10 Crucial digital marketing strategies to grow your business in 2024

WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING?

“Digital marketing refers to advertising delivered through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. Using these online media channels, digital marketing is the method by which companies endorse goods, services, and brands”

The growth of  businesses with the help of internet has been tremendous in the past two decades. Traditional media like newspapers and television were the primary source of marketing channels untill a few years ago, But with the arrival of 4G and now speculated 5G in India, digital marketing overtook traditional media and has acquired a prominent position to promote businesses online.

In 2020, if your business doesn’t have an online presence, you are most probably in a position to be excluded from the market. Digital marketing involves various strategies that can be used online to facilitate awareness for your brand and promote your products to reach your target customers. To understand how to use digital marketing strategies effectively, it is crucial to know the various types of digital marketing. In this article let’s look at the types of digital marketing and their importance.

1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)

If you are a business owner, you would be aware of why SEO is important for a business. Search engine optimization is the process of improving your site’s visibility and enable it to rank at the top in search engine result pages (SERP). Since people search for content online every day, SEO becomes a fundamental, essential and irreplacable part of digital marketing. Google’s search algorithm is designed in such a way that it surfs for relevant and authoritative pages to give the user a satisfying search experience.

 

 

Keyword research is the pivotal factor in SEO. You must analyze the keywords relevant to your customers and  developcontent around those specific keywords. SEO is a great way of accelerating organic traffic on your website. One should also give a relevant title for the content as users are more likely to view your content based on the title. Brands should ensure to deliver high quality, relevant content periodically to optimize SEO.

Why SEO is important?

Do you know how many searches are conducted online per day?. It is around one billion. And this means a terrific amount of traffic through search engines. Many people browse for products in an intention of buying them.  Customers are searching for solutions to their problems. When they get the solution from you, a sense of trust is built on your brand which eventually can leverage more leads and sales. This makes SEO a basic need for every business.

2.CONTENT MARKETING

When you hear content marketing, I bet you would have thought about blogs, youtube videos, social media content. But content marketing is far more than that. This is why because content marketing is another form of story-telling. We all were brought up by hearing stories in our childhood. Stories automatically drive a person’s attention and the message can be conveyed very easily.

 

 

Here’s why content marketing is important for your business

• Creates awareness for your brand
• Enables customer engagement and timely communication
• Helps you educate customers about products and services
• Boost conversions and sales
• Cost-effective method of marketing

Content marketing is merely educational and not related with promoting products or services. Creating engaging content will enhance your marketing efforts to accomplish the business goals.

3. PAID ADVERTISING

In traditional marketing you pay for your advertisements irrespective of whether it has reached your target audience or not. But the main advantage of online advertising is that you can broadcast your advertisements to specific customers. Also you can analyse the results of your ad campaign through GOOGLE ANALYTICS. Paid advertising can be done through search engines and social media. Paid ads appear on the top of the search engine result page before the organic results with an “Ad” favicon. (SEM)

There are different models for paid advertising :

1. Pay per click
2. Pay per install
3. Pay per view
4. Pay per download
5. Pay per acquisition
6. Display ads
7. Video ads

The most familiar amongst the above is pay per click where you pay for every click on your advertisement. You have to bid for the relevant keyword to display your advertisement in the search results. Paid ads give you instantaneous results whereas SEO will take time to show results. Based on your budgets, you can choose any of the modes for paid advertising to boost conversion rates.

 You can also advertise your brand on social media platforms like facebook, youtube and linkedin.

Why paid advertising is important?

Paid advertising gives you faster results than organic reach. Running advertisement campaigns enables you to reach broader audience in a limited time span. Also you can reach specific audience who are interested in your product and convert them into leads. If you are a start up company trying to enhance your online presence, try to run a paid ad campaign to achieve your goals instantly.

 

4. EMAIL MARKETING

Wondering whether emails are still a marketing strategy? Yes it is and can be used efficiently

Emails are one of the direct communicating channels with the customer and a cost-effective inbound marketing strategy.  If this strategy is used effectively, you can view significant results. You can update your customers with promotions and services through emails.

There are numerous email marketing tools to automate the process of sending emails which can ease manual labour. Newsletters, thank-you notes, and event notifications are part of email marketing.

 

 

Why email marketing?

Eventhough social media has a significant rise, emails are still effective to leverage leads and gain customers loyalty.Emails hold a better way of communication. Are you aware that most people check their emails on a daily basis?.  Also your social media account can be suspended or deleted for any reason whereas in email marketing you have your own list of potential customers which cannot be removed at any cost. The ROI through email marketing is much higher and a well planned email marketing strategy is the best practice to grow your business.

5. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Almost 90% of the world’s population is owning one or more social media accounts. So marketing through social media will definitely be a right thing to do for online business.

Social media marketing (SMM) as the name suggests is the strategy used to promote your brand or products via social media. By now you must be aware of how social media has evolved. You can create an account and promote your brand on any social media platform organically or by means of paid promotions. Either way its healthy for a brand to be on social media in today’s day and time.  The main advantage of SMM is that you can interact with your audience directly and collect feedback from them. This will help in improving the quality of your business. Some of the most used social media platforms are Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat. 

Why social media marketing?

You can raise awareness for your brand through social media very easily and increase website traffic by linking it to social media accounts. SMM is a cost effective strategy in which you can create any number of social media accounts for free unless you decide to go for paid ads in social media. When you have a social media presence, you can improve your brand’s loyalty by engaging your customers through curated content. SMM has the potential to increase your brand value and it is mandatory to have SMM for an effective growth of your business.

6. Affiliated Marketing

Have you ever noticed youtubers recommending certain products/services and providing links to purchase them. This is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a process by which content producers are paid a commission for promoting your product/service to their audience. They produce original content and mention your brand by providing affiliate links. When a user decides to buy using this particular link, you pay the affiliates for the conversion. You also have to select the appropriate affiliates relevant to your products/services. Some examples of affiliate networks are amazon associates Shopify, eBay, and many other e-commerce sites. This is a two-way benefit marketing where you can reach the target audience and the content producer will be getting an income for every sale.

                                                       

Why affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing leverage more profit than expected.  Your product gets a dramatic promotion through affiliates when you still continue to sell your products online. Also it expands the number of your potential customers and attracts new customers. The key point here is to build a robust affiliate network who can bring in more sales. I would say it is not mandatory to have affiliate marketing but also can’t deny the fact that it has it’s own benefits.

7. INSTANT MESSAGE MARKETING

Heard of reselling business through whatsapp by sharing  images? Well . This is what many home makers do now as asource of passive income. Messaging platform can be used as a business tool by targeting specific customers.

The rise of instant messaging apps is enormous over the past few years. The most widely used apps are Whatsapp, Messenger, Wechat, and Telegram. These are the platforms where your customers can directly contact you and you can also provide support when needed.

Every platform has a direct messaging feature and you can use them to your benefit.

                                                                  

 

Why Instant Message Marketing?

Many companies view instant messages as a personal communication tool rather than a marketing strategy. The reality is that instant messages may be one of the effective marketing strategies to implement in the long run. Instant messages are the only platform where you can show your empathy towards your customers. It is a reliable method of two way communication where you can get the acknowledegement from customers by reading your messages. One can target specific audience based on demographics in an easier way through this type of marketing.

8. INFLUENCER MARKETING

Have you watched television ads of actors/cricketers recommending certain brand to buy their products?. My favourite is Sachin tendulakar’s “Boost is the secret of my energy”. That is an example of influencer marketing in traditional method. By now there are many influencers(not limited to only actors) through social media and you can choose the appropriate one relevant to your business.

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing where digital influencers with a great fan base are used for promoting a brand. This type of marketing works very well because of the trust built by the influencers with their followers that helps to reach  potential customers. You can track the sales generated by the influencers by assigning tracking code or links. Choosing the right influencer for your brand is the key factor and this strategy can  leverage more sales.

 

Why influencer marketing?

This helps you to build trust among customers and establish your brand. You can reach large number of targeted audience through influencers. With the immense of growth of social media, you can attract more customers with the help of influencers. Also more people tend to block ads which makes your ad campaign less effective. In such case influencer marketing comes to the rescue.  If your business possesses the relevant influencer, this marketing can be used to acquiredesired results

9. MOBILE MARKETING

‘Mobiles a great innovation that had brought the entire world at a single place and so is the business. You can literally do everything with a mobile now.’

Mobile marketing is an omnichannel engagement where brands can reach their target audience on their tablets, smartphones through applications, emails, websites, social media, MMS, and SMS. In 2020, people are glued to their phones and so mobile marketing will enhance the brand value and the demand for products/services.

SOME OF THE POINTS TO CONSIDER FOR THIS TYPE OF MARKETING :

1. Create an app for your brand with push notifications

2. Incorporate instant message marketing and connect with your customers directly.

3. Update your customers about your products/services through SMS

Why mobile marketing?

Mobile has become an essential part of everyone’s life. Hence it is the right platform to use for marketing. Mobile phones are the best devices to advertise your products. You can grab your customer’s attention very easily through mobiles. Every brand should have a planned mobile marketing strategy that can reap more benefits.

 

10. VIDEO MARKETING

Whoever doesn’t like to watch videos?. From small kids to adults, everyone is attracted to watch videos.

Videos are more appealing than any other content. 90% of people make their purchase decision after watching videos. YouTube is a wonderful platform for video marketing. Customers surf for reviews about products through videos before making a purchase.

You can create demo videos for your products and post them on social media. This will enable your potential customers to more likely to buy that product. Videos are a more powerful online marketing tool and can initiate more conversions.

Why Video marketing?

Videos are more engaging content than text and helps to deliver the messages more effectively. 90% of the content in video is retained by a customer when compared to only 10% reading in text. Most of the marketers use videos in their marketing strategy to create brand awareness. In short, video marketing helps your brand to reach more number of customers and this is one type of marketing which you should not ignore.

The opportunities in digital marketing are endless. It is not mandatory to incorporate all types of digital marketing but it is also not the best practice to adhere to only one aspect. You can have a mix of all these types and check out which works the best for you. Does your brand needs assistance in digital marketing? Kindly contact GDCS to enhance the online presence for your business.