5 Steps  to Make Sure Your Digital Marketing strategy is Results Driven

5 Steps to Make Sure Your Digital Marketing strategy is Results Driven

“Is my digital marketing strategy working?”
“Am I doing it right?”
“Why am I not seeing the results I want?”
“How can i fix my digital marketing strategy?”

If you find yourself asking these questions, don’t worry — you’re not alone. You are among the people who do not have a proper digital marketing strategy in place for your business.
In this article, you are going to learn to fix the problems in your digital marketing strategy.
According to the Managing Digital marketing research report, nearly half (45%) of companies don’t yet have a planned digital marketing strategy.
However, if you do have a digital marketing strategy and yet find that it’s not giving the results you expect, here are some questions you should think about:

  • Have you established the right goals?
  • Are you looking at the right metrics?
  • Do you have the right tools to evaluate the results of your campaigns?
  • Are you struggling to make sense of all the data you’re gathering?

Information overload is a real struggle

Too much information is overwhelming. With too much data at our fingertips, monitoring and measuring success can be tedious and time-consuming. This is why it’s important to know what to focus on and what to leave out.
With a ton of metrics to be tracked on a daily basis, it’s a tough job to navigate the right metrics to know whether your digital marketing efforts are actually helping you fulfill your business goals.

A recent LinkedIn report shows that 50% of digital marketers in India rely on inaccurate metrics.
So if you want to ensure that your digital marketing strategy is working to fetch you the results you’re looking for, let us walk you through five steps that will help you achieve that.

1. Plan

Failing in planning means failing in getting results.
The first step to making your digital marketing process more results-driven is to be sure you have clear goals. If you’ve already established your goals, take the time to evaluate those goals.
Begin with collecting as much information as you can about your business and industry as. This will include:

  • The trends that impact your business, such as seasonal slumps or peaks in sales so you can tweak your marketing campaigns accordingly.  
  • The past achievements and failures of your business, such as marketing campaigns that were successful and the ones that weren’t.
  • Market research to see what your competitors are doing, what’s working and what’s not.

Also, it’s important to narrow down your goals to make sure you’re hitting the nail on its head.
For example, instead of a vague goal like “make more sales”, go for something more specific, such as “increase sales of X product/service by X% by the 2nd quarter”.
Such clear-cut goals help to make your marketing campaigns more focused and easier for you to identify the actions that will get you the result.

Related Article8 Step approach of a Successful Digital Marketer

2. Implement

It’s another very important step to drive results.
Many people plan but only few implement.
You have to figure out how you can implement the digital marketing strategy that you have planned in the first step.
Create all the processes with action points, Fix the calendar and complete the tasks one by one.
A good way to start is by identifying your target audience and creating your customer profile. The objective here is to know exactly who you’re going to market to.

For example, if you’re targeting new moms to buy baby products from your online store, your social media activities and online ad campaign need to be designed around that demographic.
Because you have pinpointed exactly who you are marketing to and which product you are trying to sell, your digital marketing strategy is much more actionable and likely to produce results.

Related Article8 Steps to Develop a Google Ads Strategy for Any Business

3. Track

Now, it comes to making sure that your goals are relevant and measurable. How to do that? Focus on metrics like revenue per lead by source or an estimated sales value of each new lead.
For instance, if you know which of your leads are most likely to convert and where they are coming from, you can continue to invest in those channels. Likewise, this will help you stop wasting your time and money on channels that won’t be the most profitable for you.
Carrying on with your marketing campaigns without knowing if they are actually working and what needs to be done to improve them can be a huge drain on your budget.
For a truly result-driven digital marketing strategy, you must track the progress of your campaigns and recognize specific ways to measure success. For example, if you’re running a social media ad campaign, the metrics you need to focus on are:

  • The “impressions” your posts are generating
  • How engaging they are
  • Click rate or how many people are interacting with your post
  • Traffic or how many people are visiting your website

Related Article6 Simple social media hacks to convert contacts to contracts

You need to pay attention to each and every aspect of your digital marketing campaigns to understand how truly successful they are and which are the areas that need to be tweaked. Failing to do that, you may risk running an ineffective campaign for too long, and wasting your money as a result.
Here are some tools that will help you at this stage:
Digital marketing analytics This helps you monitor and track critical aspects like the search engine rankings and social media performance of your business.
Testing tools – These enable you to test the different versions of a marketing message or a feature on your website. For example, testing the headlines of your email campaigns or different versions of sign-up forms will let you determine which option will get you higher conversions.
Event-based tools These will allow you to look at the actions that visitors perform on your website or mobile app.
Visual behaviour tools – These tools let you track which areas of your website are more engaging to visitors and where they are spending more time. For example, when you gain insights like which are the most heavily clicked areas on your website, you can place your call-to-action buttons there for maximum impact.

4. Interpret

After you have collected data and gained insights into your campaign’s performance, you’ll be better positioned to determine where to allocate your budget for increased ROI.
There can be many ways to interpret what you discovered in the earlier steps.
For one, you must put more time, effort, and resources into channels that generate higher quality leads and offer maximum potential for conversions.
If you don’t seem to be getting results from a particular channel, it means your product/service is probably not for the users and demographic of that channel. This will require you to take another look at your audience profile or try another more suitable channel. 
Evaluating the insights will also help you understand whether you need to readjust your goals. Maybe you’re setting up objectives that are too ambitious for your business at the moment and that’s why your marketing efforts are falling short of expectations. Or perhaps, you’re meeting your goals too easily and need more challenging goals to see better end results. 
Armed with this information, you’ll need to tweak, rinse, and repeat your digital marketing strategy until you see the outcomes you’re looking for. 

5. Optimize

Based on Interpretation you’ll have to optimize the required platforms and campaigns.
After understanding which activity is giving you better results, you’ll have to focus more or less on the respective activity.

For example, if you have many pages ranking on the 2nd page of google for commercial keywords, you can optimize your webpages in such a manner that they come to the 1st page of google. This optimization will give you instant results.

Related ArticleStep by Step Guide To Develop a Search Engine Strategy for Your Business 

For a digital marketing strategy to be successful and effective, it needs to be result-driven. If you’re not driving profits through your online campaigns, it’s time to put your strategy under the scanner.  
It might seem like an overwhelming process with a whole bunch of metrics to be tracked, but knowing which of them apply to your business and monitoring them using appropriate tools can make all the difference. 
We’re hoping this guide will ease some of that confusion and help you create a digital marketing strategy that actually works for your business.
Our coach Mr. Sharan Kulkarni is on the mission to help people make a result-driven digital marketing strategy for their business.

Do you want to learn Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies?

Make an advance payment of Rs.2000 to attend 3 modules.

Proven SEO Strategy for All Kind of Businesses

Proven SEO Strategy for All Kind of Businesses

Do you want to crack the code on how you can use SEO to grow your business and get more leads and sales?

You may have heard the SEO success stories of other people and now you want the same for your business. That’s great, but here’s a reminder — SEO is not an option. You simply cannot ignore SEO if you want to survive and succeed in today’s business landscape.

But where do you begin? Which SEO strategies would work for your business?
Before diving straight into the application of SEO techniques, it’s important to find answers to these questions and put a plan into place. That’s where the need for a solid SEO strategy comes in. 

Without a strategy, not only will you feel lost but also lose time, money, and opportunities. You won’t see the results you’re looking for and it may even damage your website’s reputation and presence online.

What types of unethical tactics should you avoid? How to prevent your site from getting penalized by Google?
A proper SEO strategy will help you navigate the tricky waters of search engine rankings while helping you steer clear of any shady practices that may put your brand at risk.

So, if you’re looking to make SEO work for your business in 2020, we have you covered. But before we get into the step-by-step process to create an SEO strategy, let’s quickly take a glance at what SEO actually is.

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the way to drive high-quality traffic to your website and simultaneously boost your brand’s presence, reach, and lead generation through organic (or non-paid) search engine results.
Simply put, SEO is all about making changes to the web pages on your site in a way that they are understood and preferred by search engines better than those of your competitors. This puts your website among the top positions on search engine result pages (SERP) for a particular query, so you have a better chance of being seen by your target audience.

1. Understanding whether you need SEO

As we mentioned before, SEO is a must-have for businesses these days. But if you still wish to assess your need for SEO, as yourself the following questions?

  • Are you witnessing less conversions? 
  • Are you struggling to compete in your market?
  • Do you want to reach more customers? 
  • Do you want to get more good-quality leads?
  • Are your customers spending more time online?

If the answers to these questions are “yes”, then your business needs SEO and you need to have a strategy to make it work. 

2. Finalizing goals

In this step, you need to identify the goals you’re looking to fulfill through SEO. For your SEO outcomes to benefit your business, make sure that these goals are aligned to your business objectives.

For example, if you want to increase your sales, then it makes sense to adopt SEO strategies that are focused on converting your site visitors into paying customers. Plus, through tactics like retargeting, you can attract existing customers and encourage them to become repeat buyers.
Similarly, if your aim is to create a buzz around your business and increase customer awareness, your SEO strategy should focus on brand building and promotion. 

3. Spying on your competitors

Clueless as to where to begin? Simple, keep a watch on your competitors. In this context, “spying” means knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your closest competitors in business. This will help you gain new ideas and learn from their mistakes. So when you know what your competitors are up to, you’ll be better positioned to plan out your next move.
Wondering how to do that? Check out this list of tools that allow you to collect a host of information on your competition.

Related Article12 Affordable Digital Marketing Tools To Spy On Your Competitors (Like A Boss)

4. Doing keyword research

Are you still guessing the keywords your customers might be using while searching for your products/ services? Or, are you still entering random keywords into a tool and hoping for good results? 
These are impractical and often blind-sided ways to go about SEO keywords research. So, when you do it this way, you end up optimizing content around phrases that will probably give you mediocre results at best. In other words, it can be a hit or miss.
Now is the time to put the guessing game to rest. One of the most effective tactics is to find the exact keywords that your competitors already rank for. This cuts down your time for research and gives you those keywords that have good potential. You can choose from a bunch of different tools to find keywords that your competitors are using — SEMrush is one of them.

5. Choosing different keyword types for different goals

Not all keywords are meant fulfil the same purpose. For example, transactional keywords and informational keywords are used to target buyers in different stages of customer lifecycle.
While transactional keywords (contain words like “buy”, “sale”, “rent” etc.) are typically meant for ready-to-buy customers, informational keywords (include “where”, “when”, “how”, etc.) are used by customers in the awareness phase when they are still searching for information prior to making purchase decisions.
Along with the purpose, the way these keywords can help you rank on SERPs is also different. Transactional keywords are suited for landing pages, category pages, and service pages of the websites. Informational keywords, on the other hand, perform best when used in blogs and articles.
In one of our previous articles, we discussed the differences between these two categories of keywords in depth. You can check it out here.

6. Estimating the efforts and time required

SEO can be time-consuming and the returns are rarely immediate. Therefore, it’s essential to set realistic expectations at the outset.
The amount of time and effort you’re willing to put into your SEO campaigns will depend on factors like your business goals, budget, type of customers, competitors, etc. For example, if you’re planning to rank highly for a large number of keywords against many competitors, you’ll have to spend more time than someone who is looking to rank locally.
It’s true that the more time you invest, the better payoff you can expect. But, whether or not you should invest a certain number of hours into your SEO efforts is something you have to figure out after understanding your business needs and the role SEO plays in it.

7. Doing on-page and off-page SEO

Your SEO efforts should be a concerted mix of on-page and off-page SEO. For the uninitiated, on-page SEO takes place within the site, while off-page SEO happens outside the site.
For instance, on-page SEO refers to elements within your website that you can optimize such as the content and the underlying code. Off-page SEO refers to activities performed to boost your site’s credibility, reputation, and authority through inbound links and social signals.
Both on-page SEO and off-page SEO are important when it comes to driving valuable traffic to your website. You just need to understand the way both work and how to implement them in your strategy for maximum benefit.

8. Implementing advanced SEO

Have you noticed how some search results appear in a box-like format at the top right side of the SERPs? Well, this is known as a Knowledge Graph.
Rich snippets are another form of structured information that appears in the space between the URL and description in the SERPs.
Google’s Knowledge Graph and structured snippets both play critical roles in entity-based search and are particularly helpful for e-commerce businesses.
These advanced SEO elements allow website owners to add more details about their website and its content, which makes their websites better understood by search engines. This is done by including a piece of code in a specific format that’s understandable to search engines, which read the code and create rich snippets.
When done well, this extra step can take your SEO outcome from ordinary to outstanding.

9. Using search console to improve the ranking of every webpage

This is perhaps one of the best yet an understated SEO trick in the book. Google Search Console (former Google Webmaster Tools) is one of the most powerful SEO tools at your disposal.
It’s a free service by Google that enables you to manage your website’s search functionality. Not only does it help you to optimize your search engine rankings, but it also helps you identify and fix errors that could weigh down your website’s rank in the SERPs.
There’s a host of other benefits of using a search console, but one this thing is certain — it’s a vital tool that can make a world of difference in your SEO results.

Related ArticleThe Definitive SEO Guide to Growing Small and Medium Businesses 

With these proven strategies in place, you’ll be on your way to take your company’s SEO to the next level. 
But here’s something you need to remember. As with everything else in digital marketing, building an SEO strategy is not the end of the road. You need to keep monitoring, measuring, and tweaking your SEO efforts to experience the advantages that SEO offers.
If you’re planning to employ SEO to grow your business or looking to improve the outcomes of your existing campaigns, start from the drawing board. While it might look like a step back, taking your time to strategize your SEO efforts could pay dividends far into the future.
Related ArticleStep by Step Guide To Develop a Search Engine Strategy for Your Business

Do you want to learn Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies?

Make an advance payment of Rs.2000 to attend 3 modules.

8 Steps to Develop a Google Ads Strategy for Any Business

8 Steps to Develop a Google Ads Strategy for Any Business

Do you want to use Google  like a growth machine?
Do you know that Google Ads are more effective when used with proper strategy?
Are you using Google Ads in a way that gives you the best bang for your buck?
Or, you are simply picking a bunch of keywords and creating your Google Ads around them.
If yes, then it’s a recipe for failure.
Why?

Because while Google Ads certainly work and they can give you nearly-immediate results, running a few ads and hoping to reap massive success from them can lead to disappointments.
For one, this ad-hoc approach won’t give you the results you desire.
You’ll end up wasting time and money on campaigns that probably won’t drive conversions.
And, even if they do, you might not be able to identify which campaigns are showing results and which aren’t.
For instance, you won’t know for sure if a lead or sale you’ve received has been driven by your Google ads or not.  

The key to success lies in the right strategy

Most of the business owners fail to succeed because of the wrong strategy when they don’t know the right steps to get results from Google Ads.
While the promise of driving low-cost, highly-targeted, and high conversion campaigns on the world’s most popular search engine sounds lucrative, you won’t get these benefits unless you have a strategy in place.
Like any successful marketing campaign, it all starts with planning. If you’re just getting started with Google Ads, this may seem a bit challenging.
In this article, we’ll walk you through Eight steps to plan out a Google Ads strategy for success.  

1. Pick a goal for your campaign

The purpose of this step is pretty straightforward. To pinpoint why you’re creating a particular campaign. This is to ensure your campaign fulfills a specific goal for your business.
Google can make some automatic suggestions for what goals you can choose for your campaign.
It could be getting more leads, more sales, driving more traffic to your website, increasing your brand awareness, and so on.

Related ArticleSupercharge Your Leads from Google Ads With These Simple Steps

After you select a specific goal for your campaign, you have the option to tweak it further with features and settings.
While you can add or remove a goal at any point of time, remember that goals also serve as a benchmark for gauging the success of your campaign, so setting up goals is always a great way to start.

2. Finalize the campaign type to achieve the goal

After you set up the campaign goals, it’s time to select the type of campaign you’d like to run in order to fulfill those goals.
Your choice of the campaign will determine where your target customers will see your ads. Also, the settings and options available to you will vary accordingly.
Here are the types of campaigns you can choose from:
Search: These are text ads that help you attract customers who are interested in your product or service.
Display: You can run these ads across the web using images and banners.
Shopping: These are specifically purchase-oriented ads where buying/selling is involved.
Video: These ads use videos to reach and engage viewers on YouTube and elsewhere on the web.
App: These ads are focused on driving app installs across Google’s networks.

3. Identify your target audience

This step involves finding your target audience.
Keywords are at the heart of Google Ads and because these words are used by your target audience while searching for a product/service, it’s critical to determine the right audience.

  • Use information such as demographics — age, gender, location and spending habits — to interests and preferences to define exactly who you want to reach. 
  • Use insights from your existing customer data to refine your audience profile further. 
  • Identify which stage of the buyer journey they are at for a particular campaign e.g. first-time buyers, existing subscribers, etc.

Google Ads is set up to assist you in selecting the most appropriate ad format and positioning for your audience and your goals. So if you find the process a little daunting, you can let AdWords make some basic decisions for you. 

4. Create the keywords list

Selecting the right keywords can make or break your Google Ads campaign.
Some tips to do it right:

  • Rather than using general keywords related to your business, decide on 10-20 possible search queries that closely match your campaign. 
  • Just like in SEO, long-tail keywords help fare better than generic ones. 
  • The more specific your keywords, the better e.g. ‘women’s sports t-shirts Bangalore’. These types of keywords will improve the targeting of your ads, reducing their chances of being shown to searchers who are unlikely to convert.
  • All keywords come with an estimated value; the more popular they are, the lesser chances you have of getting seen on the first page, plus, the more you’ll pay per click. Therefore, focus on lesser-used keywords for better positioning and ROI – Keyword Planner can help with this.

5. Develop your campaign assets

Assets are the elements needed to create ads while running a campaign. These can be banners or images (display ads), video (for video ads), text and landing pages (for search ads), and so on.
Make sure you use appealing texts, headlines and descriptions, eye-catching visuals, and impactful audio to attract and engage your audience.
Your assets should align with the specific goals of your campaigns as well as those of your business.

6. Setting up the conversion tracking

Can you monitor and analyze the actions that visitors take when they land on your website, such as filling out the contact form, subscribing to your email list, or downloading a resource?
Without being able to tie every conversion to your campaigns, it’s difficult for you to track what’s working and what’s not.
This is why it’s imperative that you measure and attribute the conversions to your campaigns. That’s where AdWords conversion tracking comes in.
Setting up conversion tracking is simple and the process begins when you define a conversion goal for your Google Ads campaign.
After you’ve specified your desired conversion action, such as a sale, opt-in or call, you’re on your way to track data. Here’s how you can start tracking conversions:

  • Select a conversion source
  • Create a conversion action
  • Personalize the tracking options as per your goals
  • Install the conversion tracking code

7. Create a campaign

Depending on your campaign goals and type, now it’s time to create a messaging for your campaign that’s relevant, engaging, and convincing.
Remember, while creativity can be alluring, what’s more important is to deliver your message in a simple and hard-hitting way that persuades your target audience to take your desired action. After all, the end goal is always a conversion.
To this end, your campaign should not just have eye-grabbing content, but also a strong call-to-action that will guide people to take the next step.

8. Optimize the campaign

Creating a successful Google Ads campaign doesn’t stop with clicking on “run”. After the ad is live, you need to monitor it at least once a week to track progress and make the required tweaks here and there.
Here are some basic metrics you should track:
Impressions – the number of people who saw your ad
Clicks – the number of people who clicked on your ad
Click-through rate – the number of people who were led to your website through the ad 
If your ad isn’t performing as it should, you’ll need to optimize it, which means making changes that will drive the desired results. So, if your ad has few impressions, try working with different keywords. If your ad suffers from less clicks, maybe you should reconsider your targeting. Poor click-through? Revisit your copy or messaging. Not getting enough conversions? Improve your landing page.

Related Article4 Proven Ways To Reduce Google Ads CPC

Finally, remember that like any other plan, it’s important to be patient and follow-through from time to time to ensure your Google Ads strategy is working at its best.
Hopefully, you’ll find this guide helpful whether your Google Ads efforts weren’t as fruitful as you’d have liked in the past or you’ve just dipped your toes in the world of Google Ads.
Either way, there’s a whole world of benefits you can unlock for your business if you learn to do it right. We have designed a free webinar to guide all business owners while making their search engine strategies.

Related ArticleStep by Step Guide To Develop a Search Engine Strategy for Your Business

 

Do you want to learn Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies?

Make an advance payment of Rs.2000 to attend 3 modules.

Step by Step Guide To Develop a Search Engine Strategy for Your Business

Step by Step Guide To Develop a Search Engine Strategy for Your Business

You do SEO and SEM but do you have a strategy to make it work for you?
You are spending money on SEO and SEM but do you have systems to track the growth ?

If not yet then it is the time for you to take action and design a search engine strategy for your business to fix these issues.
So, how do you use search engine tactics to crush the competition?
How do you use them effectively to grow your business online?

That’s what a search engine strategy is all about.
While most businesses realize that they need to have a search engine strategy in place, few have an integrated plan to grow their online presence and engage their audiences effectively.
In fact, it is estimated that 49% of organizations do not have a clearly defined online marketing strategy.
However, that’s easier said than done. Ranking high on SERPs is becoming insanely competitive and driving your business online has become more difficult than ever.
Companies of all sizes are scrambling to stay at the top of the search engine rankings. But, achieving this requires more than simple SEO fixes here and there.
“It requires a comprehensive strategy.”

Time and Money Wasted

“I’ve spent more than ‘X’ amount of money on SEO but didn’t get any quality leads. It’s a waste of time.”
Every once in a while, we hear someone talking about their failed online marketing efforts.
Often, they make such bold claims and go on to blame internet marketing channels.
In truth, marketing campaigns — be it online or offline, SEO or SEM — without a strategy is doomed for failure.
If you’re not seeing the desired results from your search engine activities, then probably you’re going by ‘let’s throw it at the wall and see what sticks’ mentality.
Or, simply your campaigns are being handled by an incompetent team.
Whatever be the reason, one thing is for certain — your search engine marketing isn’t working because it wasn’t done correctly.
 In the absence of a clear and focused strategy, your search engine activities won’t generate the desired results.

What is a Search Engine?

We all know how to use Google, which is nothing but a search engine. So what is it really?
A search engine is software that allows internet users to search for the information they are looking for.
When users type the keywords into a search engine and hit “enter”, it generates a list of content in the form of websites, images, videos or other online data.
This list of content is referred to as a search engine results page or SERP.
In other words, search engines answer users’ queries by offering the most relevant and informative content.
 And this is one of the basic reasons for businesses to focus on creating high-quality content that provides answers and solutions to their target audience. 

What is SEO?

It is the practice of optimizing (making changes) the web pages in such a manner that your web pages are liked and understood by search engines better than others.
As a result of it search engines would prefer your web pages over other web pages while showing the results on search engine result pages (SERP) for a particular query.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of driving more high-quality traffic to your website, while also enhancing your brand awareness and visibility through non-paid (also known as “organic”) search engine results.
It may seem like SEO has everything to do with the search engines, but the truth is, it is just as much about people — the users — as well.
Understanding this is critical because ultimately, the point of SEO is to help people get proper answers to their queries online.
So, a business needs to be mindful about the words people are using and the type of content they wish to consume. This will help them connect with and engage the people who are searching online for the solutions you offer.

What is SEM?

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is a marketing technique that allows businesses to use paid advertisements — often known as pay-per-click ads — that appear on search engine results pages (or SERPs) to attract ready-to-buy customers.
Advertisers bid on keywords that search engine users might type in when looking for certain products or services.
Unlike, SEO which will organically earn you a spot on the SERPs by having the most relevant content for a given keyword search, SEM is a paid strategy and involves paying search engines for traffic and clicks.
However, both SEO and SEM should be fundamental parts of your search engine strategy. Why? Because while SEO is a powerful way to drive consistent traffic at the top of the funnel, search engine ads help to drive conversions at the bottom of the funnel in a cost-effective way.

Related ArticleThe Definitive SEO Guide to Growing Small and Medium Businesses

Steps to Develop an Integrated Search Engine Strategy

1. Identify your business goals

The first step to creating a search engine strategy is to understand your business objectives and what goals you’re trying to accomplish through your search engine efforts.
Your overall focus is to drive more traffic to your website, but your goal should be more defined than that.
Therefore, you need to list down your goals — it could be increasing your sale, creating a buzz around your brand, generating more leads, or establishing yourself as an authority figure in your industry. 
This is important because the traffic you’re meaning to drive needs to carry out certain specific actions in order to convert. Without clear goals,
 it’s hard to navigate your visitors in a way that they perform the actions that will bring the outcome you desire.

2. Identify search behavior

Having a clear sight of your business goals will help you refine your target audience by recognizing the search behavior of users.
You should gain insight into how consumers search using Google services like Keyword Planner, Search Console, and Google Trends.
You should also use search queries and SERPs to determine a user’s search intent, gaining an idea about their motivations and buying preferences.
You should carry out these steps to figure out the keywords that people interested in your products/services are searching for globally or locally within a specific area.
Doing this ensures your search engine strategy is targeted at buyers who are more likely to convert.

3. Identify and segregate keywords

In this step, you need to create your keyword lists and optimize your keyword strategy.
Think of the most relevant words pertaining to your product or service and the possible search queries your potential customers are likely to type when looking for this kind of product or service.
 You should use tools like the SEMrush SEO keyword tool to know the keywords your competitors are using.

Within this step, another important function is to understand and separate the two broad categories of keywords:

Transactional Keywords: These types of keywords (also referred to as “know” keywords) are typically used by buyers who have already searched for information, have made a purchase decision and are now ready to make a purchase.
Such keywords feature words like “buy”, “sale”, “rent” etc. For example, “buy black leather shoes”. As you can see, these keywords are more specific and they may describe the product or service more precisely.
Informational Keywords: These are keywords that people are searching for information typically before making any purchase decisions.
These keywords usually contain words like “how”, “where,” “when,” and so on. While these keywords have high search volume, they don’t help much indirect conversions. 

4. Build landing pages with transactional keywords

Landing pages are the pages where people enter into your website (Generally they have any commercial intent).
As transactional keywords allow businesses to directly target people who have the intention to buy a product or service, they are the perfect candidate to be included in landing page content.
Because most people are actively looking to buy products or services when they are searching for transactional keywords.
Through proper use of these keywords, you can lead potential buyers to your landing page and provide the information they need to make a purchase.
Generally, the main service pages, category pages and product pages are giving us more business so these are landing pages.

5. Create blogs with informational keywords

People ask questions when they need information and when you answer these questions they take you as an advisor.
Informational keywords are great to target customers in the awareness phase. These are people who are just beginning to realize their need for a product or service.
 By creating blogs that answer the “how”, “what”, and “ways to” types of queries, you help potential customers know more about a topic, a problem, product, or service.
If your potential customers are getting answers to their problems or queries by you again and again they become your loyal fans and they start taking or recommending your products or services whenever they require.

6. Rank the landing pages for transactional keywords and blogs for informational keywords

Now your goal should be to rank for all the transactional keywords at the top of the search engine result pages. (No matter how)
You should use SEM or PPC to rank from day 1 to rank on top 3 positions in SERPs for all commercial keywords.
If you do not rank ASAP you lose to your competitor.
After you have segregated your transactional and informational keywords and included them within the content of your landing pages and blogs respectively, it’s time to take action to make sure they rank for those keywords.
 Depending on whether you’re looking for organic growth in SERPs or faster results through paid ads, build your SEO or SEM action plan to meet your online marketing goals.  
Your SEO strategy should be started parallely for transactional and informational keywords so that over the period of time your cost per acquisition or cost per lead can be reduced.

7. Create systems to collect data in form of cookies and leads

This step is very much important to understand the type of people coming to your website and to retarget them.
In this age of data, collecting data of potential and existing customers should be a top priority for all businesses.
 Not only does it provide a steady supply of high-quality leads, but also helps fine-tune your marketing campaigns.
This can be done in a number of different ways. You can set up cookies, which can be used to identify unique users and store information about them for future campaigns via Google Analytics. You must also build your email list.
 For this, you can use email capture or opt-ins on various pages of your website to collect email addresses of customers legally.
You should use facebook pixel (to collect the cookies from facebook and instagram campaigns), google tracking codes (to collect the cookies from google campaigns), google analytics code (to collect the cookies of paid and organic visitors), UTM parameters (To understand and analyze the traffic source and mediums) and email tracking codes (To collect cookies from email campaigns)

To Know More About How to Generate Leads, Read this BlogSupercharge Your Leads from Google Ads With These Simple Steps

The key here is to take the analytical approach and improve the performance of our digital marketing campaigns day by day.
If we have these systems in place our results get better day by day and we win the game.

8. Build a remarketing strategy for better results

Remarketing (also known as retargeting) is a technique to draw those people into your sales funnel who have already had online interactions with your business.
The idea behind this practice is that customers familiar with a business are more likely to engage with their advertising.
So someone who has browsed your website or used your app, for example, can be remarketed to by ads to persuade them to come back and sign up for free trials of products/services.
Remarketing is a powerful activity, which has shown to generate more conversions — a retargeted website visitor is 70% more likely to convert on an offer than a new visitor. Because he has already seen your brand before.
Although, how you set up your remarketing campaign depends on your business goals and target customers.
Retarget them at every possible place using the tracking codes you have set up in the previous step so that they do not forget the activity they have performed on your web page or app. Finally, remember to monitor success, track your goals, and assess your strategy from time to time. Establish and evaluate your performance data, such as your sales goal, ad clicks, and impressions, etc. to make sure you’re on the right track.
Whether your search engine strategy didn’t take off as intended or you never had one to begin with, we hope this guide helped you understand some of the basics and primary steps to get started with an effective search engine strategy. If you want to know in detail about such search engines strategies for your own business attend our free webinar on “search engine strategy and planning.”

Learn the exact fail-proof system that we use for our clients to convert their social media contacts to contracts without playing the guesswork game or spending a ton of money

5 Growth Hacks To Build Relevant Social Media Followers

5 Growth Hacks To Build Relevant Social Media Followers

Building social media followers is one of the greatest and most effective digital marketing strategies to build your brand and enhance ROI.
Studies say that 71% of consumers/social media followers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family.
For Social Proof you need a good number of social media followers and reviews. Studies show that 97% of consumers say online reviews impact their purchasing decisions. Hence, social proof is necessary for building your brand image.
So, keep in mind that your most crucial social media strategy is to enhance your social media followers and then convert them into your loyal fans.

Related Article- 
6 Simple Social Media Hacks to Convert Contacts to Contracts

However, without the presence of the relevant followers in your niche, your social media strategies and content strategy will go in vain, causing you many losses in your business.
So growing social media followers would indeed help the business to grow their customer base and sales on the online platforms.
If you don’t have enough audience on Social Media Pages, prospective customers will hesitate to buy from you.
If you don’t have an audience who is not eagerly waiting for your content, then these are the consequences:

  1. Less Engagement as you are reaching the wrong audience
  2. Less Engagement gives a negative signal to algorithms of the Social Media Platforms
  3. This Leads to Lesser Organic Reach for all future posts on Social Media Platforms
  4. This will also kill the presence of your Social Media Platforms

Here are the 5 growth hacks to build your relevant Social Media Followers  –

1. Run a Loyal Fan Contests

A loyal fan contest is a contest to get genuine social media followers. These followers  would interact and get engaged with your contests and this is how your contests will reach out to more people and that will get you many new followers too.
Your contest strategy includes the specific target audience research and find out their aspirations.
The content for the contest has to address the pain points or aspirations of the target group.
Giveaway should be something which is in the bucket list of your Target Group or any necessary thing for them and then set rules for the contest to make them follow your Social Media Pages.
Once you decide your giveaway, promote this across social media channels where the cost per reach is minimal. For example –  Promote it on FB and Instagram
Example Contest – Iva bags Fan Page Contest

5 Growth Hacks To Build Relevant Social Media Followers

 

In this contest(above), the target audience was all the assumed Set of people who were girls and women interested in buying “trendy bags”.
When they were offered this free trendy bag, they were asked to like the page, tag their friends, share the message on social media.
This is how they were able to reach out to the friends and followers of the people who were interacting with the contest and in result they got many organic and loyal followers who would always wait for such contests.
Expert tip – Once your contest is over then you need to retarget all the engaged followers and website custom audience with your core content to make them your brand advocates. This is how the word of mouth about your brand will increase and so more sales and more loyal customers..

2. Run Paid Facebook Like Campaign

Running paid facebook like campaigns is one of the most effective ways to increase the followers. Before running the paid facebook like campaigns you need to identify the people who might be interested in your brand as well as in the posts you share on social media.
All you have to do is create Images, Carousel or a video advertisements to communicate the benefit of following your social media pages
Examples 

  • Like our page to get a free seat to our Workshops or Webinars. 
  • Like our page to get Free Case study on Digital Marketing Customer Acquisition.

Expert tip – For your paid like campaigns, the below mentioned audience should be targeted

  1. All the people who have engaged with you web assets and not followed your page 
  2. Facebook and Instagram Engaged Fans who have not followed your pages  
  3. Databases that you have collected from all your marketing activities excluding the people who have followed the page 
  4. Lookalikes of your existing customers and leads who have not liked your Social Media Pages

3. Share your Social Media Pages on all the Social Media Groups and Forums

Social media groups and forums are the best sources to enhance your follower base. Hence, share your social media posts as your page in the related groups and forums of your niche in order to get more visits to your social media pages and communicate the benefit for following your social Media Pages.

4. Integrate Social Media Follow Icons on all your web assets

Integrate Social Media icons on all your web assets is one of the effective methods to increase traffic to your social media platforms.
When you add social media profile links to web assets, the users can easily navigate to your social media channels to know more about your business, contact you and to share your content. In this process many people will follow your social media pages to get updates about the offerings and knowledge you share there.

5 Growth Hacks To Build Relevant Social Media Followers

Incorporating these buttons into your site shouldn’t just be a case of copying the standard Facebook, Twitter and YouTube logos and cramming them into an empty corner. Instead, try to blend them seamlessly into your brand and website design

5. Provoke your Existing audience to Share, Comment and like

In your Video and Blog content , incentivize or provoke people to like,comment and share. This will help you to attract the Social Media Friends of your  followers.
Having a good number of comments, shares and likes is the key for getting higher organic reach.
When you get more likes and comments, your business becomes more legitimate to the people and it is more likely to get prioritised when facebook serves your content.

Conclusion:
Following all the above strategies will help you to gain the relevant followers who are eagerly waiting for your content. They will engage with every content you produce and this will eventually help in increasing organic reach and also you will do justice for all the content you create and make your prospective buyers comfortable to buy from you.

Related Article-
11 Step Content Creation Strategy To Convert Your Contacts To Contracts

If you are interested to learn more hacks like this you can attend our free digital marketing webinar.

 

Learn the exact fail-proof system that we use for our clients to convert their social media contacts to contracts without playing the guesswork game or spending a ton of money

6 Simple social media hacks to convert contacts to contracts

6 Simple social media hacks to convert contacts to contracts

Nowadays businesses have so many social media followers but none of them buys your products or services.

Studies show that 55% of consumers say that they would boycott brands whose views don’t align with theirs and on average all the brands do not even have the overall engagement rate of 1% on their social platforms.

It is possible that your business may have a huge fan following on social media. However, the challenge occurs when your followers fail to convert when your brand is not transparent or appealing to customers or not meeting customer expectations.
According to research studies, 53% of consumers say they’re likely to buy from brands that are transparent on social media.

Most of the time we are unable to take the highest advantage of our social media followers as we are not able to convert them into our customers.
Having thousands of inactive followers on your social media profiles is meaningless if you can’t make them buy your products or services.

All the money that you spend in order to get followers gets wasted without the strategy to convert your contacts (Followers) into Contracts (Customers).

What exactly can you do to convert your contacts to contracts?
What is it that hinders your social media fans from converting?
Your first crucial step is to find out the shortcomings in your social media strategy that reduce the engagement rates as well as sales.
But don’t worry. We have the solution for you!

Here are the 6 simple social media hacks to convert contacts to contracts

1. Understand your Target Audience problems

The initial step to convert social media followers to brand advocates is to understand your target audience’s problems. You need to identify and understand the pain points, fears, frustrations and aspirations of your particular niche customers.

The better you understand your target audience, the better your content strategy and brand communication methods will be.  This will enable you to design the most effective social media strategy and planning to each specific target group through relevant content, videos, infographics etc.

As the depth of your target audience insight grows, it brings increased ROI and higher conversion rates by turning your social media list to loyal fans.
Hence, understanding the problems of your target market has to be based on audience research which needs your willingness to study each and every likes and dislikes, interests and expectations of your particular niche social media fans.

It is when you can offer what they want through your products or services, your contacts turn into contracts and you get the actual sales.

So, the success of any business does not start with “Sales”, but from “knowing your customers”!

2. Solve your target audience problems through blog and video content

Now when you already know the problems of your followers, the next step is to craft the most suited and personalized content that solves the specific target audience’s problems.

To create content that connects to your potential social media brand advocates, it is essential to answer all the WH questions related to their problems like why should you create a masterpiece content of their problems addressing your target audiences’ pain points, fears,  frustrations and aspirations.

As you create a blog or video, you need to make sure that your target audience finds it useful or it solves their problems or fulfil their aspirations.

Don’t aim for just clicks, shares and page views, rather have an intent to solve problems of your prospective customers and aim for a long-lasting customer-brand relationship, which ultimately increases engagement rates and convert followers to fans. Let your content be a trusted resource that readers can count on.

By solving your target audience’s problems through blog and video content, you create a cost-effective content strategy, gain a better competitive edge and improved conversion rates by converting your social media followers to brand advocates.

“The actual game changer is to find your Content Core and talk about what your audience cares about”.

Related article
Content Strategy that Converts your Contacts to Contracts.

3. Update them with the latest information using image and infographic content

Rather than lengthy words, visual content is more appreciated by your social media fans. Infographics are not just a visual display of content in an appealing way, it is the simpler and most effective marketing tool to communicate your message to your target audience.

You need to create infographics in such a way that your prospects and existing customers enjoy it and feel compelled to share it with their friends and followers.
An infographic is attractive when it is well presented with relevant content that solves customer problems. Putting your logo in each infographics is a way to imprint your brand image in your existing customer minds.

When you also add embed code in the infographics, you are able to track the number of visits and potential reach of it.

“Updating the latest information through Infographics and image content is one of the easiest, less time consuming and impactful content strategies to drive back huge traffic to your blog or social media channels”.

4. Engage Them with frequent contests

Engaging your audience with frequent contests (once a month or once in 45 days) on social media is one of the great strategies to improve your Social Media engagements.

The objective of running social media contests is to increase their participation level as well as the number of active users.
Social media contests that offer a free giveaway product or service that fulfill the bucket lists/ interests/ aspirations of your target audience are more likely to get more attraction and engagement.

Examples of running engaging contests can be “like and/or comment to win”, giveaways, lucky winner contests, photo caption contests, best comment contest etc.

For Digitechniks, we run “fill in the blanks contests” for which we give away our exclusive marketing ebooks. Once in 45 days, we run social media contests where we give Digital Media Strategy and Mentorship Program for free to our target customers.

Results from contests: In this way, social media contests are cost-effective social media strategy to enhance the engagement and that will in turn increase the reach of your social Media Posts. It is run to build brand awareness, engage and delight your current customers.

When you run frequent contests, your social media page engagement rate will be higher with more visits, shares, page views and likes. In this way, your traffic to site is increased with higher conversion rates and better ROI.

People who participate in your contest will always wait for the next contest because it’s fun. These are the people who’ll later become your customers or brand advocates.

5. Make your social media channels as the encyclopedia of your niche

The best tactics to convert your social media fans to brand advocates is to give every possible information about your niche on your social media channels. 

The simple reason for your social media fans to get diverted to your competitor’s page is due to lack of relevant information in your page which they are searching for. When you help your social media followers with the information they want, they become loyal fans.

Hence, here the relevancy, quality, frequency, usefulness and adaptability of your information is the key. When all these components are combined in your social media content, your social media channel becomes the encyclopedia of your niche.

It is when your social media strategy works well and which in turn convert your social media list to loyal fans. When you cover your social media channels with all types of content that your prospects or existing customers are searching for.
This strategy prevents them from searching for similar social media channels where they might get hooked up with relevant information, which shift their focus and becomes your competitor’s loyal fan and buy their products.

“So, creating your social media channels as the encyclopedia of your niche is the one of the best Customer Retention Strategy and the most effective brand awareness tool to enhance your competitive edge and increase sales”. 

6. Retargeting Strategy

Your Retargeting Strategy is to make sure the content you create is reaching to all the social media followers. Your Social Media Followers should see all your content which is communicated to your target audience via  Email, Messenger and Retargeting. It is the best way to close a sale that did not convert before.

When you are developing your web assets, you need to build a system that will collect the data in the form of cookies and contacts.

The content that is created as a part of the content strategy, will get organic Reach on Search Engines and Social Media as well. Since Overall Organic reach to your list is less than 10% you have to use all the available Digital Marketing Platforms like Email Marketing, Messenger Marketing and Social Media retargeting.

Related article
List Building Strategies that Convert your List to Contracts

As soon as the content is posted on the Website and Social Media Channels, the same blog, video and infographic content should be sent to the email Subscribers, Messenger Subscribers and retarget all the people who have visited our web assets.
By doing this, you can save a lot of money by not reaching the wrong audience. Hence for converting your social media lists to loyal fans, your content should be shown only to the people who have shown interest in your product or services.

You can make your retargeting message impactful only when your content is personalized based on the specific target market. When a user visits your website through a search term, it shows that their intent is high level.

Hence, you need to show the same content with this search term in your next social media ads through different content in order to make your social media followers to brand advocates and improve sales conversion rates and ROI.

Here is the example –
Your content strategy begins with identifying the problems of the target audience. Once the problems are identified, create a blog/Video/Infographic content and show it to your list using paid and organic strategies.

Make your social media pages as the encyclopedia of your niche by frequently posting relevant images, videos,blog and infographics. Be the trusted educational partner of your niche through regular Social Media Postings.

Through this strategy, you will be able to convert social media lists to loyal Fans.
Are you interested to learn all of these strategies and tactics from our experienced Digital Marketing coaches?
Then, don’t miss this huge opportunity to attend our Free Digital Marketing Webinar to learn How you can also convert your, Social Media Followers, to contracts. 

Learn the exact fail-proof system that we use for our clients to convert their social media contacts to contracts without playing the guesswork game or spending a ton of money