If you have your own business or you’re just putting your business plan together to start up a new business idea, then one of the key factors that you will need to take into account is your digital marketing strategy.
If you’ve never looked at digital marketing before then it can be a daunting prospect but if you break it down into segments then you might find it easier to tackle.
So what does Digital Marketing involve?
Unless you’ve been living on another planet for the last decade, you will have noticed that technology has advanced significantly. The younger generations look like they were born with a smartphone in their hand and the usage of mobile and other devices has increased massively. This doesn’t only apply to leisure activities and social apps, it also applies to people looking to make purchases or find services. The world is now a very digital one and if you are marketing your company then digital channels are going to be one of the key ways of advertising your products and services.
Website
If your business doesn’t have a website then you are seriously missing out on a huge opportunity. Consumers will research a product or service by looking for the company’s website, even if they intend to make the purchase in a shop. If a potential customer is looking for a builder in your area, they will type keywords like ‘Builder’ and the location into an Internet search engine like Google. If you don’t have a website then they will have no way of finding you through a search engine.
SMS
Another popular marketing channel is to send bulk SMS messages to potential customers or past customers if you have collected their mobile numbers. Get more advice on how to use SMS for marketing here.
Social Media
Successful businesses use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to promote their services. One of the benefits of doing this is that you can set up the accounts for free and build up a large following of people that are interested in your services. By carefully planning your content you can create information that people find useful and that they wish to share with other people, increasing your reach.
Email
Another popular channel of digital marketing is email. Emails are easy to construct and can be very cost effective. As well as just using standard emails, you can now use templates supplied by companies like MailChimp that will help you build a professional email campaign with little or no costs. There are also ways of producing data that will help you analyse whether a campaign has been successful or not. For example, how many people have opened your email and how many people have clicked through and visited the web page you have directed them to.
There are lots of different strategies that you can tap into for successful email campaigns and the trends are frequently changing, so it helps to stay up to date with any current marketing trends.
