1) A multi-channel approach to your marketing
Competition in the digital marketing space can be fierce. Staying relevant and engaging with your customers is key to elevate your brand in a crowded, competitive and potentially expensive space. With a multitude of options available to ignite your brand, a strategic approach is always best. If you want to learn more – as a Starter member you can access our digital marketing benchmarking guide which allows you to assess your position and audit your strategy against competitors.
Researching which digital communications channels are best for you will be a key player in reaching your customers and building engaging relationships.
What channels are your customers engaging with?
An omnichannel marketing approach helps to gain knowledge of what your customers are thinking/searching for. Then you can understand what will be useful for them. For example, how can you help them and where? This helps to plan how you will engage with them, what topics are of interest and how you can build relationships for ongoing retention. To help you understand your customers, our customer persona template is really useful for our members. It can help to fully embrace who your customers are and create a better customer journey for increased engagement and retention.2) Embrace digital transformation
In the past, some companies have been reluctant to integrate new technologies with their current business models. However, during the last few years especially, it has become crucial for businesses to embrace digital transformation to remain competitive. In the digital world that we live in today, creating brand awareness online, e-commerce and digital marketing have become more important than ever. It not only impacts your bottom line as a business but has also the digital world has become a strong platform to build relationships with your customers. Whether that means social media connectivity or a high performing website, it's important to connect with your customers. Particularly when it comes to digital marketing, technology has helped companies to build their brand awareness to attract new prospects; both locally and globally. One of the most significant driving forces for reaching customers and meeting their needs has been improving and cleaning data. It allows businesses to speak to the right customers with a more personalized touch. This also supports a more proactive approach for businesses and facilitates the ability to thrive. Digital transformation doesn’t have to mean investing in the latest AI, VR or even 5G technologies. Instead, it can be as simple as upgrading your telephony system, holding webinars or online events, and creating more accessible ways to do business online or remotely. It could even be updating your marketing strategy to a more digital approach. To create the right digital transformation strategy for your business, our guide, ‘Set your vision for digital channel transformation’ is a great source to help focus and align your digital and business goals.3) Re-evaluate your content strategy
Once upon a time, it was enough for a business to have quality web page content, update their blog regularly and keep in touch with clients predominantly via email. As technology has evolved, including social media, there are now multiple channels to reach out to your customers. We have a great Quick Win for our members that really helps plan out how to write copy for social media in order to engage with your customer base. Your content can include regularly sharing new content or repurposing content. This can be via social media, joining communities online, building personal brands, creating videos, infographics, reels, working with online publications and many more. All of which can be great ways to increase your reach using the RACE framework for digital marketing strategies. Part of a great business plan includes investigating the avenues that are relevant for your customers. This enables a greater reach of customers, that are more engaged, informed and compelled to buy. Which, in turn, drives up your sales.
How do I reach a digital audience?
There are various ways you can reach your audience through technology. If anything, the pandemic really highlighted how we can work together remotely. But we can also connect in new ways and reaching out to our customers. Luckily, technology is on our side. That means that image sizes, metadata, and all things AI/VR are at our fingertips when we are ready for them. What’s more, is that we don’t always need to be that complicated. The best thing businesses can do to relate to their customers is to have conversations. In order to do that, it’s important to find where they are in the digital space. Once you're there you can get involved and solve their problems with your solution – aka your product or service. It’s simply just a matter of reaching out to people that have a need for something and doing it in the right way. People will always be people. So, let’s continue to treat them as such, digitally or otherwise.Source: How businesses can use technology to make the most of marketing (smartinsights.com)
