Any new business will have a hard time figuring out the digital marketing strategies that suit it best. While there are only so many of them out there, it can be very hard to know which ones are more likely to work than others. Add to that the fact that a lot of the articles you read online on the subject are actually rubbish, and it will be quite easy to see why confusion is inevitable.
To save yourself some time and effort, take a look at the following seven digital marketing tactics to employ. While none of them are described comprehensively, they are an excellent starting point.
Create Buyer Personas Early
Buyer personas should inform all of your future marketing decisions. If you don’t create them on time (i.e., after you’ve already started implementing certain marketing tactics) or if you create them poorly, all of your efforts will inevitably miss the mark somewhat.
When creating buyer personas, you ideally want to be as detailed as possible. Think of them as real humans who would benefit from your product or service. What do they like, how old are they, where do they live, and how are they currently solving the problem at hand?
Once you have your buyer personas mapped out and written down, you can tailor everything you do to appeal to them. This will significantly increase your chance of marketing success.
Research Your Competitors Cautiously
Competitor research is another important part of digital marketing. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses, established and new, utilize it in the wrong way.
Your goal with it is not to mimic what another brand has done successfully. Instead, it’s to see what’s out there and what your audience is exposed to and then to discover what exactly you can do better. You don’t want to do the exact same thing. The goal of competitor research is to gather information.
Don’t let yourself get caught up in the comparison game. Your competitors have been in business longer than you have, so naturally, they’ll have better results.
Choose Rankable Topics to Write About
Content marketing is a key element of digital marketing. Without it, you don’t have a real shot at ranking high or attracting your desired audience.
When choosing what to write about at the very beginning, skip the topics everyone else has already covered. It will take a long time to rank for them. Instead, go for the long-tail keywords and the less popular questions that are not as competitive.
You need to ensure there is still some interest in the topic, however. A keyword research tool will help you there. If the top-ranking pages are not seeing any traffic, you don’t want to write about it either. If they are seeing less than 100 visitors a month and are not major players, it may be a topic to consider. Small fish, but a good place to start.
Only Work with the Best
Chances are you won’t be able to succeed in digital marketing without working with either a digital marketing agency or a freelancer. Since you are not an expert yourself, you will need to bring someone in who has the experience to help.
When choosing who to work with, look for a good SEO agency that works with start-ups. An established SEO agency will already have plenty of connections you can benefit from. They will understand how the industry works and how to grow your brand.
Working with someone who has never worked in your industry or who has yet to make a name for themselves is simply not as effective. It would likely not bring results as fast.
Build an Email List from the Start
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to turn visitors into customers and to secure repeat business. It’s very easy to set up and manage, so you want to make sure you start building your list very early.
Don’t wait until you have a certain following or a certain number of visitors. Create a newsletter and welcome email sequence as soon as you launch, and offer early converters special bonuses. This will ensure they stick around, and it can give you some positive press too.
Limit Your Social Media Presence
While you do need to have social media profiles, you don’t want to create all of them at once. You’ll only be spreading yourself too thin, as you can’t possibly manage three or more pages in-house while also trying to grow a business.
Start with the network that makes the most sense. If you’ve done a good job with your buyer personas, you will know where your target audience spends most of its time. As long as you speak their language and make sure to engage with them, you will be much more effective than if you’d created an inactive presence across all the major platforms.
Understand How to Track Results
Finally, don’t forget that a lot of digital marketing success is about trial and error. You need to know how to track results in order to understand which tactics are working and which are not.
To do that, you will need to set up Google Analytics and Search Console as soon as possible. Learn what each metric means and how what you are doing on your website or on social media is impacting your conversions and visits.
Set yourself some targets (make sure they are realistic for your niche), and monitor how fast you are able to achieve them. Track the most relevant KPIs, and don’t let yourself get side-tracked by the plethora of information. While it’s certainly all important, you can’t act on all the data at once. Stick to your main goals first, and expand as you grow.
Wrapping Up
With the help of this advice, you’ll be able to craft a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. Use it to grow your business and attract the kind of audience that will benefit from it the most.
