In today’s digital age, your online presence must be experienced and evoke a sense of connection with your potential clients and customers.

Today’s successful companies are all about what’s called “attraction marketing.” In other words, the people who find your website and content were “already looking for you.”

In the past, the opposite of that would be called “interruptive marketing,” where you would essentially “interrupt” what a potential customer was already doing to gain their attention and hopefully win their business through a sales pitch. Mass advertising, events, conferences, magazines would get companies in front of prospective buyers. These tactics are still useful and important parts to your marketing strategy, it’s absolutely critical that you have a solid digital marketing foundation.

Customers are more savvy today than ever and are more likely to make a purchase decision based on a referral or sense of connection to a product or service. We have access to seek out products and vendors that meet our specific needs. Most large purchase decisions today are made in the comfort of our own homes with substantial online research in advance of making any phone calls or sending any e-mails.

Think of the last time you purchased a car or home (two of the largest purchases most Americans will make in their lives). We are willing to bet that you started your process by researching options for what you were looking for online as opposed to waltzing into a dealership or brokerage firm looking for someone else to tell you what you want.

Instead, they are more inclined to conduct their own research online regarding potential tools and services that can help their business grow. A popular research statistic states that buyers will complete as much as 70% of the buyer’s journey is completed prior to reaching out to the sales agent or representative.

Let’s face it, it isn’t fun feeling pressured into buying something we don’t want. Neither is it fun to be on the other end pressuring someone into buying something they do not want. Wouldn’t you rather be spending your time developing meaningful relationships that either result in a client or referral?

Therefore, it is prudent to not only offer, but design your “sales content” online in a strategic way that is easy to access and understand, with every opportunity to reach out to you possible when the context makes sense.

Through a sound Digital Marketing Plan and Online Presence, you can give your target audience the attention and information they need to research and compare the pros and cons of the offerings available to them. This valuable time spent researching vendors online will save both you and your prospects time and money.

You will want your technology to do the majority of the sales work for you (even while you sleep) before the consumer ever picks up the phone to call.

5 KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY

1. STATEMENT OF VALUE

An important part of planning for digital marketing success is understanding the value that your organization brings to the marketplace for what you have to offer. The value your company provides is far greater than the product or services it sells. In fact, people do not buy products or services at all; instead, they are looking to invest in a desired outcome.

2. CONTENT OFFERINGS

There are many types of content around which to base your digital marketing plan. Some of the most important pieces include:

    • Audios: Whether they are .MP3s podcasts or other form of file prerecorded for listening.
    • Blogging: Blogs have an important role to play in B2B companies. You can use your blog to get across your company POV. Easy to update and maintain, blogging can also drive your SEO strategy. If you want to build an individual within your company’s leadership into something of a thought leader in your field, your blog is the ideal platform for regular opinion pieces which can achieve this aim. For B2C companies, blogging is deployed to tell compelling stories that deliver brand appeal, value, and trust to your customers.
    • Case Studies: Case studies will lend some credibility to your product or service. By demonstrating the proven potential of your product, you are much more likely to win new business. The biggest fear of key decision-makers is introducing software that doesn’t deliver ROI. Case studies that showcase the success of your product can help to allay these fears. Ideally, you will want to create case studies for each industry you are targeting.
    • eBooks: eBooks provide a chance to go into more depth on a particular subject and educate potential buyers. By building up a reputation for thought leadership in a particular area, you can start to develop a degree of trust with prospects.
    • Infographics: Infographics can be used to transform a complicated premise into an easy to consume piece of visual content. By providing an embed code alongside your infographic, you can also start to realize some SEO benefits. Remember, 90% of the information that comes to the human mind is visual in nature. Make the most of our love for visuals by making infographics an important component of your digital marketing plan.
    • Landing Pages: Much of your digital marketing plan will be based on driving website visitors to landing pages where they can fill out a form and download free content. Some tips to boost conversion rates include streamlining the form fields, creating powerful calls to actions (CTAs), and including customer testimonials on the page as social proof. You should A/B test each element of your landing pages to help uncover what works best.
    • Newsletters: Low cost, with proven ROI, newsletters are becoming an increasingly popular component of a digital marketing plan. To get the best results from email marketing, you should segment your database to deliver targeted content to the right people.
    • Press Releases: Press releases can be picked up by other publications, bringing some welcome attention on your company. You can also help to build links which will help your SEO strategy. Take care as you put together press releases. They are not necessarily cheap and, because they are so common, it might be difficult to stand out. Research by Dan Zarrella has shown that press releases with embedded pictures and links to video content can increase engagement by 18% for pictures and 55% for videos.
    • Videos: Not only will webinars help you to generate leads, they can also help to build a relationship with potential buyers. By providing high quality and engaging webinar content, you can start to realize these benefits at relatively low cost.

3. MODERN WEBSITE

Invest in building a website that is intuitive, search-engine friendly, mobile friendly, and secure. Creating your website and online presence from a holistic approach to cover content, marketing, and search engine optimization will go a long way. It will also save you unnecessary headaches that come with hiring developers to “fix” or “troubleshoot” an area that they don’t necessary specialize in. It will also afford you the ability to avoid expensive traditional advertising that is no longer as effective as it once was without a proper digital marketing plan in place.

4. MARKETING AUTOMATION

Setting up your business with the best online marketing technology is an important part of your organization’s user experience. Marketing automation tools and services can help you manage your campaigns, create landing pages, prepare e-mails/newsletters, track website visitors, and send alerts to your inbox or phone as leads are generated.

5. SEO AND SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Your website design should be integrated with a solid SEO and Social Media Strategy from the beginning. That way, the on-page coding is clean and done correctly from the beginning.

6. PAID ADVERTISING

Digital advertising is when we use the internet for marketing your goods, services, brand, or business. Digital ads boosts brand awareness and sales over the short term. Based on our market research supporting you in identifying customer needs, we build advertising campaigns to promote your company and its products/services through paid channels.

Digital content and marketing is so common that consumers now expect and rely on it as a way to learn about brands and services. Businesses must invest and commit to a monthly advertising spend to reach their target audience members.