You have your website in place. Your SEO is in order. You’ve got blogs written and published – about all the right topics.
You’ve got one or more social media platform accounts up and running with a reasonable number of followers or likes.
Now is the time to see what your strategic digital marketing campaign can do.
Before you start, though, it’s important to get the balance right between doing too much and doing too little to get you the results you want. When entering the world of digital marketing for the first time, it’s important to be realistic about what is ahead of you.
Diving in and doing one of everything is not the most productive – or cost effective – approach. With social media, without a plan in place, you can easily overstretch yourself and your limited resources.
When you set out on your online campaign, you need to focus on what your customers need and balance that with what time and money you are able to dedicate to the social media cause.
Whilst inspiring customers to purchase should be your over-riding aim, you also need to make sure it’s possible to deliver within any constraints you have.
Focus on the elements you consider to be important and ensure they are given the chance to bring real results. Consider:
- The social media channels that are likely to work more effectively for your business.
- What you have tried and tested in the past and how well it worked.
- Your competitors’ activities. Take a look at what they are doing and where they are in the social media environment.
- How your digital marketing plans interlink with your wider marketing strategy and if they fit with your overall business aims.
If you’re going to take your digital marketing seriously, it’s important you’re selective about what will make an impression with your customers and what won’t. Try to combine approaches which complement each other and avoid a scattergun approach as it rarely works.
A solid rule here is to use five consistent methods to promote a single element – for example, good SEO, blogging, social media, an e-shot and a press release.
However, you need to consider which five marketing elements will work for your firm, sector and customers – and this is where you may need some professional advice.
Also crucial in striking the right balance in your digital marketing strategy is to focus on quality over quantity.
For examples, e-shots have developed a reputation of being a waste of time and energy, with the perception that most of them head straight for our online bin. However, this doesn’t have to be the case.
Rather than focusing on new customers, use e-shots in a more targeted way, placing your brand in front of people who already know what you do.
This is one of the reasons that Gravity won’t recommend buying lists of email contacts as this will often put quantity ahead of quality.
Focus instead on a measured approach with the customers you have – past and present – and you will strike a better balance, getting results and not just frustration after your carefully written e-shot is discarded.
If you’re not sure where to start, or how to strike the right balance, then we’re happy to help – call us and we’ll happily sit down with a cuppa and have a no obligation chat to you about your options.
At Gravity we have 60 years’ combined experience in digital marketing and we’re happy to share it.
