Digital marketing is a trillion-dollar world, and for good reason. Today, most businesses operate online, and this requires them to be on the pulse with digital marketing trends.
Best Marketing Tools to Start Leveraging
While businesses shouldn’t disregard traditional marketing approaches altogether, they should pump more of their resources into ensuring they are using the right digital marketing tools to engage audiences and interact with their customers in a digital space.
Find out which five marketing tools your business should be leveraging now.
Social Media
In this digital world, most businesses should be utilizing social media. Brands should, at the very least, have a Facebook page that details their main business information (i.e. opening times, location, website URL, contact information). However, by leveraging other social media channels such as Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest a brand can increase engagement and customer interaction. What’s more, through social media a business can promote their goods and services in a creative way that aligns with their identity and message.
Another benefit of social media is that it makes engaging with customers more personal and instantaneous. This also means that customer service is more efficient, as a business can monitor their social channels and the engagement on posts and respond rapidly to customer feedback and queries. The better the interaction between a customer a brand, the better the reputation of the brand will be.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Through social media, a business or brand can spark User Generated Content (UGC). This is when customers interact with the brand on their own accord and use their own channels and online presence to promote a brand. In some cases, UGC can go viral and can – depending on the positivity of the content – bring a brand great success and recognition.
A good example of UGC is when a YouTube “influencer” creates and uploads a video to their channel where they review a brand’s product or service, which then increases that brand’s exposure and inspires others to invest in the brand. This is free marketing for a brand and can result in a surge in organic traffic and sales.
A brand may encourage UGC by running online competitions. For example, a tourism business may ask its followers to post a holiday photo with a designated hashtag to be in with the chance of winning a free trip. This engagement will boost interest and brand awareness.
Blogging
Within social media, there is a lot of different channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) and different forms of content (social posts, blog posts, news articles, images, video, podcasts, white papers, etc.). Blogging is one aspect of social media that can be very beneficial for some businesses. It is a great way to engage, inform and educate online users and customers on products and services and also on industry news. Using keyword research, a business can create blog content that their customers want to see. Blog posts that are SEO-optimised will capture high-volume search terms and rank highly on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), which will greatly boost organic traffic and enhance brand awareness. Better yet, blogging is considered “owned media”, which means it is an inexpensive marketing tactic.
If you don’t have copywriters/content marketers in-house, hire a creative content marketing agency in Australia to help you create a content strategy.
Email Direct Marketing (EDM)
Another essential marketing tool that all businesses should be utilizing is direct mail marketing. Through an email marketing campaign, a business can promote their goods and services and target specific audiences to generate leads and convert them down their sales funnel to increase conversion rate. Better yet, it’s easy to measure the performance and effectiveness of an email marketing campaign to inform future strategy.
Apps
Some businesses, such as eCommerce retail business, gyms, banks, etc., will greatly benefit from having an app. Having an app will improve customer experience and encourage more interaction. This is because most online users interact with online platforms using their smartphones instead of desktops, and therefore using an app to interact with a business is far more efficient and easier to use.
By leveraging these 5 marketing tools, your business will position itself as modern, professional and customer-friendly and, in turn, achieve better ROI.
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