If you already know how to maintain and deliver an effective online marketing campaign for your business, then you know the importance of writing fresh content, having meaningful interactions with your customers and followers, and having a regular schedule for publishing content on your website and social media networks. Marketing experts employ a variety of methods to help retain their level of appeal and attraction to their audience and know how to keep viewers hooked for longer. Let’s take a closer look at some of their online marketing strategies and analyse exactly what they do that makes them so successful.
Write realistic online goals in your online marketing campaign
The online world is always available to receive content from startups to established businesses who are ready to launch a brand new website or social media account. However, just because you might have a new concept or a great idea that you think is both profitable and marketable, the idea may not translate into an overnight success the moment you launch your online marketing campaign.
Few online marketing campaigns go viral and receive phenomenal success. Your online marketing goals need to be realistic, otherwise you will end up disappointed that you did not achieve as highly as you had expected when you launched. Think about the following: how many people do you need to reach? Where does your target audience hang out online? Which websites do they visit? What social media accounts do they have? How do they usually interact when they are online?
When you start to focus your online marketing goals and refine your advertising efforts, then your goals and results will be much more realistic and successful.
Use specific social media networks
Look at the social media networks your target demographic uses – you don’t need to be active on every social media network, especially if your customer base doesn’t use them either! If you tried to maintain an active profile on every social media platform this would consume all your time and energy. You’d end up with a large number of neglected social media profiles and would quickly lose motivation for maintaining them. Perhaps you would even lose sight of why you thought it was a good idea to create an account, and who you were hoping to attract.
Analyse the online behaviour and web usage of your target audience, and create profiles and accounts on the right social media websites. For example: on Pinterest and Instagram you are likely to find a lot of people interested in food, but would be unlikely to find such a following on LinkedIn. If you are wanting to promote your new restaurant or advertise your new cook book online, or your new cooking school then create an account on both Pinterest and Instagram. Use the social media websites which your intended followers are already using.
Keep up with the latest technology trends
An expert marketer always tries new technologies. Somehow they have a sixth sense about which tools will work and which tools require further experimentation and tuning before they know they can trust it to send effective messages to their followers. If, for example, your website is not mobile responsive, you’ll find yourself remaining behind your competition.
Take a closer look at some of the global recognizable brands, such as: Mac or Coca Cola – you may notice that their marketing teams are always the first companies to implement the latest technology with their fans. When you begin to look more closely at how some of these big brands use marketing technology techniques effectively you’ll begin to transform your online marketing strategy.
Try not to give up too early and think these companies have a vast marketing budget to accomplish such success, just analyse their approach and strategy and do something which is equivalent and relevant for your followers.
Don’t solely focus on the number of followers or fans
Focusing too much on the quantity of followers or fans on your social media network is a mistake. Instead, you should consider the level of engagement you have with your fans or followers as a more valuable indicator. Although a large number of fans/followers adds to the credibility and helps generate more popularity and good page rankings with the search engines, if you have a smaller online community who instead express a genuine interest in your product or service or the content you publish, then surely that is more worthwhile than a few hundred followers who only engage with you by clicking “like” occasionally and don’t share your content with their network, let alone purchase your product or service.
You want comments, questions, feedback from your followers – a two-way level of engagement and interaction. It does take effort and creativity to find and attract this unique online community, but the results will pay off in the long run.
Consider alternative traffic channels
It’s a fact that Google is the main source for most website traffic. But does that mean you should solely focus your online marketing campaign to your raise ranking on Google? If you want to attract more visitors to your website, think about how you can reach the Influencers i.e. the people who are early adopters and have a large number of followers and write messages which generate a large number of responses.
Offer to write guest posts on other people’s blogs, send promotional style emails or newsletters to subscribers, generate some buzz by leading a social media forum, use affiliate marketing techniques. Expert marketers utilize a number of methods to attract customers and include links to direct people back to their website.
Provide a variety of content types
The content on your website does not need rely on the traditional formula of website publishing practice i.e. image + text. Try to deliver information in a variety of different forms. By having a diverse range of content types and formats, you keep your target audience interested. Try to create some short presentations, an infographic or two, prepare a podcast or shoot a short video, write a top ten list or any other content you can think of. If you are unable to create these content types yourself, hire a professional to help you. Experiment and see what response you get back from your customers.
Ask local personalities for a recommendation
Sometimes when you read or see an endorsement by a recognized figure in your community, you have one of two reactions – you either think the product or service goes up in credibility and reliability, or you cynically think ‘uh huh, yeah right’. A few nationwide brands have tapped into using local celebrities, known to have the trust and interests’ of their community, to help promote their campaigns to a local audience.
Instead of thinking of the unattainable and getting a famous celebrity recommendation, that everyone knows and recognizes and thinks ‘they’re only doing this for the pay check’ and not really invested in the product or service they are linking their name to, approach it differently, start reading through your local newspaper, contact a popular, positive personality who you know everyone loves and is able to relate to. Think of how you can include them in your marketing campaign and ask them to help spread the word about your business.
Your online business benefits from your offline activities
Deliver a strong offline presence by promoting your business through brand-driven messages on your local radio station and in your community newspaper, on flyers pinned on supermarket noticeboards, handing out your business card, a pamphlet/circular letter box drop in nearby neighborhoods. Offer free coffee cups or pens, or sponsor a kids’ sports team uniforms. These may be small investments for your business, but they put your business name out there in the community. You may start to get some feedback online from this seemingly unnoticeable marketing campaign.
Keep going – persevere
You might find yourself spending months on your online marketing campaign, without seeing the considerable results you were expecting. However, that doesn’t mean you should give up on it. Marketing online requires you to put in a lot of time and commitment. You may find that through sheer perseverance, the results you wanted have finally paid off. Sure, there will be disappointments along the way, but the effort surely makes you appreciate the rewards you have gained.
There are plenty of online marketing tools, methods and strategies that will help you to build a better connection and engagement with your customers and boost the recognition of your brand online. I suggest you experiment, trust your instincts, and go for it. The risks may not always yield success, you’ll make mistakes along the way, but the good thing is you’ll learn from them and move on.
