History of Digital Marketing

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            Digital marketing (also known as data-driven marketing) is an umbrella term for  the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

             The term digital marketing was first used in the 1990s, but digital marketing has roots in the mid-1980s, when the SoftAd Group, now ChannelNet, developed advertising campaigns for automobile companies: People sent in reader reply cards found in magazines and received in return floppy disks that contained multimedia content promoting various cars and free test drives.

In 2000 a survey in the United Kingdom found that most retailers had not registered their own domain address.

Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s, when the proliferation of devices' capability to access digital media at almost any given time led to great growth. Statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that digital marketing was still a growing field.

Digital marketing is often referred to as 'online marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'. The term digital marketing has grown in popularity over time, particularly in certain countries. In the USA online marketing is still prevalent. In Italy, digital marketing is referred to as web marketing. In the UK and worldwide, however, digital marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013.

Digital media growth is estimated at 4.5 trillion online ads served annually with digital media spend at 48% growth in 2010. An increasing portion of advertising stems from businesses employing Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) to tailor advertising for internet users, but OBA raises concern of consumer privacyand data protection.^[

The Top 5 Digital Marketing Skills for 2017

As 2017 draws closer, our focus turns to the essential skills needed to excel in the New Year. As the digital industry is in constant flux, there is a perpetual pressure on marketers to stay up to date with the latest developments and newest product releases.

The need for digital marketers has never been higher, yet the digital skills gap has never been wider. This discrepancy can provide you with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate your value and competency – you just need to make sure you’ve strengthened the right skills. If you want to set yourself apart from the competition and establish yourself as an in-demand marketing professional, you need to know which capabilities count. That’s why we’ve created this list of the top 5 digital marketing skills you should refine in 2017. 

1. Search Engine Optimization

93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. This means that now, more than ever, Search Engine Optimization skills are an essential asset. Although it may seem like a nebulous specialism, due to ever-evolving practices and search engine algorithm updates, 70% of the links search users click on are organic, so if you can master SEO, you have the potential to drive more traffic and more conversions as a result.

Whether you aspire to become an SEO specialist, or you outsource organic search marketing, it’s important to have a comprehensive understanding of its core functions and benefits. This will allow you to easily analyze results and take the right action (or send a detailed brief to your agency) accordingly.

Develop an awareness of the importance of keyword research and implementation, the nuances of content (how much is too much, and what is relevant) and the best methods for acquiring quality links. SEO skills are based upon a combination of creative and technical elements. In other words, know when to utilize guest blogging and what constitutes a suitably compelling topic, but also be able to analyze your site for key errors, such as broken links and 404s.

2. Video Content Marketing

In 2017 video marketing will account for 69% of all consumer traffic, mobile video ads will grow 5 times faster than desktop and landing pages with videos can generate 800% more conversions. Though content marketing has been heralded as an essential specialism over the past few years, video is equally, if not more deserving of your mastery.

It’s unsurprising that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine – video content is easy to consume and generates enhanced levels of engagement. It’s a formidable marketing platform that is often underused due to a lack of necessary skills. If you take the time to truly understand video content marketing, you’ll be able to reach a much larger audience and make your brand distinct and memorable.

Make the most of meta-descriptions and tag your videos with keywords in order to optimize them for search, not only YouTube but Google and its peers too. From a content perspective, learn to storyboard and execute videos that anticipate your target audience’s needs and interests, and convey your brand in a creative, humanizing way. Look to well-established brands such as Guinness and Apple – though you may not be able to emulate their budget, there’s a lot you can learn from their ability to craft a compelling story.

3. Community Management

78% of small businesses now get at least one quarter of new customers from social media, undeniable evidence that organizations need to embrace social. However, there’s much more to it than optimizing your images on Facebook and running paid ads. Social channels are essential for cultivating a positive customer experience, and if your organization owns them, you have a responsibility to nurture and maintain your community. This may seem like a time consuming prospect, but learning how to develop meaningful social relationships with your target audience segments can generate significant return on investment. The more you know about your customers’ needs, challenges and preferences, the better you can engage them.

Learn how to use social listening tools to gain essential insights into your customers and competitors, so you can target your followers with the right content at the right time. Be able to set up alerts and make use of advanced search functions so you can monitor any brand mentions or customer comments that aren’t tagged. Send personalized, helpful, relevant messages and be as timely as possible. 32% of social customers expect a response to a complaint within 30 minutes, and 42% expect a response within 60 minutes. You should also learn to create and implement a crisis management plan that will enable you to react appropriately and protect your brand on these highly public platforms.

4. Marketing Automation

To reiterate, 91% of the most successful marketing automation users agree that it is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels. As the digital marketing landscape evolves and expands, marketers are expected to complete an infinite amount of tasks with a finite amount of resources. By learning how to implement and use marketing automation, you’ll be able to achieve this seemingly unachievable feat.

Find out how to set up workflows so you can share personalized content that is tailored to your target audience at every stage of the customer journey. Use trigger emails to automate your engagement while maintaining your customer’s interest! Faster follow-ups will give you a better chance of qualifying leads and ongoing scheduled communications will help you to easily nurture and convert these leads. You can also learn how to create integrated cross-channel marketing campaigns, using marketing automation to enable you to establish consistent brand presences on a variety of platforms, including social, email and text.

As the adoption of marketing automation increases (there are nearly 11 times more B2B organizations using marketing automation now than in 2011), the faster you can harness its powers, the most effectively you’ll perform. 

5. Analytics

Analytics always has been the most important, and simultaneously overlooked digital marketing practice. The ability to interpret results and translate them into action is indispensable – it means that you can not only assess your effectiveness, you can improve it as well. A data-driven approach will enable you to make the most of your digital marketing budget, whatever its size, as you’ll be more targeted and specific. You’ll be able to better segment your customers, and know more about their buying behaviors, challenges and motivations.

70% of the customer journey is completed online before a buyer even reaches out to a sales rep. This shift in power from the rep to the customer means that sales and marketing professionals are being forced to rethink their strategies. And the only truly effective way to revise any digital marketing strategy is to derive new plans from valuable insights. You should be competent in utilizing analytics tools beyond just Google Analytics. 

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10 Reasons Why Digital Marketing is Important for Your Business!

Why Digital Marketing?

The key element of social media lies in being ‘being social’. Digital Marketing has a transformative impact on business be it a large-scale business or a small one. Businesses, which adopt social media, are more collaborative and responsive to customers. With the various tools available on social media, can listen to customers, spur innovation, identify new market opportunities and gain credibility. With the help of social media monitoring, one can gain key information on their competitors and make strategic business decisions in order to stay ahead. One of the best benefits of using social media for business is using it to increase website traffic and search ranking.

Here are a few reasons why digital marketing is highly essential for a business.

1. Result Oriented Strategic Digital Marketing

A result oriented digital marketing campaign points your brand in the right direction. You can experiment with different target audiences with a complete 360 degree strategy that combines visibility, leads, engagement and your brand positioning.

Our objective with Dr. Paul’s Multispeciality Clinic was to establish their brand presence & promote their services on all the major social media channels, create visibility about their services and to generate leads for their website. The SEO service helped them fetch 100+ keywords in 6 months and increased their website traffic to 200+. Thanks to the increase in website traffic, the clinic’s online leads were significantly increased and received a good number of leads.

As part of their corporate blog strategy, 20 blog posts/month were posted with the SEO elements integrated in the blog article.

Krazymantra also won a Best Display Campaign Award for our ad campaigns for Dr Paul’s!

2. Optimize Advertisements Across Different Platforms          

Targeting your audience and website visitors is important. But how do you ensure you convert this audience?By running retargeting advertisements! Your audience will be targeted through third party apps from Facebook when they visit the site which serve as a funnel to your ROI. Later, build a database of this audience to target your future campaigns!

 3. Mobile Friendly

The rapid growth rate of the mobile users segment has upped the growth of digital marketing by widening the opportunities and reaching out to customers from various demographics, helping business customize and define their customer reach. The first step towards this is to make your website responsive! A responsive website is one which is flexible and adapts to fit a variety of screens sizes for different devices. Having a responsive website is considered as one of the best web design practices. This way the brand can cater to customers through a variety of channels! With the distinct shift of audience to smartphones and tablets, mobile responsive design is becoming extremely important. This helps to generate more traffic on the website, increase leads and conversions. Our clients Dr. Paul’s,emhealth and Star Weddings, they have responsive websites and we have obtained excellent results so far. The leads count has doubled and also provided their clients with an excellent user experience!

 4. Conversion Optimization

Running conversion based campaign and advertisements will benefit your business immediately and in the long run. Investing in SEM and SEO and keyword specific campaigns doubles your results, enabling you to generate and quantify revenues.

5. Survival, Action, Trust & Reputation

For your business to survive, your brand must have a clear cut digital marketing presence. Survival incites action from your customers, which builds automatic trust and relationships, thus creating your reputation online.

6. Your Customers are there and so are your competitors!

Where your customers are, you must follow. And what more than a wonderful way to follow them than digital marketing?

7. Content Marketing

Digital marketing is where content reigns king. It provides an opportunity to create a range of content that talks about your brand to educate your customers. The kind of content you create creates the major perception in your target audience’s minds, positioning your brand as well. Content marketing is one of the best ways to improve your leads and drive sales. But always bear in mind while your audience and brand while creating the content, create your content with a purpose.

We always make sure to write content with our brand and audience in mind. As one of our brands, Urban Tree, which is one of the best real estate brands in Chennai, our content usually revolves around property and Chennai everything Chennai related. Every blog post we publish has a message behind it apart form the marketing and promotion. We make sure to communicate specific messages along with the brand’s mission statement. Eg: The recent Facebook post on ‘Hilarious Hollywood Scenarios’ is all about relating famous Hollywood movie and television shows to situations which our Chennaites face on a regular basis using a lot of word play in the content. Another example would be one of Urban Tree’s blog post 10 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Porur  which reaped a good SEO status, helped increase their website traffic as well. Our client blogs and posts always have interestingly designed creatives or GIF’s. Creating image rich content will have your audiences looking for longer! We also ensure that our content is keyword friendly.

 8. Converse, Listen & Engage

Bridging the gap between customer interaction, digital marketing allows you to not just talk but converse, listen and engage your potential customers and target audience.The most vital and essential aspects of Social Media marketing is the ability to converse, listen and engage with your present and potential customers. Our formula for listening, conversing and engaging on social media platforms involves usage of right keywords, hashtags and looking for users based on demographics if required by a brand.

Apollo White Dental being a National brand requires us to tweet to people all around the country. One of our other brands, Star Weddings, which is totally Chennai based requires us to engage with people residing in Chennai. Before listening and gaining right conversations for Star Weddings, we always determine what to search for and take advantage of the ‘Advanced Search’ option on Twitter by looking up Chennai and Wedding related keywords which are #Weddings #Chennai #Festival #Shopping #Photography and so on. In order to achieve the business goals of a brand on Social Media, it is highly important to carry out activities and create content for audience engagement. This also helps to keep the existing audience interested. For one of our brands Oliva, which is a clinic for skin and hair care we make create engagement posts every week concentrating on different themes, which leads to a lot of interaction thereby increasing the fan base.

9. Exclusive Revenue Generating Model

With your brand’s positioning and creative campaigning strategy, the conversation leads to a revenue generating model.

10. Behavioural Targeting

Behavioural targeting helps you in identifying what your customers are looking for, customizing and narrowing your audience’s interest to befit your targeting at the same time offering a customized approach to the customer.Content is analysed and broken down to behaviours breaking it into dimensions on a broader perspective. This of course, is possible only in digital marketing!

With Facebook’s impressive ad targeting capabilities, it is always essential to have a target group for your advertisement campaigns on Facebook, either target your customers behaviour wise, by their demographic capabilities, customize your audience i.e. if you have a customer data base (list of their emails and telephone numbers) etc. Recently we had run a Like Advertisement Campaign for one of our brands on Facebook, Oliva, which is a multi specialty hair and skin care clinic located in Bangalore and Hyderabad! The set of advertisements were targeted to iPhone users between the age group 18-65 in Bangalore and Hyderabad, which helped us generate about 1100 likes in a span of 3 weeks increasing the fan base 18,088 approximately!

Understanding the Importance of Keywords for Digital Marketing

The majority of people look for products and services online and the first thing they do is to type in a keyword phrase into the search box. The core idea of digital marketing is to target audience through specific keywords and terms. Keywords are like connectors for digital marketers that connect them to their audience. Knowing and identifying such keywords will help digital marketers and business men get desired results from their search engine optimization campaigns. A proper keyword search lies at the heart of a successful marketing campaign.

Keywords research helps your target audience to search and find you through the common words and terms they speak or use. Your keywords must stand out. This builds up your contacts and paves way for potential customers. Keywords help you identify relevant words or phrases that are overall linked to the theme of your website. This puts your website in a good place with search engines. A keyword research helps you save money by letting you focus only on keywords that will deliver results rather than on keywords that will not generate any traffic.

The development of effective internet marketing tools has created a wider space for business marketers to sell their products and services online. People depend on keywords and search engine result pages before they make a purchase online and they don’t go beyond the first page of the search engine to look for options. If customers are searching for you and the search terms they put are not within your site’s content, it is very likely that they will not be able to find you. Hence, keywords need to be relevant and are very important.

Why People Love Digital Marketing?

Is it a little too self-serving to exclaim, “We love marketing”? Does it seem superficial to say marketers around the world are now discovering how uniquely fulfilling and enjoyable a career in marketing can be? Here’s why you might be hearing more of this: marketing isn’t what it was just ten or fifteen years ago.

Today it is an industry that not only rewards creativity, but it also relies heavily on input and guidance from analytical types; those who know how to connect with others, and those who seem to always exist on the leading edge of technology. Here are six reasons why today’s marketers seem to be happier and more engaged than ever in this growing field:

1 – Innovation Is Fun

Marketing has always been a creative discipline, but digital marketing elevates the game to one of innovation. Creativity refers to delivering something new, but innovation is all about bringing something to the table that not only changes the rules of the game, but creates a uniqueness that can quickly separate one business from the rest. Those who innovate are proud to stretch the rules and redefine what it means to create.

2 – Marketing Is Storytelling

Steven Spielberg proclaims his job is the best in the world because he simply gets to tell stories. In a way, today’s digital marketing professional is able to do the same thing – except he or she doesn’t have to hire actors and deal with the craziness and expense of a film set. The contemporary marketing director can creatively align products, processes, and people to tell a desired story. And history has proven time and again that these stories can blossom into full-blown marketing campaigns that can drive business in an authentic manner.

3 – Tracking is Better

Back in the days of print marketing, you really couldn’t measure an accurate ROI on a specific campaign – so many external influences are always in play and shifting the behaviors of the buying public. But today’s marketers have access to an endless supply of analytics tools and trackers that can quickly disseminate important information from seemingly complex data streams. Simply put, marketing data is more easily obtainable today, and that means marketers can make changes more quickly and with more accuracy than before.

4 – Two-Way Marketing

Before the proliferation of social media, online advertising, and content marketing, most marketing campaigns were unidirectional. In essence, marketers would create a campaign, print it or prep it for delivery through television, print, or radio, and then sit back and hope the consumer reacted as desired. Today, though, creative types can initiate dialogue and two-way communications with the target audience – meaning that boatloads of feedback and relevant information can be gleaned in a matter of minutes from the base of prospects and customers. Marketers can have fun and interact with the audience, and they’re actively inviting loyal fans to join in on the fun and create user-generated content to help boost the brand. It’s gotten a whole lot more social in the marketing world these days.

5 – Marketing Is Accessible to More People

Unless you were a big player in 2008, few businesses could afford the six-figure price tag it cost to produce a 30-second TV spot destined for release on a national network. Just a few years before, though, a little startup called Facebook was launched, and it forever changed the way we think of marketing. With more than 1.79 billion active users, a slick, budget-friendly ad campaign has the potential to reach tens of millions of people for much less than you’d expect to pay for similar exposure via traditional marketing mediums. Marketing is way more accessible to those who have something to say – not simply those who can afford to say it.

6 – Constant Changes Are Engaging

Marketing aficionados are a curious and intellectual group, and the current digital marketing realm is one that keeps us on our toes. Rules change, preferences and predilections shift, and the audience is only a step or two away from the release of a new social media platform, piece of technology, or social whim that can redefine what it means to build a brand. As curious people by nature, marketers today like that the industry continually redefines itself.

How to promote business online?

Internet is the new sensation now days and hence become the biggest marketing tool. The rapid growth in mobile technologies and internet availability makes it more popular. As far as India is concern we are still not fully equipped with internet based platforms however the Indian urban audience is very much pro to internet. Being the second largest population in the world India is huge potential when it comes to internet marketing or online promotions.

Krazymantra IT PVT LTD is creative internet marketing agency based in Ahmedabad. Being the market leader in online business promotion we at Krazymantra IT PVT LTD realize that still Indian business owners are not very much well versed with online business promotion. Indian business owners are using conventional marketing techniques to promote their product or services rather than internet marketing techniques. We have also observed that trend is changing rapidly for Internet marketing hence more youngsters are joining businesses. We are putting few internet marketing techniques by which one can promote business online –

Use of website –

Website is essential tool for online business promotion. One should have user-friendly website with latest updated information about their respective products or services. Website provides you the flexibility to sale your products and services 24X7. It is great way to connect with your potential customers. 

Effective Use of Social Media –

Social media has gained massive popularity in recent past hence it becomes an effective marketing tool. A strong social media presence will help people to know more about your products and services. Many social media platforms are providing paid services for online business promotion including Facebook. 

Targeted Emailing –

If you have a list of potential people who may be interested in your products you can mail them on frequent basis. To get the potential people for email you can opt out professional help from internet marketing agencies. 

Third Party Listing –

Internet is full for marketplaces where so many websites and portals are providing you the flexibility to sell your products. You can join them to increase your sales or promote business online. 

Video Promotion –

Viral marketing is the best and most effective way of selling your products. You can take a professional videographer’s help to shoot creative video about your products and services and upload it on YouTube and other video sharing website. It provides you great presence for online business promotion. 

Above are some basic but effective Internet marketing techniques however hiring a professional Internet marketing agency will make more sense. You can subscribe our blog for more updates about Internet marketing.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC POSITIONING IN DIGITAL MARKETING?

Strategic positioning will be one of the crucial factors in your success as a digital marketer or online business. We’re going to start this guide by discussing the meaning of strategic positioning, before moving on to explaining some of the methods digital marketers can use to communicate a brand’s strategic position at various points throughout the customer’s journey.

What is strategic positioning?

Strategic positioning is an essential part of the planning that goes into digitally marketing a brand or product.
The process of plotting your strategic position starts with defining your brand’s value proposition – a customer-focused statement explaining why it exists:

As our CEO Daniel Rowles writes in his new book, Building Digital Culture, answering the following questions will help you to define this fundamental aspect of your strategic position:

• What is it that your organisation stands for?
• What is the core purpose of your organisation beyond your commercial objectives?
• How does everything your organisation does provide value?

Distil the answers to these questions into one clear mission statement.

To decide upon your brand’s strategic position, you must now use insight-driven strategy to bridge the gap between the value proposition we have just discussed and what audiences want to engage with – the things that motivate them.

For instance, if your mission statement is “We deliver the most beautiful flowers in the land to people’s homes”, and your market research indicates that there exists a particular demand amongst your target audience for a service delivering flowers from independent florists, your strategic position might become, “Flowers from the UK’s best independent florists, delivered to your door.” This is an over-simplification, but it demonstrates the logic used in defining a strategic position:

Mission statement + Data-driven strategic insight = strategic position

What’s the Difference Between Digital Marketing and Inbound Marketing?

On the surface, the two seem similar: Both occur primarily online, and both focus on creating digital content for people to consume. So what’s the difference?

The term ‘digital marketing’ doesn’t differentiate between push and pull marketing tactics (or what we might now refer to as ‘inbound’ and ‘outbound’ methods). Both can still fall under the umbrella of digital marketing.

Digital outbound tactics aim to put a marketing message directly in front of as many people as possible in the online space -- regardless of whether it’s relevant or welcomed. For example, the garish banner ads you see at the top of many websites try to push a product or promotion onto people who aren’t necessarily ready to receive it.

On the other hand, marketers who employ digital inbound tactics use online content to attract their target customers onto their websites by providing assets that are helpful to them. One of the simplest yet most powerful inbound digital marketing assets is a blog, which allows your website to capitalize on the terms which your ideal customers are searching for.

Ultimately, inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, convert, close, and delight customers online. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is simply an umbrella term to describe online marketing tactics of any kind, regardless of whether they’re considered inbound or outbound.

Why your organization needs Digital Skills Training

Digital is transformative. Consumers are now empowered by search engines and social media at every stage of their customer journey – 81% of them conduct online research before making a purchase, and 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before they reach out to a sales rep. Digital has enabled consumers to self-educate, and be much more scrupulous when making their definitive purchase decision.

This creates an obligation for organizations to acknowledge and adapt to this digital growth if they want to achieve lasting customer success and be as profitable as possible. 76% of marketers think that marketing has changed more in the past two years than the past fifty, which means that continual ups killing is essential. 

If you’re still in any doubt as to how your organization could benefit from a strategic, sustainable digital education plan, we’ve outlined some key advantages below:

1. Digital skills can motivate employees

Currently, there is an unprecedented global digital skills shortage affecting all industries. As a result, the recruitment of competent candidates presents a problem to organizations of every size.

As they are in competition with each other to hire the few digitally engaged professionals that exist, smaller businesses suffer, failing to match the increasingly lucrative salaries and benefits packages easily offered by their corporate competitors.

Yet despite this urgent demand, digital skill levels worldwide are staggeringly low. In our 2016 Digital Skills Report, marketers across Ireland, the UK and the USA, when tested on their digital competence, scored just 38% on average. This is coupled with a widespread acknowledgment that they will need to improve their digital marketing skills to remain competent in their roles (86% Ireland, 69% UK and USA).

More and more, companies are looking to hire skilled professionals internationally as a solution to this scarcity of talent. However, the easier, and ultimately more cost effective option is to cultivate an indigenous talent pool.

According to Adobe, organizations with a plan for their digital maturity aim to train and develop the skills of their existing workforce. They recognize that training, and the opportunity for professional and personal development is often a main priority for employees. Without it, they can feel unstimulated and disillusioned.

If organizations empower their employees with a digital education, not only will they benefit from their new digital capabilities and incentives attitude, they can leverage the training as a powerful retention tool as well. 

2. Digital skills can help to drive more revenue

Digital tools and technologies have already had a profound impact on the global economy. In 2016, global online advertising revenue will surpass TV advertising for the first time, and total digital advertising revenue is foretasted to reach over 260 billion US dollars by 2020.

Digital ad spend and marketing budgets are systematically expanding as a growing number of organizations have begun to acknowledge the business benefits that digital can bring. According to a report from Capgemini, companies with stronger digital intensity derive more revenue from their physical assets and are between 9 to 26% more profitable.

There have been too many technological advancements for organizations to thrive on traditional marketing and selling approaches alone. Only 28% of prospects that are cold called actually engage in conversations, and only 1% of those cold calls will ultimately convert into appointments. As consumers become more empowered by digital, they rely less on the expertise of sales reps and more on their own ability to research. In response to this shift in power, organizations need to revitalize their sales and marketing functions and utilize the same channels and platforms their customers do in order to reach them effectively.

3. Digital skills can generate significant cost savings

We’ve all heard the phrase “spend money to make money”. But what about spending money to save money too? With a complete digital skill set, your organization can achieve both.

The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) collected training information from over 2500 firms and found that organizations that offer comprehensive training have 218% higher income per employee than those with less comprehensive training. This means the simple act of motivating employees through skills training can save a substantial amount of money for an organization. Similarly, according to the American Management Association, the cost of hiring and training a new employee is between 25 to 200% of annual compensation, so skills training can cut costs again by alleviating unnecessary employee turnover. In addition to this, other financial benefits can include labour savings, reduction in lost workdays and productivity increases.

Digital marketing’s main principles are based on efficiency and cost-effectiveness:

• Precise ad targeting options can result in a lower Cost-Per-Lead
• Easy and immediate online interactions with a segmented target audience can generate more conversions for less cost
• An abundance of data from analytics tools provide invaluable insight that can help to refine a digital strategy and avoid unnecessary spending.

According to Partner, 40% of organizations claimed they received considerable cost savings from using digital marketing methods to promote their products and services. These savings can then be taken and reinvested into more digital marketing techniques and tactics to reiterate revenue success at a lower overall expenditure. 

4. Digital skills can help your organization to develop a competitive edge

A strong digital skill set is no longer a luxury for organizations – it’s a fundamental element of any competitive business model. Yet despite this, our latest skills report found that organizations remain largely disengaged with digital. Only 31% of US organizations, 25% UK and 40% in Ireland are felt to be digitally engaged, and the general consensus among employees is that the pace of technological and digital change is too slow.

According to McKinley, 90% of all marketing roles now require digital skills. This is because digital specialisms are infinitely more targeted, efficient and measurable in comparison to traditional techniques. Digital is a data-driven enabler for success. It can streamline processes and the accompanying effort required, whilst expanding capabilities. Being able to gain precise insights and translate those insights into actions means that, if leveraged successfully, digital tools and channels can help organizations to develop, and maintain an impactful competitive advantage.

Social media can provide a platform for meticulous online customer service that will improve retention rates. Mobile marketing can help an organization to develop a ubiquitous brand presence. Email marketing can nurture valuable relationships through useful content at every stage of the customer journey. And every campaign you construct can be measured and optimized using analytics tools.

Some of the main barriers to digital adoption is a lack of expertise in-house, as well as a lack of organizational commitment to the area. In order to realize the potential that digital holds for your organization, it’s essential to have the requisite skills training to be able to understand its significant benefits and take action.

Helpful Digital Marketing Objectives For Your Business

Do you want your potential customers to be searching for your product or service and first encounter one of your competitors? Of course you don’t. You want to be the one they find first, click through to and ultimately either buy a product or make a query.

It is guaranteed that at least one of your competitors is utilising an SEO strategy to optimise their site – after all, it’s vital for online brand awareness.

Your ultimate goals for an SEO strategy should be based around the following:

Keyword tracking

In order to rank well, you will also need to conduct keyword research so that you can determine the best terms to target when optimising your site. Think about what users will be searching for when trying to find a business like yours.

OBJECTIVE:

To rank for relevant keywords. To achieve this, you need to measure the success of the keywords that you have selected to target. Sometimes, the terms you feel are relevant, are not the ones that are going to drive traffic to your site. Adjust accordingly, and continue to monitor their performance. You ideally need terms which have a high search demand, with low competition.

Auditing your site

This might seem more like a task than a goal, but it is incredibly important to check that your site is working technically. SEO is not all about ranking for keywords, and your site could end up holding you back if you have inaccurate coding, duplicate content or a restrictive site speed.

OBJECTIVE:

An audit should not just be carried out once – you should set a goal of ensuring that you carry out regular audits to ensure everything is ship-shape. Without keeping on top of this, any aspirations of ranking well and being found online will be scuppered.

Backlinks

Aside from the site itself, you also need to be monitoring your backlinks – this is essentially “link PR” and ties back to brand awareness as well as your rankings.

Low quality links from spammy sites are akin to bad PR when it comes to ranking well, whereas high quality authoritative links from great sources equals a PR high five and better chances of ranking higher.

OBJECTIVE:

Improve your backlink profile by using tools to monitor regularly. 

PPC

Pay-per-click advertising is a must for delivering paid traffic to your site. With a paid search campaign, you can point visitors to particular landing pages (for example, a product, services or resources page), helping to more directly encourage sales leads.

Once again, you need to have an understanding of what new customers will be searching for. Within the ad, you will have to sell the landing page with a killer description. On top of that, you need to have the budget to bid competitively.

OBJECTIVE:

To drive targeted traffic towards particular pages on your site that will be of the most value to customers and to your business. Managed well, a paid search campaign can increase sales significantly, making it a great return on investment.

Content

Content has become a buzz word in the world of digital marketing for some time now.

The need to create fresh, unique content that people will find useful, informative or entertaining and will want to share is now a necessity in order to not only support ranking for keywords, but also to build your brand as an expert within your industry.

So what can content do for your business goals? Plenty.

Referral traffic

Great content can be a wonderful source of referral traffic, particularly if you are able to secure an editorial post on a site that has greater authority, and a larger audience than your own. The same goes for a particularly popular piece of on-site content that has been shared across social media. That piece of content is drawing in new potential customers – so make it count with actionable calls to action.

OBJECTIVE:

Build relationships with bloggers and site owners by contributing quality content. Provide value with all that you create. This will help build a naturally healthy looking backlink profile and help increase brand awareness as well.

Brand awareness

Great content is remembered. Whether it’s a particularly interesting and useful blog post, or a well-designed and informative infographic, if your brand principles are at the heart of it, then this is great exposure for your business. Take the often cited example of innocent smoothies – each piece of content they create is fun, friendly and incredibly shareable.

OBJECTIVE:

Think about the desired outcome of your content. Don’t create content for the sake of it. Create a strategy that is a blend of content types and measure what works.

Social

Is your business active on social media? If not, you are missing out on a great platform for not only sharing your own content, but also sharing other content relevant to your industry. Once again, this will work towards building your reputation as a source of expertise.

On top of these benefits, social media is the place that many people turn to in order to share their thoughts on brand experiences. Turn this into an opportunity to offer good customer service, instead of remaining in the dark about what many of your customers have to say.

OBJECTIVE:

Monitor brand mentions on social networks. Whether you receive good or bad feedback, engage by responding and turn an unhappy customer into a happy one or a happy customer into one that feels appreciated. Check out this video for the best brand monitoring tools out there.