Digital marketing is fundamental to business success in 2021, it helps you to expand your customer base, increase your sales and increase your brand awareness. For businesses to be able to fully take advantage of all the benefits digital marketing has to offer, they need to keep up with digital marketing innovations. Digital marketing is a complex and multi-faceted process, with search engine algorithms, business opportunities and best practices evolving quickly. This guide is here to show you some of the ways you can take your digital marketing campaigns to the next level.
Understand Your Customer
Knowing your customer is key to any successful marketing campaign, this is especially true in the case of digital marketing. Digital marketing allows businesses access to a global customer base. This, in theory, sounds like a dream – a global customer base surely just means more potential customers. Digital marketing does offer the potential for an increased customer base; however, all internet shoppers will not be interested in your product or service. Having a deep understanding of who your customer is will enable you to exclusively target relevant shoppers with an expressed interest in your market niche. A focus on your target audience will help you to ensure that you get the highest return on your digital marketing investment. This is because you are using your digital marketing resources to exclusively target a relevant audience who are the most likely to convert.
To understand more about who your customer is you should consult your customer data. Tools like Google Analytics will provide useful information, such as customer demographics, on-site behaviour and shopping habits. This will help you to better understand who your customer is, what motivates them and what they prioritize. Analytic data will also provide valuable insights into how your site is operating, which pages capture the user’s attention the longest and which need improvement.
Use Chatbots
Chatbots have been heralded as the future of online customer communications. Chatbots are already used today by innovative companies that want to take their digital marketing to the next level. There are two reasons why chatbots are so beneficial to online businesses, they enable improved communications with customers, and they free up customer service teams.
Chatbots allow you to offer an improved service to your customer because they are constantly available. No matter what time a customer uses the service they will receive a swift response. This is because, unlike employees, a chatbot functions twenty-four-seven. Not only will this improve your customer’s perception of your brand, but it is also likely to improve your conversion rates. This is because a customer who has to wait for a response is more likely to take their business to a competitor.
Not only do chatbots allow you to offer an improved experience for customers, but they also benefit your customer service team. Chatbots can be programmed to answer routinely asked questions, which takes this burden off customer service teams. This allows customer service staff more time to focus on tasks that require critical thinking and promote business growth.
Use Site-Specific Marketing Techniques
Many online stores have realized the value of selling as a third party on a larger online retailer, such as Amazon. Listing your products on a site like Amazon has the potential to hugely benefit your brand. This is because you are exposed to a large base of relevant traffic who are searching specifically for your product and are highly motivated to make a purchase.
When the right digital marketing techniques are used, Amazon does have the power to positively impact everything from sales to customer awareness. However, many online retailors do not understand how digital marketing on Amazon works. It is common for retailers to assume that Amazon is similar to a search engine and will therefore use the same practices. This is not the case. As an Amazon consulting agency explains, success requires a custom-designed Amazon marketing campaign. To take your digital marketing campaign to the next level you must consider the techniques that you are using in context. Research new platforms and their best practices to ensure the highest chance of success.
Shoppable Content
Shoppable content is no longer considered a new trend or niche offering, it is now accepted as a valuable practice for all digital marketers to use. Shoppable content is any form of content that provides the user with a way to directly purchase a featured product. Shoppable content can come in the form of blog posts, livestreams, or native articles. Traditionally, the consumer would be required to click on a link, which would take them off-site, where they would be able to make their purchase. With shoppable content, the user can make the purchase without switching platforms – making it quick, easy and convenient to buy. Shoppable content offers you a way to take your digital marketing to the next level, by enabling you to meet with customers more easily and authentically on a range of platforms. It also promotes purchases because it takes less time for the customer to get to the point of purchase.
Personalize Your Marketing
As more and more businesses are going online, customers are increasingly prioritizing personalized content. Email marketing is one of the easiest and most accessible forms of digital marketing to personalize. Ways in which you can personalize your email marketing include:
- Sending emails from an individual, rather than the company itself
- Refining your customer base into groups by interest, shopping habits or on-site behaviour and sending relevant emails to these focused groups
- Giving customers the option to reply to marketing emails
- Sending personalized discount codes
Try and be as specific as possible when sending marketing emails, to avoid giving the impression that what the customer is reading is a marketing template sent to all customers. You should also aim to make your email as eye-catching as possible, try including videos, images or graphics in the body of the email. To ensure that all your hard work pays off you need the customer to open the email. Pay attention to the subject line to increase the chances of the customer clicking on your email.
Bio: Ryan Flannagan is the Founder & CEO of NuancedMedia, an international eCommerce marketing agency specializing in Amazon. Nuanced has sold $100s of Millions online and Ryan has built a client base representing a total revenue of over 1.5 billion dollars. Ryan is a published author and has been quoted by a number of media sources such as BuzzFeed and Modern Retail. To connect with Ryan, check out @Ryanflannagan on Twitter or via Linkedin
