Social media is everywhere, so your business must be active on several different platforms. However, the key to effective social media marketing goes far beyond simply having a few social media accounts.

Advantages. You must use your social channels properly and effectively — the more your audience is inspired to engage with your content, the more likely they are to share it, potentially inspiring their peers to become customers as well.

Disadvantages. It’s worth varying your content on different platforms — what works well on Twitter might not be as effective on Instagram, which is more visual. A common mistake for a business using social media is to fail to post frequently or get the tone of posts completely wrong. Again, know your audience, and what they want.

Read more about social media marketing here.

Email marketing. 

After more than two decades, email is still the quickest and most direct way to reach customers with critical information. Today, successful email campaigns must be incredibly engaging, relevant, informative, and entertaining to not get buried in your customer’s inbox.

To succeed, your marketing emails should satisfy five core attributes. They must be: 

• Trustworthy
• Relevant
• Conversational
• Coordinated across channels
• Strategic

Timing and scheduling are important — don’t bombard customers’ inboxes with repetitive or irrelevant messaging, or they could hit the unsubscribe button.

Here’s our blog on why email marketing still rules.   

Mobile marketing. 

Mobile devices are kept in our pockets, sit next to our beds, and are checked constantly throughout the day. This makes marketing on mobile incredibly important — two-thirds of consumers can recall a specific brand they have seen advertised on mobile in the last week — but mobile is also very nuanced considering its intimate nature.

Advantages. SMS, MMS, and in-app marketing are all options to reach your customers on their devices, but beyond that, you must consider the coordination of your marketing efforts across your other digital marketing channels.

Disadvantages. Privacy remains an issue — be careful with how you treat customer data.

See how mobile marketing can boost your campaign results.

Marketing automation. 

Marketing automation is an integral platform that ties all of your digital marketing together. In fact, companies that automate lead management see a 10% or more bump in revenue in six to nine months’ time. Without it, your campaigns will look like an unfinished puzzle with a crucial missing piece.

Marketing automation software:

• Streamlines marketing tasks and workflow
• Measures results
• Calculates the ROI of your digital campaigns

Marketing automation can help you gain valuable insight into which programs are working and which aren’t. And it will provide metrics to allow you to show digital marketing’s efforts on your company’s bottom line.

Learn more about whatffer in our guide Digital Mark101: Key Tools for 

Digital marketing roles.

The digital marketing industry incorporates several different jobs and roles, each requiring contrasting skillsets and characteristics — though some do complement one another. Key digital marketing roles include:

1. SEO. Responsible for search engine optimization, analysing the performance of websites, scoring against competitors, creating a data-based strategy to improve rankings.
2. Content. Including copywriters to create copy for websites, and strategists to plan campaigns, blog calendars and more.
3. Social media. Writing posts for various social media channels, planning and managing a calendar, responding to replies from customers.
4. PPC. Managing pay-per-click advertising campaigns, which includes overseeing budget and spend, tracking performance and recommending new approaches.
5. Lead Gen. Generating new leads for the business, whether by managing an outbound strategy or dealing with inbound queries.

 

ROI of a successful digital marketing program.

Digital marketing ROI (return on investment) involves much more than the up-front payback of standard banner ads. Organic content marketing is also a major player in the digital marketing space. 

1. Digital marketing reaches customers beyond advertisements. Some 70% of internet users want to learn about products through content versus traditional advertisements (MDG, 2014). 
2. Digital marketing drives content marketing. The top five B2B content marketing tactics are social media content (92%), e-newsletters (83%), articles on your website (81%), blogs (80%), and in-person events (77%) (source). 
3. Digital marketing is vital for SEO. The first organic search results on Google account for 32.5% of traffic share for a search term (Chitka)