Top 10 Digital Marketing Strategies for Ambitious Marketing

Expert marketers generally define digital marketing as a method of marketing that leverages the internet and online media to reach a specific audience. Marketers generally approach digital marketing in two ways depending on the product/service they are offering and the target audience. Even though digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all kind of marketing, generally, most digital marketers rely on it to connect ideal buyers with the end goal of having them make a purchase or at the very least, make some other conversion.

With more and more people daily moving their businesses to the internet and more buyers increasing their shopping online, the importance of digital marketing in now more than ever before. This is more so for ambitious marketers. Digital marketing helps marketers to streamline sales thereby making it easier for them to connect with buyers around the world 24/7. This is in addition to its cost-effectiveness, making it budget-friendly for most small businesses operating on tight marketing budgets.

Here are some of the top digital marketing strategies ambitious digital marketers depend on to generate valuable leads and make good sales.

1. Responsive Website Design/Layout

For digital marketers, their websites are their most important business windows on the internet. That is where prospective customers first make contact with their businesses. That makes it highly imperative for marketers to fully optimize their websites to enhance their online presence. Website optimization requires some technical details you can handle yourself if you have the skills and the knowledge. If not, you may choose to hire professional webmasters to design and host a responsive business website for you. Alternatively, you can use the services of web hosting platforms like WordPress or Wix who automatically use a responsive layout to give users the best web experience no matter the type of device people are using to access the sites. If however you decide to use your own special custom-coded website, be sure the website developers optimize it for mobile users as part of the package. Optimizing your website for mobile users is very valuable for SEO as most marketers very well know.

2. Social Media Marketing, SMM

Ambitious marketers who are desirous to tap into popular social media platforms to build brand awareness need to repeatedly create engaging content and post on social media to be able to do so. That is social media marketing, SMM. Many marketers find SMM most effective when they approach it to build a community of friends/followers who have a lot in common. That allows businesses to establish some sort of influence and authority that helps to drive prospective customers and customers to their businesses. But first, you must determine which social media platforms your target audience is active on and build a presence there. There are many social media platforms, the most popular of which are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and a few others. Any of these platforms marketers decide to market on is heavily dependent on their unique features and the type of business. This is because every social media platform has its unique features that allow marketers to create and share different types of content.

3. Search Engine Optimization, SEO

If you want your business to rank well in search engines, keep your eye on the SEO of your business website. If you repeatedly create content that helps your rankings with search engines, that shows your SEO is good. You can hire the services of an SEO specialist to help you with SEO technicalities if you do not have the knowledge or skill to do a good SEO for your website. If your SEO is good, your website benefits from organic traffic which search engines send its way. A good SEO helps you to target relevant keywords to your business niche. With those keywords used naturally on your content, you can actually capture the attention of prospective customers that are searching online for terms related to your products/services. Major search engines also look for these clues throughout your web pages and blog posts that signify that your content is valuable to these searchers. That way, they turn up your website as part of the results for such searchers in response to their search queries. Now, that’s great for organic traffic.

4. Video Content Marketing

Video content is a much more engaging content type than many others. The reason it helps marketers to better connect prospective customers with their brands. Digital marketers generally use two main types of video content; live and on-demand videos to attract customers. Both types of videos have their own unique usefulness. Live videos are helpful to broadcast virtual events, product demos and other activities that could call for direct participation of the audience while on-demand videos are viewed at the convenience of the audience. On-demand videos are mainly educational and how-to activities that give value to the audience at its convenience. Depending on your preferences as a marketer, you can market with videos directly from your website or on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest even though some of these platforms have some restrictions as expected in matters of content and functionality. But with experience, you can always find your way around most of these restrictions.
 
5. Email Marketing

Email marketing may be “old school” marketing technique but it is still very effective when done right. The type of email to use depends on your type of business and the marketing strategy you have adopted. To build brand awareness and get customers, you may decide to send out promotional email blasts or well-optimized emails on newsletters. If your emails carry the right CTAs, they help to lure the recipients to “look in” or even buy from you. For email marketing to be effective, you must have your own qualified, reliable and current email list built over time. That is an important requirement even if you are using popular email automation tools like MailChimp for promotional email blasts.

6. E-Commerce Storefront

The beauty of e-commerce platforms is that buyers on their own come over to them looking for products. So, instead of searching for buyers as most digital marketers do why not simply create a storefront on a popular e-commerce platform? By creating a storefront and listing your products, you effectively put your products right in front of prospective buyers. Top rated e-commerce marketplaces like SFI TripleClicks.com, Alibaba.com and Amazon.com are some of the best wholesale platforms in the world. These platforms are trusted by buyers and sellers alike because they have a great reputation of a variety of programs and restrictions that secure and protect all the transactions carried out through their platforms.

7. Paid Digital Ads

No matter how tight your marketing budget is, it is advisable to spare some money for paid ads. You need paid ads to complement your digital marketing activities to reach your target audience better. Digital ads are good for your business because they can be run on search engines, social media platforms, and other online locations. Digital ads are cost-effective in comparison to traditional ads methods on billboards, newspapers, radio and TV stations and news magazines. Additionally, digital ads can be directed at specific audiences and with specialized messages to guarantee their maximum effectiveness.

8. Strategic Partnerships/Collaboration

Just like all partnerships, marketers find collaboration hugely beneficial to businesses in digital space. It encourages marketers to leverage connections to form strategic partnerships with a view to reaching larger audiences and attract more new customers as a result. Business owners can also collaborate or partner with social media influencers at mutually beneficial terms to market their products. There are referral programs too which are also very valuable to marketers. Through referral collaborations businesses refer leads to one another and referral commissions are paid on such referrals that actually make a purchase. Most affiliate marketers earn a tidy income by way of commissions through referrals.

9. Networking Online

Every network is a great asset to digital marketers. Through networking online, marketers can connect with new leads and new contacts that can be sending referrals their way. Through the right media platform particularly social media, you can get to “meet” many people online, make more acquaintances and build good relationships that are valuable for future business promotion and transactions. As an ambitious marketer, if you regularly post valuable content, such as photos, infographics, videos and text posts on very popular social media sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others, you can build very useful marketing networks over time.
 
10. Search Engine Marketing, SEM

SEM is one very valuable marketing tactic which enables marketers to leverage high search engine rankings to drive traffic to their websites. It is usually a PPC, pay-per-click service. It is a very effective marketing tactic with search engines.  When paid for, search engines deliberately put your content at the top of their SERPs instead of relying on your SEO to rank it organically. With that, SEM results are more precise and predictable than SEO results. The downside of SEM however is that search engines never fail to label your ranking content as “sponsored content.” Habitually, many users are a bit wary of sponsored content. They do not trust it as much as organic content because they know it is paid sponsorship. That affects the results SEM gets somewhat but as a digital marketing method, it is always worth the while and the expense if it suits your type of business.