Marketing used to be so simple back in the days of offline media: you film an ad, you push it into the market, and you increase your ROI.
Nowadays, though, marketing has become a nuanced art form and a psychological game every growth-oriented brand must master in order to separate itself from the competition and win over the hearts and minds of its target demographic.
Needless to say, this is often easier said than done, as digital marketing constitutes a variety of “pulling” strategies and accompanying tactics that need to be prepared, implemented, improved upon, and of course, optimized for maximum market impact.
And so, up-and-coming companies and start-ups are finding it difficult to nail their marketing strategy and decide where to direct their money, time, and collective brainpower.
All the while, the proverbial clock keeps ticking as the competition is hard at work creating a winning marketing strategy of their own.
Here to help you pave the road to long-term success in the industry is the essential guide on crafting the perfect marketing mix for a thriving online business.
Website optimization and design
We live in a world of brand uniformity and an overly-saturated global market where brands are constantly fighting over the love and support of their audience.
So naturally, branding will be one of the most powerful factors that will set the winners apart from the mediocre and the unimportant. In the modern world, the customer wants to be dazzled by an amazing website.
So what constitutes a winning online presentation? First off, there is an imperative to weave your unique brand image and story into every aspect of your online presence.
Your website, therefore, needs to portray alluring visuals complemented by a tone of voice people will automatically associate with your brand.
Naturally, this requires thorough preparation, brainstorming, and even some trial and error until you come up with a modern, transparent, and user-friendly design.
Next, you want to focus on creating a winning SEO strategy that will guide your website to the top of the search query and make everyone’s favorite search engine favor you over the competition.
This is not an easy feat to achieve, and it will require a stellar content strategy, gathering deep industry insights, as well as the implementation of relevant keywords and tags across your website and its content.
Building a strong content strategy
Content marketing has become one of the most important aspects of a winning online presence, as Google and other relevant search engines favor websites and companies that deliver stellar content on a regular basis.
What is stellar content, you ask?
Amazing content entails not only the creation of beautifully-written articles and blog posts, but also their meticulous optimization in terms of keywords, images, and accompanying features such as adding an author’s bio, linking to all relevant sources, etc.
It’s continuous work as well, as search engines may punish dormant websites that have stopped producing content on a regular basis.
With that in mind, you want to focus on creating, running, and maintaining an active blog page, constantly adding better and better content as time goes by.
It’s also a great idea to diversify your content pool as much as possible for maximum audience engagement.
Understand that content comes in a variety of forms, so don’t just settle on articles, but experiment with videos, infographics, podcasts, free tutorials, and more.
This rich content pool will help you attract new audiences, and it will make it that much easier to share your publications across relevant SM platforms without being repetitive or tedious.
Gathering relevant industry insights
All of the above (and the following, for that matter) can be pretty difficult to achieve if you don’t have a clear and deep understanding of your target demographic.
Have you even defined your target demographic by now?
Let’s assume that you have pinpointed your ideal audience, now you have to dig up the most relevant industry insights that will allow you to optimize your marketing approach and craft a winning strategy.
Arguably, the best way to obtain this information is to engage your audience in meaningful conversation, and also to ask concrete and concise questions that will deliver answers fast.
Given the fact that online surveys have become very popular with people looking to make some extra cash, this is your golden opportunity to incentivize your audience to share their truthful opinion.
Remember, rewarding your audience is always an excellent way to gather quality information.
You can create surveys in a myriad of ways, and also disseminate them across all of your social media platforms for maximum engagement and reach.
Once you have gathered the necessary insights, you will have the tools to craft a winning marketing approach that will resonate with the hearts and minds of your existing and potential customer base.
Disseminating your brand across SM platforms
In an SM-driven world where everyone and their dog has a social media account, it would be a cry and shame if your brand didn’t try to reach such an expansive online audience.
After all, why wouldn’t you try to reach some three billion people using social media every day?
Just imagine the potential exposure for your company and the success that will come from simply sharing your content and website with your followers.
Becoming and staying relevant in an online (and therefore, global) marketplace requires planning, preparation, persistence, and meticulous execution, so you can’t just post every once in a blue moon and expect to gain a million followers.
Growing your SM presence takes time, built with quality content and frequent, regular posting, you can expedite the process and attract new potential customers to your brand.
The keyword you’re looking for here is “attract”.
Long gone are the days of marketing strategies that pushed the product or service towards the customer whether they like it or not – nowadays customers need to be wooed with an engaging story.
This leads us to the final, crucial point.
Focusing on lead generation and audience retention
Generating, nurturing, and converting leads into paying customers is the name of the game in the modern business arena.
Quite simply, it all boils down to your brand’s ability to attract potential customers, monitor their behavior, engage in communication, offer promotions and special deals, and finally convert them into loyal brand followers.
For instance, when a potential customer visits your website yet leaves it shortly after browsing through your catalog or reading a couple of paragraphs on your blog page, you’ve lost a lead.
However, you can prevent this from happening by 1) offering quality content, and 2) optimizing the route from your products/blog page to the checkout.
The key is to make the entire process as simple, rewarding, and straightforward as possible. That said, this is not the only way to nurture leads – you also want to focus on retargeting.
By using tools such as AdRoll or Google Remarketing you can easily reach the customers that have abandoned their shopping carts.
Automated e-mails will not only remind them to finish their purchase, but also offer discounts and special deals that will get the customer to reconsider and come back.
The perfect marketing mix: conclusion
Designing the perfect marketing mix for your online business venture is not an easy task, as it requires thorough market research, careful planning, and decisive implementation in order for the strategy to bear the right fruit.
Nevertheless, with this essential guide at hand, you will have no problem expediting the process and optimizing your online presence for maximum engagement, reach, and conversions.
Having read this somewhat lengthy guide, how do you plan to structure your marketing strategy?
What will be your priorities and do you believe you now have the tools to combine these tactics into a comprehensive marketing approach?
Be sure to post your opinions and any questions you might have in the comments below!
