The Trend in Online Marketing
The trend in online marketing is that it is becoming increasingly complex and system-driven. The tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated and technical. As the online marketing noise continues to increase, higher levels of creativity are also required in order to make an impact.
Consistency is the key ingredient of online marketing. Online marketing needs to be regular, consistent and add value to your readers’ lives.
For ongoing success, you need to cycle through generating the ideas, publishing them, measuring them, interpreting the data and learning from what has happened. You then need to rinse and repeat as the saying goes.
For growth through online marketing to work, you need to have expertise available to you in 5 areas: content marketing, social media, website and its ability to convert, search engine marketing (PPC and Ad Management) and marketing automation.
Here are the 5 Key Areas for Success:
- content marketing
- social media
- website/conversion
- PPC and advert management
- marketing automation
But what does this mean in more detail?
Content Marketing
Content drives your inbound marketing campaigns. Therefore it is important to have somebody who is responsible for your content marketing. This person needs to have subject matter expertise in your industry, be a talented writer and editor and understand that the regular production of content is the key to your success. People with a journalistic background can be good here as they have are naturally inquisitive.
Social Media
Social media demands that you post regularly in order to keep your readers attention. It must add value to their lives; it can’t be a sales pitch. Each post must be done in an informative and entertaining way. Who you put in this role must be passionate about communication and relationship building. Somebody who is a “social native” and “gets it” are the keys to success in this role.
Website/Conversion
Your web site needs to be the key to your online marketing and so somebody needs to be responsible for making sure that it is up to date, makes the journey as smooth as possible and that it is optimised for the search engines. Conversion from prospect to customer is becoming more critical and here the web site needs to help the visitor along with the awareness, consideration, preference, action and loyalty journey.
PPC and Advert Management
Managing ads and PPC (pay-per-click) can often be a full-time job on its own. The person responsible for PPC needs to be commercially aware so that they are aware of the customer acquisition costs because at worst if the costs are too high the programme will lose the business money and at best not maximise profit. Paid social is becoming more important and so this should also be managed by the same person as the PPC budget.
Marketing Automation
In our digital world, marketing automation is going to be increasingly important as it is a means of personalising your prospects experience and with regular emails and with the right information email marketing can help your prospects through the consideration phase of whether to purchase your product or service or not.
If you would like help with your online marketing please go to Digital Marketing Coordinator
