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With the increasing number of new entrepreneurs and small startups coming up in the business market, designing and formatting the right mix of digital marketing strategies is absolutely imperative for any company.
Here we bring you our expertise on guiding you to the Digital Marketing Path.
An interactive webinar was conducted by NMG’s co-founder and Managing Director Mr. Mohit Maheshwari in which he discussed the Digital Strategies and the Marketing Approach.
The webinar covered some practical steps which can be taken for carefully strategizing and executing the digital marketing campaigns.
The webinar touches upon some central issues faced by new businesses and startups like:
- Tips to build and grow your business website
- Tips to attract more traffic to your website
- Practical strategies for SMBs and Startups
- Plethora of tools and resources to maintain and enhance your business’s online reputation
SMBs and startups face a multitude of challenges in growing and operating their business.
Since the employee strength is low, the management is pressed for time that is to be devoted to several important business concerns.
A small organization needs to focus on its core business line and make time for paying attention to their chief offering/product.
Limited finances become a cause of concern since the company website and digital marketing is not given priority and in several cases, a clear marketing strategy also doesn’t exist.
Digital marketing strategies are absolutely imperative for any company
The very first step for a growing startup is to build a smart website that becomes your point of contact and communication tool with the client and external audience.
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Any kind of online marketing strategy or effort to enhance online reputation would need the foundation of a strong and powerful website.
It must be designed to meet client requirements and not simply be a part of your marketing plans. It should be flexible enough to steadily evolve with your business growth.
As a business grows, clarity on the distribution of roles is needed. There are internal stakeholders as well as outsourced teams that can work in conjunction and accomplish projects.
It is always advisable to have the right mix of skill sets in order to achieve the best possible results. Since budget is a concern in an SMB one person can play multiple roles and a small team, if good can be equally effective within the realms of quality work.
Since budget is a concern in an SMB one person can play multiple roles and a small team if good can be equally effective within the realms of quality work.
It is important to focus on planning and project management as this brings to successful closures of tasks. Further, as a business, you must decide that everything cannot be outsourced and everything cannot be done in-house.
In a nutshell, the idea is to be a smart spender when the budget is tight and the team is right to successfully carry on your digital journey.
Project management is extremely important in any business.
When working on a single project that entails multiple tasks, it is necessary to be on the same page with all the team members; hence, the utility value of a project management tool cannot be undermined.
Basecamp and Trello are some of the tools that ensure effective management of all projects.
For a small business that is starting out its journey into the digital world, it is fore mostly important to have an understanding of the customer base.
Knowing your customer and its internal and external influencers will enable you as a business to delve deeper into the customer psyche and see what is that they are looking for?
Knowing your customer and its internal and external influencers will enable you as a business to dive deeper into the customer psyche and see what is that they are looking for?
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For instance, your client could be anybody in the business crowd; it could be an ad agency, it could be brand/product managers or even directly another SMB owner. A digital marketing strategy basically runs on good quality content. Good quality content brings value to the users and aids in reputation management as well. By content we do not necessarily mean text, but also a variety of modes via which content can be perceived:
- Imagery/video
- Audio
- Flash presentations
- Photographs (user generated/stock photos)
- Social media feeds
- User generated content (industry round ups, guest posts, customer reviews etc. )
It may also interest you to note that having the thought process of a magazine business operation can actually help your digital marketing strategy strike the right chord with the customers.
Just like different magazines cater to a different type of target audience, your business can also appeal to different clients, each having their own set of needs. Even their operations are similar to a digital marketing agency’s in scope and range.
Once the business philosophy is set, you can go ahead and build your web presence with the help of sitemap, wireframes and content structure.
A blueprint is required when working at this step as it gives out an outline of how you want your business to project itself. Before making up the sitemap, perform an SEO research which will help you with the right keywords.
A good sitemap and wireframe structure will give you the base to put down a good and aesthetically pleasing website design. Planning out a design and getting feedback on it from personal as well as professional colleagues will give you a fair idea and make implementation easier.
There are few ways by which you can give out feedback to designers and get feedback for your own design.
Give feedback:
Get user feedback (Before launch, Post launch – tools):
There are also some tools which can be used to improvise design based on actual user feedback. You as a business should know the means to measure audience interaction and their opinion on your website. They tell you according to the real-time audience actions on your website design, landing pages and ways to improve upon them. Below are some of the tools for same.
Growing traffic to your website is quite a task. Here two types of ways can be put to use to help grow your website traffic and enhance online reputation.
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One is content, using content via organic SEO, writing fresh and rich content such as articles, white papers, blogs etc., social media and emailers.
The other mode is media based; this involves a paid form of promotions like ads, paid SMM, etc.
Both these means must be used in unison to derive the desired benefit as the positive effects would last a lifetime of positive perception about your company and services.
There could be a number of ways by which effective marketing can add value to your SMB. Here are some of them:
- Getting interviews which would make your business famous at a basic local level. Or interviewing an authority of your business and putting it up on your blog.
- There are various tools which you can use for effective PR outreach and Media mentions:
- HARO – (Detailed guide on HARO)
- Muck Rack
- Reporter Connection
- Media Kitty
- Profnet by Prnewswire (PAID)
- Source Bottle
- Pitching notes
- me
- My local reporter
- Expert Engine
- Crowd sourcing a book
- Link building exercises
- Building or developing an interactive tool or application
- Getting competitor links
- Guest blogging. It helps your business brand and leadership and helps in getting new customers and build industry relationships. There are various tools available for this:
- Designing infographics
- Live blogging and tweeting about an event
- Press releases
- Sponsoring event for bloggers
- Developing and promoting ebooks
- Giveaways
- Newsletters
In the end, what is important is your thought process as a business and how you make use of the aforementioned tools and ways that can take your business to an entirely new horizon.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is typically a series of actions taken through different channels by any brand marketer to promote the specified services and products. In this highly competitive era, it is the only source which is helping businesses achieve their desired targets and profit goals.
2. What are the types of digital marketing?
Most used and effective digital marketing types include -
- Search Engine Optimization
- Search Engine Marketing
- Paid Advertising through PPC
- Affiliate Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Influencer Marketing’ and
- Viral Marketing
3. What are digital marketing tools?
The list of digital marketing tools consists of:
- Google Analytics
- Google Adwords
- MailChimp
- BuzzSumo
- Asana
- HootSuite
- Buffer, etc.
All these tools are highly beneficial and can be used to bump up the ranking and traffic of a website.
Apart from the mentioned ones, you can also use the following tools to keep pace with the competitive market edge. The tools are -
- Google Keyword Planner
- AppAnnie
- Ahrefs
- Serpstat
- Facebook Audience Insight
4. What companies need digital marketing?
These days, digital marketing has become the need of the hour. Be it a start-up, middle scale company or a big enterprise, every entity needs digital marketing to uplift the market value among its competitors and target audience.
5. Why do you need a digital marketing strategy?
Digital marketing in today’s world helps improve a brand’s engagement with its customers. The tactics involved in digital marketing strengthens customer relationships but also helps a brand achieve optimum success and maximized profits.
6. What do you mean by digital strategy?
You can consider digital marketing a well-planned pathway to maximize the reach and profit of the brand. To implement a digital marketing strategy, you need to be focused on your business goals and should be prepared enough to take the right initiatives.
7. What are the best ways of digital marketing?
Be prepared to implement the below tactics if you wish to have a well-planned, focused and thoughtful digital marketing strategy for your business.
The effective ways to achieve exceptional digital marketing results are given below -
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Digital Display Advertising
- Content Creation
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Retargeting and Remarketing
- Mobile Marketing
It is sure, if you iterate the process diligently, you’ll be able to receive classic results for your digital marketing campaign.