3 Interesting ways to Sharpen your Company's Digital Marketing Strategy

This post was originally published here.

In my last post, I discussed a basic 1 month digital marketing plan for generating B2B leads online using paid ads. This post is about tweaking your company's existing strategy and developing more effective digital marketing strategies that deliver results at manageable costs.

When it comes to digital marketing, there are 3 popular methods which a startup, brand or company adopts - Social Media, SEO or PPC (Google Adwords). However, there is lot of competition and lots of noise online. Thousands of brands vying for a person's limited attention.

Therefore, it becomes critical to fine-tune one's strategy and ensure that you reach only the most relevant people, in the shortest amount of time. How do you that? You focus your efforts where they are likely to give the best return on your time.

After spending years in this industry, here what I have to add, in terms of focusing your marketing efforts on these three platforms. (Please note - all of these strategies will will fail unless done without 2 critical ingredients - persistence and patience.)

1. Choose Insight-based content marketing instead of generic social media/content marketing.
2. Go for long-tail SEO instead of regular SEO.
3. Conversion optimization instead of plain old PPC.

Let me explain in some detail.

1. Insight-Based Content Marketing

The myth of social media marketing

It's common for digital marketers to pitch social media marketing to potential clients by tempting them of "massive reach to millions of people on XYZ platform" or of "viral campaigns". Social media platforms such as Linkedin or Facebook are quite tempting for brands and businesses because they try to garner millions of eyeballs for free thinking visitors will happily share their content.

They couldn't be more wrong!

A strategy without any strong insights where marketers create and share content, purely for the sake of sharing or "maintaining a presence" is sheer wastage. Endlessly putting out one post after another won't really get your brand anywhere. It's really a wasted effort. How do you make it better? Find and leverage an "insight".

Insight-based content marketing relies on a "Big Idea". It's a creative idea for content creation which derives from a unique trait or habit around the audience that the brand wants to attract and influence. This is an extremely potent method which can deliver stellar results (i.e virality and mass adoption).

Example: When Cadbury Dairy Milk was launched in India in 80s, it had virtually no competition. Owing to its great product and simple, effective advertising, it became a household name. However, towards the late 90s and 2000s, Dairy Milk started facing tremendous competition from other chocolate players such as Nestle and local players such as Halidram's and Amul. They desperately needed a brand makeover to regain their lost market share.

This is when Piyush Pandey and Co. at Ogilvy cracked a brilliant insight-based campaign for Dairy Milk. We as Indians usually have a craving for something sweet after our meals (particularly after dinner). They used this simple insight (common sense if you're an Indian), to crack the "Khaane Ke Baad Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye" campaign. This simple, yet insight loaded tagline worked wonders to connect Dairy Milk with the common Indian. There was a time when Dairy Milk became synonymous with after dinner sweet cravings!

These types of campaigns are personally my favourite. They have incredible potential to go viral and deliver stunning results for your clients. Executing these campaigns requires the ability of saying no to mediocre ideas and plain old persistence.

2. Long tail Search Engine Optimisation

According to this research done by Google in 2015, 71% of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search. It's common knowledge that 80% clicks happen on the first page of Google. That's precisely the reason SEO campaigns are so effective. They rely on ranking websites high (page 1) of Google Search for target keywords.

However, this is easier said than done. Ranking high on Google is difficult since there are usually lots of other websites which are actively competing for the same terms. How then do you ensure your website definitely shows up on the first page of Google?

Most SEO agencies make the mistake to go after high traffic, broad terms. However, it's the niche and more targeted search term rank easy. The less your competition becomes and more effective SEO happens.

It's a startup strategy which well-known entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham advocates in this fantastic essay on startups (I have probably read and re-read this essay about 15 times) - Instead of going broad, go deep.

Example: If a leather wallets manufacturer were to target "leather wallets", then they would face competition from a whole host of companies - manufacturers, online retailers, fashion blogs, news sites, etc. However, targeting a long tail keyword such as "leather wallet manufacturers in Delhi" would severely restrict their competition, increasing chances of ranking on page 1 for a highly relevant term.

By targeting highly relevant search terms (also called keywords), and eventually ranking on the first page of Google for these terms, you can ensure that your website attracts only those searchers (customers/visitors) who are thinking of those specific things.

3. Search Marketing (Paid/Google Adwords)

Paid Search marketing (Google Adwords) is a highly popular alternative to organic search. Why? Because results are fast, predictable and highly measurable. For medium to large companies with budgets, this is a highly recommended strategy since valuable time is saved. However, PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns have a risky downside as well. Put your campaign in the wrong (i.e inexperienced) hands and you risk wasting all your spend on attracting clicks but no leads/sales.

I've personally met many clients who quickly dismiss our expertise because "they-would-rather-do-it-themselves" only to come back after a month having been burned by poor choices and lack of actual skill. A particular photographer client of ours actually wasted almost Rs. 40,000 (620$) in 2 days because he incorrectly set his daily budget to Rs. 20,000 thinking it to be a monthly budget! Another education client based in Delhi wasted almost Rs. 2,00,000 of their PPC campaign spend in the wrong geography (Andhra Pradesh). They were flooded with phone calls from students asking for admissions. The only issue? They were speaking in Telugu!

As a matter of fact, according to this article on CNBC and this one on Forbes, billions of dollars are wasted on digital marketing spends because they target the wrong audience, poor choice of platform, lack of knowledge or expertise in managing the campaigns. Google Adwords is extremely detailed and vast, with lots of options for optimisation and driving positive ROI. A digital marketer experienced in the art and science of conversion optimisation is best placed to ensure that your money actually works in generating more business for your brand.

Search marketing can work brilliantly if the campaigns are optimised and well-designed. In my opinion a combination of SEO and PPC can be the most powerful tonic for your marketing ailments.

Conclusion

In the end, which digital strategy you choose boils down to a number of variables such as your industry, niche, personal choices, budgets, trends and available skill sets. The important thing is to HAVE a strategy before you begin work and keep working at it, till it works for you.

If you're running digital campaigns which are bringing zero/vague/no results, do get in touch. I run a performance-oriented agency with a reputation for good, strong delivery.