What’s the Right Approach to Digital Marketing?

Making the Case for Digital Marketing

The benefits of digital marketing are far-ranging, which is why scores of small, mid-sized, and large businesses have already made their online presence felt. Consider these numbers collated by WebStrategies that help make the case for digital marketing.

• When marketing leaders allocate funds, 56% goes toward digital channels and 44% toward offline channels.
• Over half of digital spending goes toward paid channels such as search, video, and social advertising.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) tops the chart for unpaid channels (8.5%), followed by content and email marketing (7.8% each).

Data compiled by Passive Secrets indicates that:

• In 2024, B2B product marketers in the U.S. anticipate increasing their digital marketing spending by 8.77% and decreasing their traditional advertising spending by 3.64%.
• The global digital marketing market is set to cross $786 billion by 2026.
• The value of the U.S. digital marketing market stood at $460 billion in 2022.
• Around 78% of brand marketers feel that digital marketing plays a vital role in their overall marketing plans.

Ignoring what the digital world has to offer is a mistake, without a doubt, and one that you should avoid. This is because if you direct even a small percentage of your overall marketing budget to digital marketing, you may look forward to considerable growth in the online marketplace.

Non-digital native businesses might have a more difficult time addressing digital growth as well as customer relations. When it comes to small businesses that have so far relied on their offline reputation and word-of-mouth referrals, they also need to take stock of how they approach digital marketing soon.

Businesses that have avoided the digital world so far need to consider getting online because that’s where most consumers research products and services, even if they plan to make purchases at brick-and-mortar stores. There are other reasons as well. For instance, if your business relies on face-to-face meetings with probable clients, you might consider using video conferencing apps like Google Meet or Zoom Meetings. This is perfect for people who don’t wish to visit physical establishments or want to avoid in-person interactions.

What Are the Approaches To Digital Marketing?

Before coming up with a digital marketing plan or implementing digital marketing strategies, you need to analyze your company’s existing online presence. A good place to start is to look at the results achieved through previous efforts. Then, a resetting of goals for your upcoming digital marketing campaigns might be in order.

The digital marketing plan you formulate should ideally rely on different online strategies and tools to further your efforts. For instance, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram let you stream videos in real time, giving you an easy way to engage with your audience. Webinars also give you the ability to get people to connect with each other from the comfort of their homes.

Here are some other aspects that require your attention if you’re wondering, “What is the best way to digital marketing?”

Get Your Branding Right

You need to work on developing your brand for people who look for and turn to your business in the online world. By building a suitable branding strategy, you give your target audience an easy way to identify and distinguish your business. It also leads to increased credibility and customer loyalty.

Optimize Your Digital Content

Take a good look at your website and look for ways in which it can offer a better user experience. It should deliver the right marketing message and have suitable calls to action (CTAs). Whether it’s your website, blog, or a listing on a third-party website, you need to ensure that you optimize all your content in the right manner.

You need to have an effective SEO strategy in place so your content benefits from maximum exposure. This helps increase your search engine rankings while improving the quality and quantity of organic traffic to your website.

Focus on Content Marketing

This is as good a time as any to come up with ways in which you may connect with your target audience through the use of content in different forms. These may include blog posts, videos, infographics, newsletters, case studies, and webinars. What you need to keep in mind is that while your content should relate to your brand, it also needs to provide value and address the needs of your target audience.

Social media plays an important role in content marketing. If your business has kept away from platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram until now, it’s time to embrace what these platforms have to offer. Your content marketing efforts should not explicitly promote your offerings, and you need to capture and hold the interest of your target audience.

Revisit Pending Projects

Most businesses have projects they put on hold. Take a look at all the projects you have put on the back burner and give them your complete attention. This could involve looking at new web design alternatives, revisiting your branding strategy, creating a YouTube channel, preparing presentations, or encouraging employee participation on digital channels.

Update Local Business Listings

This is particularly important for small businesses that do not have their own websites yet and rely on local directory listings instead. Small business owners need to remember that this is the information their customers get to view online, which is why it needs to remain up to date at all times.

Google makes use of Duplex, its AI assistant, to confirm business hours in order to maintain accuracy in its Search and Maps. However, there is no reason why you cannot update your business hours manually, without waiting for Google to contact you first. If your business hours change for any reason, make sure you update your Google business listing accordingly. Google also gives you the option to list it as “temporarily closed”.

You may also consider creating posts for your Google business profile, through which you get to provide different types of information about your business. These posts show up on Maps as well as Search, and Google archives them once they are six months old, unless you specify a date range in advance. You may use these posts to:

• Communicate with your audience directly.
• Share photos and videos.
• Provide timely information.
• Highlight promotions, offers, and events.

It makes sense to review your business listings across other platforms such as Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram too.

Remain Relevant

Your aim should be to post at regular intervals, be it on your blog, social media channels, or Google, because this gives your customers a sense of confidence in your business. However, your posts must remain relevant to your target audience. Since the modern-day consumer is rather discerning, it’s not a good idea to focus on your offerings. What you need to do, instead, is address the needs and concerns of your customers. For instance, a local gym can give its customers tips and ideas on how to work out from home on days they can’t make it to the gym in person.

Provide Structured Data and Product Feeds

Online retailers need to ensure that they update the status of item availability in real time because different businesses continue to see a surge in demand. For instance, item availability should clearly highlight whether a product is available, out of stock, in limited stock, or discontinued. This would require addressing the product schema on product pages and in product feeds.

As and when the need arises, event organizers may use the Event Status schema type on their websites to list their events as Postponed or Cancelled. According to Google, organizers should stick to the original Start Date until they can confirm a new date. Once you have a new date, you may update the Event Status as Rescheduled, and update the Start Date and End Date.

If you move a physical event to the online world for any reason, you may set the Event Attendance Mode to Online Event Attendance. The Location Type you’ll need to select is Virtual. The Special Announcement option makes way for date-stamped textual updates as well as contextualized web links to link announcements with particular situations.

Support Social Causes

Supporting social causes is a great way to demonstrate the stand your brand takes on different matters. Besides, it can work as a rather effective marketing strategy too. Consider these numbers collated by HubSpot, Engage for Good, and Digital Marketing Institute.

• More than half of the country’s consumers feel businesses need to do more about social issues.
• 41% feel businesses should highlight their stance on different social causes.
• 69% feel there’s less likelihood of their supporting businesses that just want to make money.
• 73% feel businesses need to demonstrate their support for the community and environment to gain their support.
• There’s a higher possibility (67%) of consumers staying loyal to and advocating for businesses that take action on social causes.
• There’s an increased likelihood of those between 18 to 29 years of age feeling it is extremely important for businesses to decrease their carbon footprint (73%) and function in environmentally sustainable ways (77%).

Do You Need Professional Help?

If you feel you can use a digital marketing strategy for beginners to achieve your goals, you might need to take a reality check. This is because the online marketplace is highly competitive, so much so that even the best digital marketers need to keep updating their skills to stay relevant. As a result, if you don’t have the expertise, the time, or an in-house digital marketing team, seeking professional assistance is the best way forward.

When you partner with a professional, the process begins by analyzing your business, its competition, and its target audience. Crafting an effective digital marketing strategy for a brand also requires paying attention to its unique requirements and goals. After accounting for all the factors that need consideration, the agency you partner with may suggest one or more measures. These include, but do not limit to:

• Custom web design. You might need to go the custom web design way if you don’t have a website or if the existing one does not deliver results.
• Search engine optimization. Effective SEO ensures that your website receives adequate high-quality organic traffic.
• Local SEO. This is ideal for businesses that cater to any specific region/area.
• Content marketing. Providing well-researched and useful content is great for attracting, engaging, and retaining your audience.
• Search engine marketing. Some businesses benefit by investing in paid ads on search engines like Google.
• Social media marketing. This is an effective way to reach out to your audience as well as brand influencers.

Conclusion

So, which type of digital marketing is the best? The answer to this rests on the type of business you run, your target audience, your goals, and a few other aspects. However, it’s clear that the online world has several benefits to offer, the industry you belong to notwithstanding. The overall process should involve shifting your focus to digital marketing in a strategic manner. After all, online marketing is not a stopgap measure; it’s one that can provide long-term benefits.

Remember that digital marketing requires little to no face-to-face interaction and you get to measure results. A good digital marketing agency can determine which strategies result in the most number of quality leads, suggest suitable changes, and deliver a great return on investment (ROI). Consequently, in the absence of the required skills and knowledge, the right approach to digital marketing is to partner with a specialist.