Digital marketing ideas

DIGITAL MARKETING IDEAS

Have a read of these digital marketing ideas and research what fits best for your business. Whatever you choose to do, always ensure that you measure the effects of any marketing activity to calculate your return on investment (ROI) which includes time spent.

Website

A website is essential for any business these days.  From a low cost ‘free template’ site to a professionally built site, just make sure your site will be able to grow and be changed in line with your business in the future.

However fantastic and informative your website is, it will be of no use to your marketing efforts if it doesn’t get found on the search engines so make sure you have a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plan in place.

Make navigation of the site easy for your visitors and ensure the information they want is in front of them within three clicks.

To help drive traffic to your site include your URL (your website address) on all your marketing material including email signatures, business cards, social media accounts, company tee shirts and anything else you can think of .

Social Media

Social media has opened up a whole new way of being able to get your business in front of your target market in a low cost and effective manner.

However so many get it wrong and do their business and image more harm than good by poor planning, giving out the wrong message and being inconsistent.

Don’t just follow the crowd and join sites that everyone else seems to be on.  Think carefully about which sites your ideal customer will be using.  Then consider what you want to achieve through your marketing.  Is it to get direct sales, drive traffic to a page on your website, build your reputation or get people to attend an event?

Make sure you complete your social media profiles and keep them consistent across all channels you use.  Keep them updated and include links to your website.  Try and test different types of messages to see which works best for your business and use social media to watch what others are doing and what works well for them.

Online advertising

Pay per Click/Advertising on complementary websites, social media adverts etc. all form part of on-line advertising.  Set yourself a budget and don’t let the money run away with you.

Pick one avenue at a time and see what works best for you.  Think about days of the week and what times of day your ideal client is likely to be online and set any online advertising to run at these periods.

Online advertising also allows you to target your audience more selectively than offline methods so your advertising spend is used most effectively to get in front of your ideal customer.

Blog

Set up a blog and post new articles frequently to build up a following of people who may become your future customers.  Having a blog will also keep fresh content on your site helping with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – basically helping getting your site found on the search engines.

Blogs need to be written and posted on a regular basis and it is important to write blog posts in line with SEO in order to help them get found through the search engines.

Make sure you add a ‘subscribe to the blog’ link at the end of your blogs so readers can get future articles from you and include a subscribe form on the website.

Newsletters

These can be sent easily by email to subscribers so take every opportunity to gather email addresses to create a database of contacts.

There really is no need to get too bogged down by flashy designs and numerous columns of information.  Keep it to the point with interesting, informative content.  A critical element of a newsletter is to write a catchy subject line.  With so many emails dropping into our inboxes daily, if your heading is boring you are increasing the chances of your newsletter being deleted.  Use headlines such as ‘The Secret of’ or ‘Little known ways to’ etc to tempt readers to want to find out more.

Newsletters need to be sent out on a regular basis.  The more regularly you send them out, the shorter they need to be.  A weekly newsletter that takes half an hour to read is likely to end up being unsubscribed to.  Finish off your newsletters with a call to action even if a simple ‘Get in contact to find out more of what we can offer’.

Do be aware of the law and ensure you have an opt out on your newsletters or you could end up in hot water!

Competitions

Run a contest or competition where the winner can get a free product or service or a discount on a purchase.  Raise awareness of your brand with entrants who may not have otherwise paid much attention to you.

There are many online competitions being run on social media channels now such as Facebook which are proving great for building brand awareness.  When you run competitions do make sure you are aware of the latest rules and regulations.  So many businesses break the rules on Facebook by insisting an entrant likes their page to be eligible for the draw only to then see their page removed by Facebook for being in breach.

Try and think of ways to engage people to enter.  This could be by a caption competition, uploading their own photo showing them doing something, or with something, get them to nominate someone else to win something and say why they feel is the most deserving for a prize etc.

One of the most popular ones that I saw a while ago was a business that purchased 5 lottery tickets and posted the numbers online.   Anyone that commented on what they would do with a share of the winnings would then receive a share of the winnings if the numbers came up.

E-books

Create an E-book that is branded with your company details.  You can offer your e-book for free as a way to draw attention to your business or you can put it out there as a paid offering to gain income, but this may not be as attractive to readers until you have built your reputation.

E-books can help you spread your message by adding worksheets, video training and audio interviews.  You make them available through Kindle and promote on Amazon to get a wider reach.

Affiliate marketing

Get others to do the marketing for you and then pay them a small fee for each sale they make.  There are many affiliate sites online that can help you get set up and help drive traffic and sales to your own website.

When thinking about affiliate marketing, look for complementary sites that share your target audience.  An interior designer could pair up with estate agents, removal firms or a soft furnishings company.  Affiliate schemes can prove to be cost-effective as they work on a cost-per-action basis.  This means that you only pay on results achieved and do not incur any costs until a sale is actually made.

You can set up an affiliate scheme yourself by approaching firms you think would be suitable for promoting your product but you must be able to set up the infrastructure to track any leads that convert to sales and commission payable.  This can prove to be rather time consuming although there are some software solutions online that can be integrated with your website.  Some of the big names out there are HasOffers Affiliate Tracking, Post Affiliate Pro 4 and Omnistar Affiliate.  Always take up a free trial with any of these software solutions to check what works for you before paying anything.

An alternative solution is to use an affiliate agency but check out their set up costs and ongoing monthly charges.

 

So now you have a few digital marketing ideas to think about.  As mentioned before, do your research as to what will work well for your business and measure anything you do to see if it is working.