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Whatever You Do, Don’t Leave These Things Out Of Your Digital Marketing Plan!

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital Marketing|Whatever You Do, Don’t Leave These Things Out Of Your Digital Marketing Plan! If your goal is to get your brand noticed online, then you will absolutely need an effective digital marketing plan. Of course, with marketing being part art, and part science, there is a substantial margin for error when it comes to writing and executing such a plan. In fact, it’s all too easy to leave out certain aspects that could have a significant effect on your success. Luckily, some of the most important ones have been highlighted below. Read on for more.

An end goal

One thing that it is crucial that you don’t leave out of your digital marketing strategy is an end goal for every campaign that you run. After all, a campaign without a specific purpose is unlikely to be as focused or as productive as it could be, and as they aren’t cheap to run its good to get this sorted out beforehand.

Analytics are a crucial element of goal monitoring.

In fact, by taking a less nebulous approach to the end result of your digital marketing campaign, you can much better track and measure the effect they are having. Of course, to do this effectively you, or the people you partner with will need to be adept at using analytics to measure the success of each campaign, and, as is becoming increasingly popular the success of altering even a single variable.

Mobile optimization

Another aspect of digital marketing strategy that you cannot leave out if you want success is the optimization of your website and apps for mobile use.

This reason for this is because over 75% of internet use is now on a mobile platform. What that means is if you don’t optimize for mobile you aren’t providing the best user experience for your up to ¾ of your customers! Something likely to reduce engagement as well as trust and positive regard for your brand.

SEO provision

You may not be an expert in it yourself, but if you are involved in running a business, it’s likely that you already know that SEO and its paid counterpart PPC are crucial things to include in your digital marketing strategy.

In fact, SEM, the term for both paid and unpaid search engine marketing, is so important because if you get it right, it will be your company that gets pulled up in the searches first.
In fact, in terms of SEO or organic rankings, it is vital that this happens because a large percentage of lead conversions happen when a click-through occurs from the first page of search results.

What that means is that if you can get your business’s link to appear on the first page of Google via the SEO method, you will have a much better chance or not only building your brand but getting good quality, convertible leads as well.

Of course, just like any other task that needs to be completed in your business, the best person for the job of SEO will be a specialist. To that end, finding an SEO agency to help you is usually a much better choice than going with someone with limited trading and experience. After all, reading a few posts on the internet won’t be enough to ensure your digital marketing strategy is effective as possible.

Engaging content

Lastly, the true cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy needs to be the content that you create. The reason being that content which offers real value to your potential customer is the currency you will use not only to convince them to listen to your message but to transcend the speaker-listener dynamic that is so prevalent in traditional forms of marketing.

In fact, by creating engaging content, you aren’t just offering an item of value to potential customers, but an opportunity to be involved in a conversation and a community as well. Both things that are greatly valued by people and can help boost your brand’s image.

Of course, by offering your potential customers this chance you can then use it to strengthen your brand’s loyalty, as well as perpetuate a genuine engagement that will keep your company name and digital marketing output relevant in their eyes. Something that, in turn, will ensure a maximum rate of success for your digital marketing strategy.

Summary

Don’t forget to have an end goal to your digital marketing strategy, and to use analytics to check that what you are doing is facilitating this. Additionally, you need to include provision for SEO and mobile optimization. Lastly, engaging content can help you not just spread your message but involve potential customers in a community around your brand as well. Something that when used in conjunction with the other tactics mentioned in this post can make your digital marketing strategy as effective as possible.

How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy Overnight

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital Marketing|How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy OvernightFor many small and medium sized business owners, internet marketing is like shooting in the dark. The good news is that there are plenty of online tools that will allow you to see clearer, so you can make the most out of your targeting and reach the right people. For this, you will need to collect and make sense of data and simplify processes. Below you will find a few tips on how to get started.

Learn to Collect Data

It is important that you monitor your market. Customer behaviors change faster than you would think, and this means that you will have to be proactive instead of reactive. You should conduct market research regularly, but in particular when you are looking to launch a new product or service, so you know what to expect, and what your target market wants. This will take the guesswork out of your marketing strategy.

Interpret Business Intelligence

It is important that you interpret your business intelligence and make sense of charts and data. If you are not qualified at data analytics, you might want to get in touch with a Business intelligence consulting company that will help you understand the trends and the business opportunities, so you can create a competitive advantage and grow your business through marketing.

Know Your Customers

It is crucial that you get to know your customers as much as you can. Make sure that you identify your ideal clients and those you would rather not work with. This will allow you to make the most out of your targeting and stop shooting in the dark, beating up the dead horse or dealing with tire kickers in your business. After all, you will need to maximize your marketing investment returns.

Test and Tweak

The key to scaling up your marketing campaigns is testing every single campaign and tweaking them on the go. You cannot expect people to buy from you the first time they come across your message, but you will be able to communicate a consistent brand message. If you already know what your audience reacts to, you can adjust your brand messages. When setting up a paid campaign, you can create an AB testing split, so you can identify the winning version and lose the one that is not performing.

Automate

There are some digital marketing tasks and processes that you should start automating, so you can save time and scale up your campaigns faster. From scheduling your social media posts to making sure that you are always staying in touch with your customers and let them know about the special offers available to them, there are several ways you can make your life easier and improve your digital marketing strategy.

If you would like to make the most out of your return on digital marketing investment, you will have to first understand your market and your customers. Use a business intelligence software that will allow you to make sense of big data and turn it into knowledge.

The Right and Wrong Way to Grow Your Digital Presence

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital Presence|The Right and Wrong Way to Grow Your Digital PresenceFocusing on your digital presence is a sure-fire way to grow your business, but there are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding it. For instance, many people read outdated articles about how important advertising is, but the reality is that as the internet evolves the strategies we need to use have to change as well. So in order to demystify these problems and give you a better chance at growing your business, here are some tips on the right and wrong way to grow your digital presence.

Wrong: Focusing solely on advertising

Advertising is a great way to improve your digital presence, but there’s a single problem that makes it a terrible idea for most startups and SMEs; competition. While you could probably advertise on a similar level to larger companies, they’ll ultimately have a lot more money to spend, a larger marketing budget and ultimately more power than you. You simply don’t win when it comes down to who has more marketing power.

Right: Changing the approach depending on your budget

That’s why it’s incredibly important to change your approach depending on your budget. Smaller companies with less capital can focus on social media-based approaches. This involves joining communities, getting to know your audience and paying more attention to their needs as you try to meet them.

Wrong: Doing everything yourself to save money

There are far too many entrepreneurs and SMEs that would rather use their employees or even their own skills to try and grow their digital presence. This could include learning to design your own website, trying to use free SEO tools to get noticed on Google or even trying to manage your social media accounts alone. This is a poor approach because it takes a lot of your time and you simply don’t have the knowledge or skills required.

Right: Investing into services wisely

That’s why it’s important to partner yourself with an SEO agency, web design company or even a community manager. The idea is to always rely on specialists when possible because they’ll be capable of handling the tasks you’ve set while you can focus on striking more deals, developing new products and ultimately scaling your company. You can leave the design and technical work to specialists instead.

Wrong: Automating everything that you can

There are far too many services and tools that can help you automate tasks that really shouldn’t be automated. For instance, there are tools that will automatically update your social media pages with random bits of content, there are email templates and services that will spam emails to various accounts and there are tools to automate lead followup. This might work for larger businesses, but if you value customer interaction then there’s another option.

Right: Personalizing your content

Personalizing all of your content makes you more human and thus approachable. If you’re going to grow your digital presence then you absolutely need to write and send your own emails, curate content that you wish to display to the public and follow up on leads in person.

11 Experts That Can Help Your Startup Soar

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Successful Business|11 Experts That Can Help Your Startup SoarSo you’ve had an idea for a long time and you’ve finally decided to give it a real go. You’ve spent long enough thinking ‘what if’ and grinding away at a job you hate or those textbooks you’ve exhausted, and you’re ready to turn into a tangible project.

Starting up a business, whilst a freeing and exciting process, is a feeling of being dropped into the deep end. You may have learned a lot about it in your school days, but once you’re out there trying to make something out of nothing, it’s like starting all over again – you can learn all the theory in the world, but when it comes to actually putting it into practice, the real world can throw up some surprises.

In life you’re not going to know everything, you’re going to be limited in some aspects and you’re going to need some assistance. The same applies to when you’re attempting to start and maintain a successful business. In order to find even a bit of success, you’re going to need a bunch of facets to be operating smoothly, and a way to solidify that is to get the appropriate help that can get you off the ground or over the line. Let’s have a little chat about the different types of help you can solicit and how it can benefit you as you look to make real strides in the world of business.

An Accountant

When you’re up and running, you’re obviously going to be bringing in quite a bit of money. Handling the money side of things can be a little tricky – even if you’re quite competent already. Hiring an accountant would be beneficial to you as you can let them deal with the nitty-gritty bits that may be concerning you whilst you get on with the work you know how to do. They won’t just help you in terms of doing their initial job, you can also pick up pieces of information and wisdom off of them for future reference.

An Assistant

If you’re in need of an extra body to lighten the load, you can absolutely bring someone in to work with you. There are many people out there trained in admin; they can handle the basic, tedious and necessary formalities that you need to get out of the way. Nowadays, you can look online and find a virtual assistant to help you – even from the other side of the world.

A Copywriter

If you need someone to write content for your website or anything like that, then you could get in touch with a copywriter. They place your content on your page so that you can get on with everything else. They also do blog posts with appropriate links that can boost search engine optimization. The content on emails is another way in which they provide service.

A Graphic Designer

If you’re not too versed in creating logos, heading and other fancy design on different pieces of software, then you can always find an artistic graphic design whiz. The stuff they can conjure up these days is magical and if you need someone to make a near perfect and stunning design for you, then you can get one of these guys/gals.

A Marketer

There are people out there who live and breathe marketing. They know all there is to know about promoting products and services. They also know how best to build relationships with customers so that the brand stays in their minds. If you work with someone like this, they will create a strategy for you and execute it all.

A Social Media Expert

Social media is a huge part of life now – for better or for worse. You can take a product or service and get its name out there relatively simply thanks to some of the platforms. There are people out there that specialize in the way social media operates and the way in which people behave. It’s quite as hard-hitting or as broad as getting in someone whose expertise spans throughout the entire marketing and digital marketing spectrum, but this specialist could help you score big points in terms of exposure.

An SEO Specialist

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s basically a way of making sure your website is soon on search engines like Google. It’s done by a bunch of ways, including inputting relevant and quality content and link building. If you want your brand to be seen more and more, then hiring local SEO experts could put you on the right path.

A Consultant

You’ve probably thought about every little nook and cranny that goes into your start-up. But like we’ve said before, you won’t perfect it, and there’s always something that can be added to it or something that can be improved upon. That’s where a business consultant can come in. Even if a certain aspect isn’t exactly wrong or failing, they can approach it from another angle and provide a little more insight for you.

A Lawyer

There will be a lot of legal stuff that you need to sort out when you run a business. The law can be a confusing and messy world at times, so getting in touch with a corporate lawyer wouldn’t be a stupid thing to do. They can help you set up the business without any legal issues, and they can also help you sort out things like contracts.

A Sales Specialist

If you’re not exactly the best salesman/saleswoman in the world, then there’s always someone out there who with a smooth and charming demeanour ready to help close out deals. Someone who has worked in sales for years will know everything there is to know about getting a deal or a sale over the line.

A Customer Service Firm

Finally, you can outsource this aspect of the job to a firm that’s dedicated to it entirely. You’ll want your customers to be taken care of when they have problems or when they need to inquire about something. Certain firms deal with stuff like emails and chatbots.

Easy Ways for you to Boost your Overall Website Traffic

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Website Traffic|Easy Ways for you to Boost your Overall Website TrafficIf you have a site then you will know how important it is for you to keep your incoming traffic as high as possible. After all, the more traffic you have, the more likely you are to get customers and this can be one of the defining parameters of a successful site.

Focus on Advertising

Paid search and even social media advertising are brilliant ways for you to attract more visitors. They give you the chance to build your brand and you can also get your site out there in front of more people. Every paid channel that you use will come with its own pros and cons, so understanding and defining your strategy is crucial here. If you are hopeful that getting more traffic will boost your sales, then one thing that you need to do is target popular commercial keywords. This can be expensive, but the results are well worth it.

Get on Social Media

In this day and age, producing great content is just not enough. You need to be proactive and you also need to get your site out there in front of the right audience. Social media is a fantastic way for you to do this. If you want to get some additional help, then Twitter is ideal for posts that are short and snappy. Google+ promotions however are more suited to B2B niches.

Mix things Up

Unfortunately, there is no magic formula when it comes to marketing. If you want to get the best result out of your efforts, then you need to make your content seem appealing to as many people as possible. Try and post longer articles, shorter ones and even video content too. When you do this, you will be fulfilling a plethora of search criteria and you will also be able to hit a lot of different target demographics too.

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Website Traffic|Easy Ways for you to Boost your Overall Website TrafficWrite Brilliant Headlines

Headlines are quite possibly the most important part of any search criteria. If you do not have compelling headlines then there is a high chance that your blogs will never get read. In order to help yourself, come up with several headlines and then ask people’s opinions on them. You can also play around by using different buzz words too. When you do this, you will soon find that getting traffic is easier than ever before.

On-Page SEO

SEO is so important. If your content is not optimised for search engines, then there is a high chance that your customers will never see it. Think about it, are you using your alt text to your advantage? Are you adding metadata properly? What about internal links? By taking all of this into account, you can be sure to really rocket the traffic that your site gets while boosting your overall company professionalism too. If you are stuck as to what types of meta tags to use then there are plenty of guides out there that can help.

Long-Tail Keywords

If you have your high-intent keywords covered, it’s then time for you to work on your long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords really do account for a huge number of internet searches. If you are not using them as part of your paid search, then you are missing out.

Consider Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is now more prevalent than ever. Securing a guest post on just one reputable site can work wonders for your traffic and it can also help you to build your brand too. Be warned though, because some of the regulations for guest blogging have changed over the last few years and if you use spammy tactics then this can result in a penalty.

Invite Others

Guest blogging is a somewhat two-way street. When you post content to other blogs, you then invite people to try and post on yours. If you are able to do this, then they may even bring new readers to your site and this can be the start of a fruitful relationship. When you are creating your posts, you have to make sure that you post high quality and original content. If you don’t then Google will find out and your site, and even the other person’s site will be penalised as a result.

Referral Traffic

If you want other people to link to you then this is great. You shouldn’t be spending most of your time trying to persuade them to do this however. The main reason for this is because it is a time-consuming process and the outcome might not be as successful as you’d like. So how do you get around this? One thing that you need to do is try and create content that begs to be linked to. You need to write posts that people can’t resist sharing and ones that people would be proud to post to their site. When you do this, you will soon find that it is easier than ever for you to get more traffic.

Post to LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become much more powerful over the last few years. If you want to make the most out of your traffic, then you need to post regular content on there. This will help you to boost your site traffic and it will also help you to increase your overall profile. If you have a B2B business then this will certainly help you out because LinkedIn is one of the main sites for this type of marketing.

Microdata

Implementing microdata won’t boost the traffic to your site on its own. It will however make it much easier for search engine bots to find and even index your pages. You should also consider having a site map on your page. When you do this, you will make it much easier for the search engines to crawl your site and you may even find that you can boost your website traffic as a result. This is free to do as well, so if you are on a budget then it is well worth checking out this method.