DIGITAL MARKETING EFFICIENCY: WHAT, WHEN, WHY, WHERE AND HOW

Let´s talk about digital marketing

Digital marketing is any form of marketing you find online. Marketing has always been about contacting your target audience in the right place and at the right time. Today, that means meeting your customers where they spend their time: online.

We often talk about inbound marketing as a highly effective way to engage customers online, convert them, get them to close the deal, and ultimately delight them. However, we get questions from all over the world about digital marketing all the time.

A seasoned inbound marketer might be inclined to say that inbound marketing and digital marketing are almost the same thing. However, there are a few small but subtle differences. Marketers and business people in the US, UK, Asia, Australia and New Zealand and learned a lot about these small differences and how they are perceived around the world.  

Tactics & tools in digital marketing

A wide variety of tactics and materials fall into the digital marketing realm - from your website to online branding materials, digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and more.

The best digital marketers have a good understanding of which materials or tactics are best for each goal set.

Here's a quick rundown of common materials and tactics:

Materials

* Your website

* Blog posts

* E-books and white papers

* Infographics

* Interactive tools

* Social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)

* Online coverage (PR, social media and reviews).

* Online brochures and lookbooks

* Branding materials (logos, fonts, etc.)

What are some tactics in digital marketing?

* Search engine optimization (SEO)

* Content marketing

* Inbound marketing

* Social media marketing

* Pay-per-click (PPC)

* Partner Marketing

* Native Advertising

* Marketing Automation

* Email Marketing

* Online PR

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Optimizing your website aims to increase your organic (free) traffic to your website by ranking higher in search engine results.

Content marketing

The creation and distribution of content materials aims to increase traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and ultimately the number of customers.

Inbound marketing

The term inbound marketing refers to an approach that involves the entire marketing funnel. The goal here is to engage, convert, do business with, and delight customers through the use of online content. 

Social media marketing

In this approach, you promote your brand and content on social media channels to increase your traffic and brand awareness and generate leads for your business. 

Pay-per-click (PPC).

This term refers to a billing method in online paid advertising where you pay an amount for each click on your ad. One of the most well-known providers of PPC ads is Google AdWords.

Affiliate marketing

This is performance-based advertising compensation where you receive a commission when you advertise someone else's products or services on your website.

Native Advertising

Native advertising is about content-based ads on a platform where they are displayed alongside unpaid content. A good example of this is sponsored posts on BuzzFeed. Many marketers also consider ads on social media to be 'native,' such as ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is a term for software that is used to automate marketing actions. Many marketing departments have recurring tasks they can automate, such as emails, social media posts, and other actions performed on websites.

Email marketing

Companies use email marketing as a way to connect with their target audiences. Email marketing is often used to promote content, discount promotions, and events, and is also used to direct people to the company's website. 

Online PR

Online PR is the term used to describe an activity aimed at promoting or inducing coverage of one's company in digital media, on blogs and other content-based websites. It is similar to traditional PR - but online.

What is the difference between digital and inbound marketing?

On the surface, they are similar: both operate primarily online and both focus on creating digital content to be consumed. So what's the difference?

The term digital marketing does not differentiate between push and pull marketing tactics (what we now also call inbound and outbound methods). Both methods fall under the umbrella term digital marketing.

Digital outbound tactics aim to get a marketing message noticed online by as many people as possible - regardless of whether its content is relevant or welcome. An example of this is flashy banner ads displayed on many websites to push a product or promotion to people, even though they may not even be ready to receive the message.

Marketers who use digital inbound tactics use online content to get their target customers to visit their website by providing helpful materials. A simple but highly effective digital inbound tool is a blog. It allows you to seed your website with the terms your ideal customers are searching for.

Inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital marketing materials to target visitors online, convert them to leads that will be used to close business, and then delight those customers. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is a simple umbrella term that describes online marketing tactics of any kind, whether inbound or outbound.

Does digital marketing work for all businesses? B2B and B2C?

Digital marketing can work for any business in any industry. It doesn't matter what your business sells, digital marketing involves determining buyer personas to identify the needs of your target audience and creating valuable online content for them. However, that doesn't mean all businesses should build their digital marketing strategy the same way.

In B2B

If your business is in the B2B space, focus your online marketing primarily on lead generation. Your ultimate goal is to get potential customers to contact your sales department. That's why the role of your marketing strategy is to target high-quality leads and convert them for your sales reps, using your website and other supporting digital channels.

Beyond your website, your activities are more likely to focus on channels like LinkedIn, where your target demographic hangs out online.

In the B2C space

If your business is in the B2C space, depending on the entry-level price of your products, the goal of your digital marketing efforts is likely to drive visitors to your website and convert them to customers without ever having to speak with a sales representative.

For this reason, you're probably not focusing on generating "leads" in the traditional sense. It's more likely that your focus is on an accelerated buyer's journey - from the first website visit to the actual purchase. This means you're already siting product feature information in your content for the upper stages of the marketing funnel - earlier than would be the case for a B2B company. In addition, they are likely to need stronger or more specific calls-to-action (CTAs).

For B2C companies, channels like Instagram and Pinterest are often more valuable than platforms like LinkedIn, which tend to be more professional.

What are the key benefits of digital marketing?

Digital marketing allows marketers to see precise results from their campaigns in real time, which is not possible with most offline marketing. If you've ever placed an ad in a newspaper, you probably know how difficult it is to estimate how many people flipped to that page and even paid attention to your ad. There is no clear way to find out if the ad was responsible for any sales. With digital marketing, on the other hand, you can measure ROI for pretty much every aspect of your marketing efforts.

Here are a few examples:

Website traffic

With digital marketing, you can determine in real time the exact number of people who viewed your website's home page. This is made possible by using digital analytics software like HubSpot. You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they used to do so, where they came from, and other digital analytics data.

These insights will help you determine which marketing channels to focus on based on the number of people passing through those channels on your website. For example, if only 10% of your traffic is generated from organic search results, you know you probably need to invest more time in your SEO to boost that percentage.

With offline marketing, it's very difficult to determine how people have interacted with your brand before they contact your sales department or buy something from you. With digital marketing, you can identify trends and behaviors of your target customers before they reach the final stage in their buyer's journey. This means that even at the top of the funnel (TOFU), you can make better-informed decisions about how to direct them to your website at the right time.

The performance of your content and lead generation.

Imagine you've created a product brochure and distributed it as a direct mail piece. In this case, this brochure is offline content. The problem is that you have no way of knowing how many people opened your brochure and how many ended up with it in the waste paper.

Now imagine that you make this brochure available on your website. You can measure exactly how many people viewed the page where the content is hosted and use forms to collect contact information from those who downloaded the offer. So not only can you measure how many people interact with your content, but you generate qualified leads when they download it.

Attribution

An effective digital marketing strategy combined with the right tools and technologies allows you to connect all of your sales to a customer's first digital touchpoint with your company. We refer to this as "attribution." It allows you to identify trends in how your customers search for and buy your product. This helps you make better-informed decisions about which parts of your marketing strategy you should devote more detailed attention to and which parts of your sales cycle need improvement.

Making a connection between marketing and sales is critical. According to the Aberdeen Group, companies whose sales and marketing are aligned achieve a 20% annual growth rate, while those with poor alignment face a 4% reduction. If you can optimize the customer experience with digital technologies across the buying cycle, it will most likely have a positive impact on your sales.

What type of content should you create?

The type of content you create depends on the needs of your target audience at different stages of the buyer's journey. You should start by creating buyer personas (use these free templates or try our free persona tool). This will help you determine your target audience's goals and challenges in relation to your business. At the very basic level, your online content should be focused on helping your potential customers achieve their goals and overcome their challenges.

Then, you should think about when your target audience would prefer to consume that content in terms of their stage in the buyer's journey. This is what we call content mapping.

In content mapping, the goal is to align content based on the following criteria:

The characteristics of the person you're creating the content for (that's where buyer personas come in). How far away the person is from making a purchase (i.e., their lifecycle stage).

As for the format of your content, you have a variety of options. Here, we've compiled a few options we'd recommend at different stages of the Buyer's Journey:

Awareness Phase

Blog posts They are great for increasing organic traffic if you have a good SEO and keyword strategy.

Infographics Infographics are especially likely to be shared, which in turn means your brand can be found more easily on social media. (Take a look at these free infographic templates to get started).

Short videos Videos are also shared frequently on social media and will help your brand be found by new audiences by hosting them on platforms like YouTube.

Consideration phase

Lead Magnet

E-books E-books are great for lead generation because they tend to be more comprehensive than a blog post or infographic. It's likely that potential readers will be willing to submit their contact information for this content.

Research reports This is also content with great value for lead generation. Research reports and new data for your industry may also be suitable for the awareness phase, as media or industry press often pick up on them.

Webinars Webinars are a detailed, interactive form of video content and are good for the consideration phase because they are more comprehensive than blog posts and short videos.

Decision phase

Case studies When you provide detailed case studies on your website, you provide appropriate information for potential customers who are ready to make a purchase decision. You can use this to positively influence their decision-making process.

Testimonials If case studies are not a good fit for your business, then short testimonials are a good alternative. Testimonials in the B2C sector are not so narrow. For example, a fashion brand might feature photos of people wearing one of their garments. You can source these photos from a hashtag with your branding from a platform of your choice.

How long does it take to see success?

With digital marketing, it can feel like success happens much faster than with offline marketing. That's because it's easier to measure your ROI. However, in the end, your true success depends on the scale you choose and the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy.

Take enough time to create comprehensive buyer personas and identify the needs of your target audience. Then, focus on creating high-quality online content to engage and convert your target audience. Then you'll likely start to see good results in the first six months.

If paid advertising is a part of your digital strategy, the results will show up even faster. But we recommend you focus on building organic (or 'free') traffic, using SEO and social media to achieve long-term, sustainable success.

Do you need a big budget for digital marketing?

That depends on what elements of digital marketing you want to include in your strategy.

If you already have a website and want to focus on inbound techniques like SEO, social media and content creation, you don't need a big budget. Inbound marketing focuses on creating high-quality content that your target audience will want to consume. Unless you plan to outsource content creation, you don't need to invest anything but your time.

With outbound techniques like online advertising and buying email distribution lists, you definitely have to expect to spend. How much the cost is depends on what visibility you want to achieve as a result of the advertising.

For example, if you want to run PPC ads through Google AdWords, you'll have to bid against other businesses in your industry to show up in the top search results with your keywords. Depending on how much competition you have for your chosen keywords, this can be quite affordable or extremely expensive. That's why it's better to focus on building your organic reach.

What about mobile marketing?

Another important component of digital marketing is marketing via mobile devices. Today, 60% of digital media is consumed on mobile devices. Desktop devices account for the remaining 40%. That's why it's so important to optimize your digital ads, websites, images, and other digital materials for mobile devices. If your business has a mobile app that allows users to interact with your brand or purchase your products, your app also falls under the umbrella term of digital marketing.

Users who interact with your business via mobile devices need to have the same positive experience that desktop users have. So, you need to use a mobile-optimized or responsive design to achieve the ideal user experience on mobile devices. This includes shortening the length of your lead generation forms to provide a hassle-free experience for those users who want to download your content on the go. With your social media images, always keep the mobile user in mind. Images need to be adjusted to fit the dimensions of smaller screens, or text may be cut off.

There are many ways you can optimize your digital marketing materials for mobile device users. No matter what your marketing strategy is, you should always keep in mind what the customer experience will be like on mobile devices. If you always keep this in mind, you'll succeed in creating digital experiences that work well for your target audience. This will then produce the results you want.