The face of business as people know it has drastically changed in recent years with the advent of advances in digital, online and social media. The impact of the Internet in many aspects of people’s lives have carried itself over to almost all markets ever conceived, with digital marketing driving at the helm of major promotional and advertising campaigns. Estimates placed the Digital Marketing industry at approximately 62 billions dollars in the US in 2012 and possibly even bigger if we include other countries – with still a tremendous room enough left for further growth.
Majority of businesses, particularly in the micro, small and medium scale industries are still clinging to traditional marketing systems for promoting their products and services. They’re stuck with the same campaigns year end and year out, and expectedly receive the same level, if not declining, results in a rapidly evolving and networked marketplace. Those who have seen and realized the value and potential of Digital Marketing have transformed their marketing and sales campaigns to focus on online marketing channels.
A key factor that brought success to Digital Marketing is the emergence of skilled practitioners and marketing professionals leaning towards digital channels. These professionals are helping businesses from any level realize their full potential online, educating them on various tools and channels that can help build their brand and create a strong online presence for their products and services. This article looks into all these even deeper in an attempt to provide more information on how you can set-up an effective and profitable Digital Marketing campaign for your business.
Why Use Digital Marketing for Your Business?
Sales and marketing is an essential aspect in doing business. Business owners should not expect new customers to come to them at their own accord, but should apply whatever is effective to reach out to potential clients and eventually generate sales and revenue. As technologies evolved, the marketing strategies used during the last few years may not be effective in generating results in the year 2013 and beyond.
Still, many businesses have not fully realized the full potential of Digital Marketing and would stick to the same marketing routines each year. As products and services evolve over the years, the same can be said true on how businesses promote these products and services to generate more sales, eventually leading to Digital Marketing as the most effective means in this highly networked and interconnected modern world. Check out this infographic on why SME’s should have a digital marketing campaign.
Tips on How to Set-up A Profitable Digital Marketing Campaign:
1. Direct Your Own Digital Marketing Campaign
Before starting out on a profitable Digital Marketing campaign for your business, owners should realize that they should remain at the forefront on their campaigns, just like in any other aspects of their business. Of course, it would be wise and practical to delegate certain aspects of Digital Marketing to experts and professionals in this field, but it should be you as the business owner who should maintain control of your company’s growth and overall vision using this marketing medium. The key here is to get a clear understanding of the tools you can have at your disposal that you can use for your Digital Marketing campaign. You should be the main person who has the most knowledge and insights about your business and should be at the forefront of your Digital Marketing campaign, which you should treat as another or possibly your major marketing channel.
2. Create a Website (if you don’t have one already)
The very first step of starting a digital marketing campaign is for your business to have a fully functional and running website. If you currently don’t have a website for your company then it’s about time to create one. There are lots of reliable provider out there that can help you create a lovely website for your business, 100% customized websites costs around $500 to $1,000 and up depending on the # of pages and the complexity of the website features. You can also check our web design and development packages.
3. Use The Top Digital Marketing Channels If you are the business owner who already have a website for your business. The next step that you will need to do is to understand the different options that you can use to promote your website and business online. This is an integral part of digital marketing that you must pay attention since these channels will be the primary source of your leads and prospects.
Top 3 Most Popular Digital Marketing Channels:
- Social Media Marketing – An integral and important aspect of Digital Marketing is learning to use and take advantage of the full potential of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In a study conducted by Infusionsoft, an online marketing company, companies who are spending more investments in Digital Marketing make use of diverse social media platform for sales and marketing. Among these channels, the most popular and most effective for small business owners include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Your business can also do the same and leverage on the power of these social media channels, making full use of the interactive technologies and channels that will create more and better engagement with new and existing clients, delivering a whole new level of personalized customer services that will generate more sales and brand loyalty.
- Search Engine Optimization – Optimizing your site to make it more search engine friendly is also another digital marketing channel that you can use to gain more targeted visitors for your business. Time and time again, search engine optimization proved itself to be a powerful medium for any business because of its capability of providing your site the visibility that it needs online. It allows your site to be found in the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing when a visitor (who has a problem to solve) search for something online (either commercial, tips, reviews or academic).
- Pay-per-click – PPC is also a great digital marketing medium similar to SEO. But this relieved you from the fear of search engine or Google penalization when doing SEO. Instead, it allows you to tap into the massive Advertising channels provided by the search engines (Google Adwords by Google, Yahoo Search Marketing by Yahoo!, and Bing adCenter by Bing). By using PPC to generate traffic for your business, it allows you to be seen across these search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) when a user search or type a keyword. And the best thing about PPC is that, you can target almost ALL the keywords that is related to your business and you will only pay them when someone clicked on your ad!
These top 3 digital marketing channels are enough for your business to have a maximum visibility and customer reach online. It is also advisable for you to explore some other digital marketing channels, but I advise you to do it once you gain familiarity to these top 3 and already have great results from using them.
4. Understand Different Digital Marketing Metrics
After choosing the channels you’ll use for your Digital Marketing campaign, the next step is to identify and get a clear understanding of the various metrics that you should monitor and analyze to help you make your campaign more successful. These metrics will tell you what is working and what is not for your particular business niche, thereby saving you significant amount of resources and focusing only on aspects of your Digital Marketing campaign that would create the biggest impact. These metrics include:
- Visitors Analytics – These metrics can be as detailed as telling you information about where a particular visitor came from and what browser he or she used, but the key to using these metrics effectively is to serve as your gauge to determine if visits are getting smaller or expanding according to numbers and area of reach. If you have a subscriber or email list, the same principle applies true, with declines or increases in the size of your list dictating your next steps.
- Conversion Rates – Ideally, the number of visitors coming to your site that gets converted or takes an action and became subscribers or leads should be between 2% and 4%. Smaller numbers than these will tell you that there is something amiss in your Digital Marketing campaign. Another similar metric is the sale conversion rate that monitors how many of your site visitors eventually make a purchase and generate revenue for you.
- Revenue per Keyword – A clear indication of what works for your Digital Marketing campaign is the amount of leads as well as the revenue that a particular keyword has generated. This will help you gain an insight on what keywords will provide better results and stop focusing on less profitable one.
5. Monitor the Success of Your Digital Marketing Campaign
Finally, business owners should learn how to monitor and define the success they have achieved from their Digital Marketing campaign. The real value for Digital Marketing is if it will generate sales and profit for your business, and the ability to identify if you have succeeded in this aspect or not is vital for the direction to which your campaigns will be headed. It is up to the business owner however to define what constitute success for him, which can be broken down into:
- Increase in overall sales
- Generate new leads and prospects
- Higher rankings in the search engines
- Gain a considerable following in social media channels
- Recruit better employees and staff
- Better brand exposure and recognition
- Increased retention rates for existing customers
Digital marketing has indeed helped businesses reach their highest potential, with Inc’s surveys putting success rates to as high as 71 percent (page 11 on the pdf survey). Business owners should realize that customers are now going online and are relying on online channels not only to purchase products and services, but to interconnect with other people from around the world. The only way to reach out to these online customers is to aggressively use online and Digital Marketing channels as well – or else get left behind by those who have successfully done so.
Jomer B. Gregorio is a well-rounded expert when it comes digital marketing. Jomer is also known as a semantic SEO evangelist and practitioner. Check out our Digital Marketing Services today and let us help you in achieving positive and profitable results for your business.