The Digital Marketing Formula For Success

The first pillar to consider is your strategy and content development. When creating your digital marketing campaign, you need to look at it as a single system that properly integrates your advertising (traffic generation), landing pages and website (website conversion), as well as your email follow-up campaign for new leads. All of these aspects are pivotal to the success of establishing a strategy.

The content you create for your campaigns should link prospects in sequential order, taking viewers from your ads to your landing pages to your follow-up emails, for example. Essentially, it’s important to look at it as a consumer’s journey from point a to point b. So how can you develop this strategy? For starters, it’s good to understand who your target audience is. Where will you most likely find them? Within the age of social media, it’s also important to consider which platform might make the most sense relative to your audience. Your content development will differ depending on which platform you’re targeting, so it’s wise to develop this strategy before putting too much time and effort into creating loads of content. During this strategizing phase, it’s recommended to do as much research as possible into your competitors. What are others within your niche or line of work doing well, and what do you see them doing that could be done better? It’s really important to take your time to get some more insider information to also see how their audiences might be interacting with them. For instance, does one of your top competitors have their socials linked on their website to drive customers to all platforms? Alternatively, do they also have their website linked on their social pages? When creating a strategy, it’s best to ensure there is fluidity between channels and platforms to ensure that your customers are not getting lost along the way or having to do too much work on their end to find you. This should be a part of developing your marketing strategy and is an easy yet effective means of staying in communication with your customers and strengthening relationships.

During the research and development stage, it’s also best to develop your “Brand Voice.” This is essentially what your customers will think about when they hear or see your business name pop up. What do you want your customers or followers to associate with your business? It’s likely fair to assume that you already understand who you are and what you’re selling or providing. However, when developing content, it’s a good idea to know your “Brand Voice” to ensure it’s present across all fronts. This will provide a uniform look to your content and draw in the right consumers if they know what they can expect from you. For instance, if you’re starting a YouTube channel for your business and begin creating content around choosing the right hot tubs or spas, that is the type of content your viewers will assume they’ll see moving forward. Of course, within this niche is the opportunity to expand and speak about health or wellness, too. However, if you suddenly begin creating cooking videos, it will not be in line with the “Brand Voice” you initially established for yourself. This is why during the strategizing stage, it’s best to really hone in on what you hope your brand image will be.

Once you’ve established a strategy and tone for your brand, the next phase is generating leads and sales. It’s best to look at all channels as tools to drive prospects to your website. Although creating content for social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc., are all excellent ways to gain a following and interact with others, leading people back to your website should be your goal. Considering the fact that this is where sales will be made, you will once again want to ensure that everything is connected back to your website. Additionally, you can utilize other very important channels on top of social media, such as PPC (Pay-Per-Click), banner advertising, print ads, and more.

The key to success for your business is to not solely focus on adhering to the latest trends, though it can be helpful at times when creating content to catch a trend while it’s hot. But overall, it’s important to focus on managing traffic generation by the numbers or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). It’s all about understanding which ads or channels drive the most effective cost per lead, presentation, and sale. By analyzing these numbers, you’re able to compare all of your advertisements objectively.

To scale your business, simply increase your spending on the ads that are performing best and decrease the spending on the ads that are performing poorly. This is where you will need to give yourself some time within the trial-and-error phase to determine what works best for your particular business, products, services and customers. You can also split-test different ads to see if you can improve performance, which is something we highly recommend as a digital marketing agency.

Although developing a great advertising campaign to drive prospects to your website is important, it’s ultimately just the beginning of the digital marketing formula for success. The next step you should take to maximize the return on your advertising is developing web pages that are designed strategically and thoughtfully. The way that you approach certain pages on your website will heavily depend on which advertising channels you decide to focus on for your business. For example, if you’re focusing on a print ad, you will want to use a highly simplified landing page, also known as a squeeze page, to maximize your lead volume. This squeeze page should remain simple and contain nothing more than a strong headline, your offer (such as an e-book), and a web form. The reason why this simple approach is so effective has to do with the fact that you’re presenting less content and options for your audience, which ultimately makes their decision simple. This is a strong tactic to drive people to opt for whichever offer you present to them.

Additionally, you might also choose to run a PPC campaign, or Pay-Per-Click advertising. When doing so, you will want to ensure that you’re running specific “squeeze pages” for each channel. It’s important to remember that the best approach is ensuring you have a specific place for each vital piece of content, topic or product. By separating your website into various sections, it not only makes it far easier to navigate through for your audience, so they’re able to find exactly what they’re looking for, but it also makes it easier for search engines to optimize your content.

Here are some of the best practices for setting up a landing page:

• Create a headline that is benefit-focused to show your audience what they can expect to get out of your page. Essentially, present them with the answer to why they’re on your page and why they should stay.
• Ensure you’re adding an image that effectively conveys your offer. Avoid images that do not fit the context, as it can make things look disjointed and confusing.
• Include copy on your page that is compelling and answers any questions your audience may have. Make things clear and concise and avoid too much writing, as readers prefer content they can easily skim through.
• Present an offer that is relevant to your page, product or service.
• Ensure you’re including a CTA (Call-to-Action), like downloading an e-book, signing up for your email, etc. Failing to provide a CTA is a missed opportunity to connect with your audience.
• Include your contact information and any additional links to social media or other channels to make it easy for visitors to connect with you across all fronts.

Once you’ve taken steps to maximize the number of leads from your advertising, it’s now time to establish a strategy to utilize email marketing. Gone are the days of cold calling, as there are endless opportunities and resources today to establish effective lines of communication with potential customers. Sending a sequence of emails begins a relationship with your new prospects, which proves to be incredibly effective. This is why it’s so important to plan out what you’d like your emails to say and look like. There are specific guidelines you should be following when approaching email marketing in 2022 for the best results.

The subject line is the first to consider when creating an effective marketing email, as this will either make or break the email. By writing a short, sweet and captivating subject line, you’re setting the tone for what individuals can expect to get out of the email itself. If it’s rather flat or long-winded, there’s less of a chance that people will want to read the content within the email. However, if it’s intriguing by evoking curiosity or presenting some sort of benefit, chances are they will want to click on it.

It’s also incredibly important to consider your audience when writing these emails. For instance, if your target demographic is within the 20 to 30-year-old age range, then your language or approach should be different than if your audience is 50 plus. When crafting the perfect email, language and tone are everything, and understanding your audience ensures that it’s catered to those who will be reading it.

It’s also essential to remember that marketing as a whole is all about trial and error, and therefore, email marketing is no different. This is why A/B testing is an approach that’s favoured by many, where two versions of content can be tested out simultaneously to see which method or approach performs better. The idea of A/B split testing for email campaigns essentially requires a primary goal in which you decide what it is you’re trying to improve or optimize. Then, you will decide what you want to test, whether different subject lines, designs, etc., and choose the desired recipients for each version.

Overall, email marketing is an incredibly effective way to connect with your audience, generate leads and bring in sales. You can take many different approaches to this, and there are ultimately many ways of making it your own and being creative with it.

To scale your business, it’s essential to understand how ads perform on a cost-per-lead, presentation, and sale basis. Along with having these aspects broken up to see how each part performs on its own, it’s also important to see how advertisements perform collectively. This has to do with the fact that, as a business, it’s imperative to be aware of how many leads, presentations, and sales are required to hit your sales and revenue targets. All of the steps that have been taken prior will lead you to this point, and it’s important to see how everything is performing to determine if there are any changes that should be made. This is precisely where reporting comes into play, as it provides you with the ability to scale your business by understanding the numbers. When it comes down to it, you want to ensure that you’re making the most out of your money and reaching the most individuals that will either become customers, followers, or partners. By actively doing reports and crunching numbers from every respective channel you’re putting money or time into, you can optimize your time and your spending long-term.