Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for Today’s Businesses

Google digital marketing tactics and you’ll find dozen, perhaps two worth of digital tactics to help out shine the rest. But digital tactics need to do more than that. 

They should help you foster trustworthy and lasting relations, in addition to providing top-notch experiences and driving revenues. 

How do you determine which of the two dozen tactics you’re looking at will work in your favour? We look at five worthwhile strategies.

1. Conversion Marketing

We’ll start this with some sobering stats. Did you know that around 79 percent of the marketing leads we spend time pursuing don’t convert into sales? Imagine that. Where do you start in justifying your marketing spend?

More importantly, what can you do to maximise conversions?

Through conversion marketing, you can deploy an array of tactics to help you achieve higher conversions. Some of these tactics include:

• Optimise your landing pages. Ensure your marketing copy communicates value to get audiences to act. Embed short videos, relevant case studies, or social proof to build credibility and encourage engagement.
• Follow-up cart abandonments. Reminder emails and pop-up prompts are excellent ways to nudge shoppers to complete their purchases. You can offer special discounts or limited-time offers to add appeal.
• Introducing loyalty programs. Not only are they excellent incentives for retaining customers but for enrolling them as well. Package appealing loyalty programs to incentivize your audience to share contact information.
• Review your web pages. From pricing to product descriptions and features, test site pages for smoothness and intuitiveness and tweak them accordingly.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Besides tooting your own horn (through ads, SEO, etc) putting together an affiliate program may help boost your pipeline and sales.

Here, affiliates use their own efforts to reach out to and send potential customers your way. You reward them when the desired result is achieved aka the sale of products, clicks on ads, or leads generated through contact forms.

There are several benefits to running a B2B affiliate program:

• Driving high-quality traffic to your site. Because affiliates are typically experts in their field, they can generate traffic that is both relevant and targeted.
• Building brand awareness. Well known affiliates, just like influencers, may help with exposure and breaking into markets that you may not have been able to on your own.
• Boosting your sales. In many cases, affiliates will promote your solutions to their own networks, resulting in increased sales.
• Providing additional value to your business. You don’t just receive additional traffic and sales, affiliates can also provide valuable insights and feedback about your products/services.
• Easy to set up and scale up. With minimal effort, you can fashion an affiliate program that meets your specific needs and grow it as your business grows.

3. Video Marketing

Stats say up to 88 percent of people are seeking more video content from vendors making this strategy highly useful. Right from increasing exposure and awareness to explaining complex concepts, and creating connections beyond business, videos have a ton to offer.

Top considerations include:

• Plan ahead. Before you start filming, be clear about what you want viewers to derive from it. Are expounding complex topics? Showcasing case studies to strengthen your credibility? Or detailing how your solutions work? 
• Concise is the word. With distractions all around and attention spans growing shorter you’ll want to focus on delivering your key messages concisely and engagingly.
• Use subtitles. Use subtitles in your videos so that everyone can understand the content. You can use online tools like YouTube’s automatic captioning feature, or you can hire a professional transcriptionist to do the job for you.
• Promote your videos on social media. Once you’ve created an amazing video, it’s important to promote it on social media so that as many people as possible can see it. 

4. Cold Calling

Dry mouth, sweaty palms, butterflies, and sudden memory loss—you know how that goes. Contacting people who don’t already know about your business can feel intimidating.

But here’s the thing: brands strive to find ways to generate higher revenues, improve efficiency, or cut down overheads. Connecting with these brands through cold calls allows you to share which one of their problems you can solve.

Best practices:

• Make a list of potential customers. A custom list of prospects built off your target market ensures your marketing efforts are aimed at the right organisations.
• Have a script prepared, but be flexible and willing to improvise. You never know what the customer is going to say, and you need to be prepared for anything. Keep a script handy and hone your product knowledge, industry news, the company you’re targeting, and your competitors, too.
• Follow up with customers after the call. Following the call, the last thing you want to do is leave the customer feeling ignored or neglected. Send a brief email shortly after the call recapping the conversation. Also, set up reminders in your calendar to ensure that you stay on top of important follow-up activities.

5. Local Search Marketing

In a world where more and more people are doing their shopping online, local businesses need to make sure they’re doing everything they can to stand out from the competition.

One great way to do this is through B2B local search marketing, using online tools like Google Maps and Yelp to reach potential customers in your area.

There are a number of different ways you can use B2B local search marketing to your advantage, including:

• Optimise your business listings. These days, more and more consumers are turning to online reviews to decide where they should shop or do business. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your company listing is filled out correctly on sites like Google Maps, Yelp, and TripAdvisor—otherwise, you could miss out on valuable leads from local customers.
• Utilise paid advertising options. Leverage paid advertising opportunities such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads. These tools can help you target potential customers in your area and increase your reach, so you’re sure to see results.
• Connect with local influencers. Get in touch with local influencers—bloggers, journalists, and other social media stars who have a significant presence within your community. You can grow your reach and increase visibility by partnering with them to promote your business solutions.