The Secrets of How Successful Businesses do Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing doesn’t work! If I had ￡1 for each time I have heard this from business owners I would be a millionaire. I’m not disbelieving them it probably hasn’t worked for them but it does work for a large majority of businesses that do it right. In fact a net 28% of companies are preparing to increase their budgets in 2015/16 according to the latest IPA Bellwether Report . The internet saw the biggest growth in the first quarter.

Tom George, chairman UK and Northern Europe EMEA at MEC and chair of the IPA Media Futures Group, said: “The internet continues to attract an increasing share of budgets and we predict that it will account for over half of all investment for the first time ever this year. This notwithstanding, TV continues to perform remarkably well indicating its importance in long-term brand building and underlining traditional television’s strength in that it has few substitutes.

So how can some businesses be successful with their digital marketing and some businesses struggle to see a return on investment (ROI).

In our experience to be successful in any type of marketing and especially digital marketing you need a method and systematic approach. Digital marketing is no longer to be viewed as individual items in their own little pockets, you need to have a cohesive approach and everything you do needs to complement each other. In other words the foundations need to be strong, you wouldn’t build a house on quick sand would you?

Hopefully the next few paragraphs will help to identify the strong foundations you need to join the businesses who are already successful with their digital marketing. If you are already there well done perhaps you would like to send us your thoughts too.

Create a Strategy – What is your why? Why do you want to use digital marketing? what are you trying to achieve? From here you will be able to identify who your customer is, what information they need and where they are on the internet.

What are you doing now? What is successful? How do you measure it?

Create a plan and implement it. Your plan should include which channels you are going to use, how you can use them and how you are going to measure what you are doing. Part of the plan would be to:

Create a Marketing Funnel

A Marketing Funnel is a map of a customer’s journey from stranger to prospective customer (lead) and by understanding this journey, you can put strategies in place which will inspire them to move through the funnel. The Marketing Funnel can be thought about in these four parts:

Awareness

It is important from the get go that you know who your audience is and what their challenges are, this can be assured by making "Buyer Personas". This stage starts with the prospect being aware of your product or service and are in need of something, at this stage you want to attract the customer by showing them you have what they need and why your product or service is better than others around.

 Interest

At this stage you’ve used CTAs (Call to Actions) to gather more information about them because they have shown interest in your particular product or service, it’s good to supply them with the useful and informative information you’ve created so they can use it to help with their challenges.

 Desire

Tell them more about the product or service they’re interested in because they have know the specific product or service they are looking for. Show them why they need it and how it will benefit them if they choose to purchase it. This can be done by inviting them to schedule a consultation using an email or a CTA (call to action).

Action

You have now shown that you are an expert in your niche and you have become a respected source of information so you now have the opportunity to go from a stranger to a prospective customer (lead). Now you can talk to them about taking your relationship to the next level of buyer.

By creating this process you will be able to guage who is interested in your product or service and supply them with the right information at the right time. Digital Marketing is all about interaction. Think of it in terms of have a bricks and mortar business, you wouldn’t just leave the door open and no-one in the shop to help the customer, so why would you do the same with your digital marketing? Done correctly you can help the customer who will then trust you, know you and like you and who knows may even buy from you! Good luck.

If this article has raised some questions for you please feel free to contact us for more information