing strategy that targets specific accounts you select. It’s intended to help sales and marketing teams move prospects through the sales funnel quickly. With ABM, you target the accounts that are most important to you.
Why use account-based marketing?
Personalization. ABM does not take a generic approach to marketing. Instead, it creates personalized messaging for target accounts. You use what you know about your customer and tailor your campaign to meet their particular needs.
Collaboration. With ABM, sales and marketing teams work together to identify key accounts and design personalized campaigns for them. ABM encourages teamwork as teams focus on moving accounts through the sales pipeline.
Shorter sales cycles. The B2B sales process is often slow because there are multiple stakeholders involved in making a final purchase decision. With ABM, the sales cycle is expedited because the primary decision maker, and all other relevant prospects, can be nurtured simultaneously with content created specifically for them.
4. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website and your content in order to achieve higher rankings in search engines and increase the amount of organic traffic to your site. It involves a variety of tactics, like:
Creating high-quality content
Optimizing content around keywords and user needs
Incorporating meta information
Ensuring your website is optimized for search engines.
Ultimately, SEO strives to bring in the right visitors organically to drive more leads and sales.
Why use search engine optimization?
Higher conversion rates. An optimized website is fast, easy-to-use, and compatible with all devices. Which means it’s more likely to convert users and leave you with loyal customers.
Increased brand awareness. If your content ranks highly in search results, you’ll be able to build brand awareness and trust with visitors. They’ll be more inclined to purchase your products and services than they would if you didn’t have a good web presence.
Long-term cost savings. Once a piece of content is created, it should attract and build increasing traffic over time. You'll still need to produce quality content on an ongoing basis, but you’ll be able to target users who are actively looking for your products and services without an ongoing monetary investment.
5. Social media marketing.
Social media marketing uses social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to:
Promote your content, products or services
Build brand awareness and visibility
Gain fans or followers
Engage current and prospective customers
Drive traffic to your website.
It requires an ongoing advertising spend and, most of the time, a website landing page designed specifically for users from that ad spend. As soon as your advertising spend ends, the website traffic, likes, and followers end as well.
Why use social media marketing?
Cost-effective marketing. With a relatively low budget, you can use social media marketing to expose your audience to your brand even when they’re not thinking about it. You will, however, need to incorporate A/B testing, or some other form of optimization, in order to get the most out of your ad spend and achieve high conversion rates.
Audience interaction. About 45% of the world's population uses social media, and most of them use it about three hours per day. Choose the right channel(s), do some research on how the advertising platform works, and take advantage of the opportunity to interact directly with your audience.
Improved brand loyalty. Research indicates that 71% of people who have a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend that brand to friends and family.
6. Email marketing.
Email marketing is the practice of sending promotional and informational emails to build relationships with your audience, convert prospects into buyers, and turn one-time buyers into loyal fans of your brand.
These emails may discuss exclusive deals, promote website content, upcoming sales, or general messages on the behalf of your business.
Why use email marketing?
Traffic to your website. Your emails should contain links to pages on your website. Key performance indicators include the open rate (how many recipients opened your email) and the click-through rate (the ratio of users who click on a link in the email to the number of users who opened the email).
Cost effective. Compared to other marketing strategies like direct mail, SEM or SMM, email marketing usually is cost-effective. Your investment will include a subscription to email marketing software that sends thousands of emails simultaneously, and the cost of someone to administer the program.
Delivers targeted messages. Everyone on an email list has opted-in to receive information. Which means: They want to hear from you! By further segmenting your list, you can deliver super-targeted information that is likely to be well-received.
7. PPC advertising.
Pay-per-click advertising or PPC is a strategy in which you (the advertiser) pay every time a user clicks on one of your online ads. It’s often done through Google Ads, Bing Ads, or other search engines, and it can be an effective way to reach people who are searching for terms related to your business.
However, costs can range from relatively inexpensive, to thousands of dollars per month, depending on the size and scope of your campaign. And, when a campaign is discontinued, the traffic generated by that campaign is also discontinued.
When users click on pay-per-click ads, they are directed to dedicated landing pages that encourage them to take a certain action:
Make a purchase
Complete a form
Download a report, or similar.
If you implement a PPC campaign, your primary goal will likely be to increase sales or leads.
Why use PPC?
Easy tracking. With a PPC platform like Google Ads, you’ll be able to track how many people view your ads as well as how many click on them and what percentage of them convert. You'll know instantly how your campaigns perform.
Controlled spend. PPC advertising is pay as you go. You’ll be able to change or pause ad campaigns that are underperforming, and you don’t have to commit to a certain advertising spend.
Instant results. Other marketing strategies like SEO and content marketing take time to work. PPC advertising, however, offers a fast way to set up a campaign and get results right away.
8. Video marketing.
Video used to promote your products, services, and brand may include product demos, interviews with thought leaders in your industry, customer testimonials, or how-to videos.
You can add videos to your website, PPC landing pages, or social media outlets to encourage more conversions and sales.
KPIs may include:
Engagement. Time spent watching the video.
View count. How many times it was watched.
Click-through rate. How many users clicked through to the website.
Conversion rate. Number of leads, prospects, or customers content generates.
Why use video marketing?
Improved SEO. Marketers are 53 times more likely to end up on the first page of Google results if they utilize a video on their website, because including a video in a website improves SEO, which improves the page's rank.
Increased conversion rates. When marketers include video on a landing page, it can increase conversion rates by up to 34%.
Improved brand association. In addition to better conversion rates, brand association increases 139% after watching a video. When consumers watch a video, 92% share that video with others.
9. Online (and in-person) events.
There’s nothing like an event to create buzz around a product. Of course, trade shows have always been a thing, most notably the International CES tech show. But Apple redefined such events for an online audience with its series of high-profile iPhone and Mac launches throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, often watched by up to 1.8 million people.
It’s unlikely you’ll reach such engagement levels, but there are nevertheless lessons to learn, whether you’re using an event to launch a product, service, or new business.
Why use online events?
Build anticipation. Use social posts ahead of the live event to create buzz about what you might be launching. Consider the way Apple teases small details of its new iPhone, such as a photo of small section of the device, in the days before.
Showcase your product. If you’ve dedicated your live event to one product, then that product will be the focus of people’s attention. Use that attention to tell stories about its features in the same way Steve Jobs once did for Apple products.
Stimulate conversation. Run a live stream of the launch, push out a press release and create a hashtag of the event to get people talking about your product. Consider how Apple uses hashtags like #AppleEvent to trend on Twitter.
10. Chatbot and live chat marketing.
Chatbots and messaging apps have become more common in the past decade and are now seen as a valuable marketing, as well as customer service, tool. Some 1.4 billion people who use messaging apps are happy to speak with chatbots[1]. Brands use chatbots to:
Deal with customer complaints
Answer questions about products
Promote live events
But despite these different uses it’s worth considering research from chatbot platform Drift. It says the number one predicted use for a chatbot is ‘getting a quick answer in an emergency[2] so perhaps keep your chatbots simple.
Why use chatbots?
Provide quick answers. People go online with a task in mind. They want an answer fast. Chatbots can help people to get quick answers and resolve complaints, which can have a positive impact on brand sentiment.
Enhance customer experience. People told Drift they would use a chatbot to ‘get detailed explanations’ and to ‘find a human customer services assistant[3]. Both help to improve a customer’s experience with your brand.
Sell your products. A chatbot might seem an odd place to convert sales. But 18% of people said they would buy a basic item through a chatbot, while 22% would use one to explore ideas for purchases[4].
11. Earned media.
Put simply, earned media is coverage of your business, products or events written by a third party and which you have not paid for. In digital marketing, it’s best described as PR which you outreach to the media. When the content is picked-up by a publication and written up for their own site, that’s earned media.
Examples of earned media include:
Tactical PR, such as newsjacking topical events
Traditional press releases on company news
Infographics based on survey data
Creative asset such as an interactive site.
Why use earned media?
It’s free. Once you’ve paid your staff or an agency to outreach your content, any coverage you secure from websites is free. This makes it a cost-effective digital strategy and frees up budget for future campaigns.
It’s scalable. Earned media can be delivered for any budget. From a simple tactical piece, such as issuing quotes to a newswire on a topical issue, to a bigger creative campaign, such as a site build or conducting a survey.
It’s good SEO. Getting backlinks to your site from trusted publishers and institutions can be worth its weight in gold. Google ranks sites by their DA (Domain Authority) and sites with higher DAs, such as colleges and news sites, can help to improve your own authority.
0 Comments