A-Z STRATEGIES FOR DIGITAL MARKETING

Digital marketers love to throw words around. Some of them might not mean anything to you yet, but that doesn’t mean they don’t mean anything at all.

Whether you’re brand new to digital marketing or just looking for a little inspiration, you’ve come to the right place.

Where to begin? Oh yes from “A”.

A for Audience

To market effectively, you need to know who your audience is. Otherwise, how can you appeal to them?

Social media platforms provide neat character snapshots of their users. This information gives marketers a clear picture of the kinds of people interested in their products.

Social listening also fuels your content strategy. Find common pain points for social users, and provide information to solve their problems.

B for Brand Awareness

This is a measure of how many people know about your company and its products. In other words, how well-known you are.

Raising brand awareness is a key goal for many companies.

The goal is to increase brand awareness, which can be easier said than done. Here are a few suggestions:

·        Influencer Marketing: Work with industry VIPs to increase your reach and improve your reputation. We’ve plenty more on this, below.

·        Guest content: Providing valuable content on other sites outside of your own will build an engaged audience.

·        Partnerships: Join forces with people who can help you out. We divided the work and saved a lot of time and resources.

·        Advertising: For brands that can afford it, advertising is a classic way of building awareness. For example, “pay per link ads” are a staple digital marketing strategy, thanks to the ability to target them to the perfect audience.

C for Competitive analysis

Monitoring Competitors is an essential business practice.

Tracking competitors tell you:

·        What’s working for them, and how you can beat it

·        New features they’re launching

·        When they’re receiving major publicity

·        What customers love most about their products

These days, competitive analysis is both easy and effective. Social media has made important conversations public, and there are plenty great bench marketing tools.

D for Distribution Channels

Marketing distribution channel means the ways in which digital marketing messages are delivered: social media, email, blogs, forums, etc.

Even different social media platforms require different approaches:

·        Twitter: The sweet spot for Twitter posts lies between 70 and 100 words.

·        Instagram: Posting quotes and facts, because they’re universal and make us all feel something.

·        Facebook: Facebook users prefer the shortest content, around 40 characters.

Identify the best distribution channels for your marketing, and create messages to suit them.

E for Engagement

Marketers are always talking about engagement. It’s how we judge whether people are actually enjoying content, or merely saw it.

On social media, engagement means likes, replies, and shares. High engagement shows that your social marketing efforts are working, that people are reacting to your content.

Engagement marketing is a tactic in itself. Brands want to forge personal relationships with customers to build loyalty.

Some simple techniques for increasing engagement on social media are:

·        Post great content: Be interesting. Post articles, blogs, and pictures, and get your followers talking. You know what motivates your followers, publish content to match.

·        Ask questions: This is essential in any conversation. Find out what makes them tick, and let them know you’re thinking of them. On Facebook, question posts get 100% more comments.

·        Quizzes and polls: These are a fun way to interact with your community, and you can slip in links and promotional material to your followers without arousing ire.

·        Ask Me Anything (AMA): Companies can use this to talk to their community in real time. You have to be ready for anything, and a sense of humor is a must. See if you can get the CEO to take part!

F for Fast Response 

When you place advertisements in print media, radio and television, your goal in most cases is to get the viewer to act as a direct result of the information. If the person who has viewed or heard your ad doesn't act quickly, she may forget the offer or your contact information. For this reason, many advertisers use quick response strategies to get people to contact the business immediately.

 Strategy for quick response:-

·       Place advertisement: When you place advertisements in print media, radio and television, your goal in most cases is to get the viewer to act as a direct result of the information. If the person who has viewed or heard your ad doesn't act quickly, she may forget the offer or your contact information. For this reason, many advertisers use quick response strategies to get people to contact the business immediately.

·       Call to Action: Your advertisement needs a strong and effective call to action if you want to get a quick response from customers. The call to action is a set of clear and precise instructions for the viewer or listener to the advertisement. Tell your interested customer exactly what he needs to do to either contact your company for more information or order the item right away. Be as detailed as possible to spark interest and speak to the urgent needs of the potential customer.

·       Offer a Gift: Sometimes offering a special free item or service to the customer may encourage a quick response. You can offer a free item when the customer purchases something from the business or just a small token for contacting the company--even if the potential customer doesn't buy something on that call. Mentioning the word "free" in the promotional gift offer may also inspire quick action from the person viewing or hearing your advertisement.

·       Place Time Limit: Another strategy for getting a potential customer to respond quickly is to place a strict time limit on the offer in your advertisement. Some companies even take it a step further by limiting the hours that a potential customer can call or click to take advantage of an offer.

G for Goals

In order to measure marketing performance, you need to set goals. How can you call a campaign successful if you haven’t defined success?

Your goals should be S.M.A.R.T that means: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused, and Timely.

 You’re best setting specific, realistic targets for certain time periods.

Add a deadline of three or six months, and you have goals.

H for #Hashtags

Hashtags are pretty much everywhere now, but they started on Twitter to bundle conversations around a common theme. By using a hashtag in a social post, you signify to others that you’re intentionally joining a certain conversation (as opposed to merely using a common word). This makes it easier to find your posts.

Marketers should take advantage of hashtags by using them strategically. This includes using them in specific campaigns, live events, or for humor.

Identify relevant hashtags and leverage them to your advantage. Topical hashtags can boost your tweet’s visibility.

I for Influencer Marketing

Traditional marketing has lost its pull. Factors like social media and new technology make reaching a passive audience more difficult than ever.

Look for industry leaders whose word will boost your brand’s reach. Your influencers need to be:

·        Relevant to you and your KPIs. So do their audience.

·        Active on social media. Otherwise, they aren’t much help.

·        Influential, obviously. Find examples of them shaping others’ decisions.

·        Good people. You don’t need a negative person associated with your company.

Even if they’re good people, they likely won't do this for anything. You need to offer something.

Many brands can afford to pay. This has caused a sharp increase in the number of influencers on blogs and Instagram, especially.

J for -Jacking

“Jacking” means to use something to your own advantage. The word comes from “hijacking,” and includes practices such as memejacking, pagejacking, or newsjacking.

For example, memejacking means using an internet meme’s popularity to boost your own marketing message. HubSpot says this is “a great way to create some fun, engaging content that shows off your brand’s personality and likeability.”

How to start newsjacking in 5 steps using monitoring

-Jacking can also have negative connotations. Practices like pagejacking and clickjacking are common hacks used to drive large numbers of underserved traffic to a website.

Another example is launch jacking. When people hear a new product’s about to launch, they buy URLs and quickly produce content associated with it. Because they’re early to these keywords, their pages rank highly on Google, and they get a lot of traffic.

Imagine if Apple, Snapple, and Scrabble teamed up to create “Apple Snapple Scrabble.” You quickly buy www.applesnapplescrabblereviews.com and write a review. If you’re early enough and you’ve optimized your page, you could rank in the top 10.

Suppose you’re a competitor and the review is actually negative. You conclude that “Apple Snapple Scrabble” is a waste of time, and you direct people to a better product, “PokéMonopoly.” You’ve just launch jacked another product to promote your own.

K for Keywords

Search engines help users find content, based on two main criteria: links and keywords.

They use the analogy of a subway system, with tracks running from station to station (page to page). The more popular a station is, the more likely those riders want to stop there. This is why popular websites rank highly on search engines. Other pages connected to those sites also get a boost.

To make content easier to find, use keywords in the title, URL, and headings. The more prominent your keywords are displayed, the better your page will rank.

Warning: Overusing keywords – known as “keyword stuffing” – can lead to penalties from search engines. Only use them where they make sense, and vary your language from time to time. Search engines generally reward sites with useful and interesting content, so the best approach is to write content that’s both.

L for Livestreaming

The livestreaming video is having a moment, thanks to apps like Periscope. It lets you broadcast video on a public platform for anyone to watch, or invite selected users for private broadcasts.

It isn’t the first app of its kind –  YouTube offers it, and Facebook has released a feature for it.

M for Monitoring

Monitoring lets you hear everything that’s said online. You can follow keywords and receive alerts whenever they’re used.

Marketers use monitoring for a variety of reasons, from brand tracking to social media monitoring, to finding influencers, to spying on competitors. The aim is the same: to catch conversations you’d otherwise never have known about.

The easiest way to do this is, with a great monitoring tool. These let you follow keywords across social media, blogs, and the rest of the web. They put all this information in a single place, saving you time and effort.

O for Optimization

Marketers use this term all the time. In common language, optimization means to get the most out of something. In digital marketing, it means to get the most out of content, landing pages, emails, apps, and ads. You want sky-high conversion rates across all of your marketing.

Adobe looked at what tactics lead to the highest conversion rates. The best companies:

·        Make decisions based on testing: 70% of Adobe’s top performer's test to see what works and what doesn’t.

·        Allocate resources to optimization: If you don’t devote any energy to optimization, how can you expect to succeed at it?

·        Target content: Use automation and data to place targeted content in front of leads. When leads see content that suits them, they’re more likely to convert.

·        Collaborate across departments: Digital marketing is broad. Done well, it requires buy-in from content writers, developers, sales, and management.

·        Work well on mobile: Phone content is vital these days. 83% of Adobe’s top companies described mobile as important to their marketing work.

P for Pull (or Inbound) Marketing

The term “inbound marketing” was coined by HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan in 2005. The basic premise is that traditional methods of marketing – advertisements and spam – no longer work. Consumers can avoid these messages using DVR and ad blockers.

Instead, marketers need to make content that benefits people. This means blog posts, instructional ebooks and videos, and humor. When consumers like what you produce, they’ll come to you – hence the word “inbound.”

According to HubSpot, “sharing is caring and inbound is about creating and sharing content with the world.” They state inbound has been the most effective marketing method since 2006.

But inbound marketing needs a strategy. Wordstream says there are five elements to good inbound marketing:

1.   SEO: When people have questions and problems, they use search engines. Make yourself easy to find.

2.   PPC (pay per click advertising): Online ads that appear when a user is searching, so they aren’t as intrusive as conventional ads.

3.   Content marketing: This is the backbone of inbound marketing. If you want people to visit, come back, and recommend your brand, you’d better have great content.

4.   Social media: Social platforms are full of customers, both current and prospective. Promote your content on social media as another way to make your company easy to find.

5.   Landing pages: These are where the conversions happen. Once you’ve attracted all your new prospects, you need to give them somewhere to sign up to your service.

Companies everywhere are adopting pull marketing as their chief marketing strategy.

Q for Quora

Quora is a social network with a very simple premise. Anyone can ask a question, and anyone else can answer it. The best questions and answers are featured more prominently, making quality content easy to find.

Oh, and it receives more than 100 million visitors per month.

Marketing on Quora is also very simple. If you, your content, or your product can solve a user’s problem, your Quora answers can drive real business results.

For example, take a question like “what are the best digital marketing tools?” We can answer that question and explain why Mention is a great choice. If the answer helps people and provides value it appears near the top of the thread.

By the way, that Quora question has been viewed more than 22,000 times. And it cost us nothing to sing Mention’s praises there.

The best part is that Quora answers often rank highly on search engines. Since it’s a popular site, rich with backlinks and good content, Quora answers can even become the top-ranked result.

If you want to know what problems people have, just look at their Quora questions. This works for your industry as a whole, but it also shows you what problems people have with your products.

Like all social platforms, Quora is also a great place to find competitor insights. See what people like and don’t like about your competitors, and use that information to improve your own brand.

R for Reddit

Reddit is a social bookmarking site that calls itself “the front page of the internet.” Users share links to their favorite content and have detailed discussions.

It’s well-known for being a difficult marketing space. Simply taking an existing campaign and slapping it into a subreddit is a recipe for disaster. Many marketers simply stay away.

This makes Reddit fertile ground. Its potential reach is enormous, and it’s not flooded with advertising.

You can post content you’ve written yourself, and even products you’re selling. Posts need to be:

·        In the right place. Get the subreddit right.

·        Interesting.

·        Timely. Old news is no good.

·        Original. It needs to be the first time this content has been posted on Reddit.

There’s an entire subreddit dedicated to exposing sneaky marketing on the site. Not only will inappropriate content not see clickthroughs, it’ll tarnish your brand’s image.

S for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is easily one of the most important growth hacking tools in the cupboard. Marketers use specific tools and techniques to ensure that their content appears at the top of search engine rankings.

Why is this valuable?

You need people to visit your website to show them your product. For many modern companies, this is the main avenue for sales. By optimizing your website for search engines, you make yourself easier to find.

How does it work?

There are two main factors that improve search ranking:

·        Keywords: We discussed these above

·        Backlinks: If other sites link to yours, this tells Google that you have good content.

To improve SEO, you need to make an effort to use effective keywords and encourage others to link to your work.

Learn the SEO tips that improved Mention’s search traffic by 373%

Many marketers are also interested in the effects that artificial intelligence will have on Google’s search algorithms. As the search engine gets smarter, we may need to change the way we optimize our content.

We asked some of the brightest marketing minds to discuss this very issue:

Social listening

Listening is the catch-all term for monitoring what’s said on social media. Social platforms provide a wealth of information for brands. You just need to know how to listen.

Good listening will help you:

·        Understand your market better

·        Know what content is trending

·        See what’s said about you

·        React in real time

Use a social media monitoring tool. These let you set up keyword alerts, delivered when you need them. You won’t need to watch Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, forums, or other sources.

Trying to monitor these sources individually is virtually impossible. How can you possibly watch everything said across the entire web on your own? You want to know what’s said about you, your industry, and your competitors. That’s a lot to track without help.

For example, most tweets about a company don’t include the “@” symbol. If you aren’t paying attention, you won’t catch what most people say about your company. That’s important for customer service, product improvements, and building your brand. If you don’t know what’s being said, you’re missing out – big time.

T for T-shaped marketer

The T-shaped marketer is one who has a broad but shallow understanding of all subjects and a deep knowledge of two or three. This description of marketers is increasingly popular, due to constant changes in technology and expertise. Marketers need to roughly understand all of their team’s work, and be ready to lead in certain tasks.

You also have natural overlaps between roles. This means that while SEO may not be your strong suit, you at least understand the principles. If the PPC(Pay Per Click) person is away, another team member can step in and do some light lifting.

U for User experience          

Definition: “‘User experience’ encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” In this section, we’re really focusing on the things that marketers can control: content and web presence.

Grasping how web users interact with your content is important. You’ve got actions that you want users to perform, like click on advertising or request a demo. Your only goal might be repeat visitors.

Understanding user experience – and making changes – can be tricky for digital marketers. In a post for Convince and Convert, Justin Zalewski gave six steps to improve UX:

·        Optimize images: Make images the right size to speed up site performance. Every moment a user waits for an oversized image, the more frustrated they become – at you.

·        Automate speed improvements: This one’s a little tricky. Speed up your site by “caching” parts of it. This means users don’t have to download the whole webpage every time they visit.

·        Avoid stock photos: Let’s face it, stock photos are a little too good to be true. These days, web users can easily spot them, and a stock photo “instantly devalues your website.”

·        Protect your brand: Don’t sacrifice the look and feel of your site just because an A/B test told you that your ugliest buttons perform 1% better.. Focus on making people feel good about your site and your product.

·        Be clear: “[Visitors] should be able to understand what you do within a couple seconds of landing on your homepage.” Start with a clear sentence stating what you do. Users want answers to their questions, not mystery.

·        Well-placed CTAs: Keep your calls-to-action close to your most informative content. When users have found the information they need, they are most likely to follow-through and make a decision. You CTAs should reflect that.

V for Virtual/Augmented Reality

Virtual reality (VR) is all the rage. Demonstrations are appearing at digital marketing roadshows, and the technology is available to buy. The same is true of augmented reality (AR). This may be the tipping point.

Virtual Reality: VR uses computers to build complete, physical environments for the user to enter and interact with. Think of headsets like Oculus Rift and Samsung’s Gear VR.

Augmented Reality: The ability to overlay virtual content on the physical world and have the two interact in real time. Think of Google Glass. The wearer can still see and hear the world as usual, but with extra information added via the lenses.

Virtual reality is an immersive experience, whereas augmented reality takes the world we live in, and adds features.

W for Whisper and Yik Yak

For brands interested in the Snapchat demographic, anonymous messaging is another interesting option. These apps let unidentified users post text and image messages seen by anyone in the vicinity. They appeal to teens and college students and were created on college campuses.

Marketers can use these platforms as listening and market research tools. Search for your brand name on either app and start looking for trends. Ask for feedback from users who don’t even know they’re being quizzed.

Y for YouTube

YouTube is hardly a secret. Forty-six thousand years’ worth of video is watched every day on the site.

But not every digital marketer is using Youtube. This may be a mistake. A video is the future of content marketing, and YouTube is its leader. If your customers or the influencers of your customers are watching videos on YouTube related to your industry, then you should have a YouTube channel.

Make great videos

The key to great YouTube content is storytelling. Brand Stories found that the best YouTube marketing is:

·        Authentic: real is better than glossy.

·        Relevant: to your products and your audience.

·        Collaborative: work with influencers to increase exposure.

·        Engaging: make interesting videos full of calls to action. Ask for comments and shares.

·        Regular: consistently create quality videos, on a regular basis

And the last Z for Zapier

Zapier is an automation tool that lets your apps talk to each other.

Zapier connects to APIs (application programming interfaces) for more than 500 apps. Many of these integrations (known as “zaps”) are public, but users can also create private integrations for themselves.

For example, someone needed to transfer the subject lines and bodies of emails into a Google spreadsheet. Rather than do this manually (because, boring!), he let Zapier do the work. This is a fairly straightforward example of the kinds of interactions that Zapier facilitates.

These are the sorts of connections developers normally build. Instead, Zapier handles the technical stuff.

Given the wide range of tasks marketers are expected to perform, automation is increasingly popular. Zapier is known for being more powerful, and more customizable, than other options on the market.

Conclusion

Well, we’re fresh out of letters. Hopefully, you’ve found useful information about a whole range of digital marketing terms.

There are a ton of things you could do next. You could try new channels like Yik Yak, Quora, or Reddit. You could try new tactics like newsjacking or livestreaming. You could even revamp your entire marketing strategy with new goals, optimized content.