Over the past few years, digital marketing (aka internet marketing) has, in some form or another, found a valuable and permanent place among the majority of South African corporations and agencies. And while traditional marketing is certainly still relevant, you’re more likely to find campaigns that incorporate both direct and online marketing tactics.
However, although digital marketing is widespread, there is still some confusion among clients as to what it involves, and what strategies are best suited to individual requirements and marketing goals. Each client is different, and therefore campaigns are generally tailored with this in mind.
Digital marketing is made up of a number of ‘strategies’ – each of them serves a different purpose, although the end goal is the same – driving valuable, relevant traffic to your site and helping convert one-time visitors into repeat, paying customers.
At Lima Bean, our tailored campaigns use a combination of the following:
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
By all accounts, this is the official ‘work horse’ of digital marketing. It’s effective and most marketers swear by it (although some tend to just swear at it.) This is largely because the main search engines are constantly updating and modifying their systems and algorithms in an effort to curb black-hat SEO tactics. Good SEO tactics will help a website rank organically for relevant keywords, drive valuable traffic, encourage conversions, and increase and maintain a website’s page rank.
Recently, however, there has been a lot of focus on the importance of Content Strategy and User Experience (UX). So much so that SEO is now becoming known as USO (User Satisfaction Optimisation), which makes sense. After all, your aim isn’t only to appeal to the search engines, but also (and perhaps more importantly), to visitors who navigate to the site.
Social Media
This is one of the ‘newest’ digital marketing strategies, and it is fast becoming one of the most popular, especially since it’s now possible to track engagement and ROI. There are a number of valuable social media platforms that companies can use, but the main ones are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and Google+. The beauty of social media is that it offers an open platform (not forgetting a massive target audience) from which brands and companies can engage, encourage and monitor their followers on a daily basis, while also keeping them up to date with the latest news and promotions that are running. For fans, contact with brands is merely a click away, and if those brands make sure they’re paying attention to the people posting questions, complaints or praise, it’s a point of contact and insight that they aren’t likely to get any other way.
Web PR
It works in much the same way as traditional PR except that online, your target audience is much bigger. Press releases and industry related articles are written, optimised and distributed to websites and online publications that are most suited to your brand. As with traditional PR, it’s important to build and maintain relationships with online editors and journalists who are likely to use your material and help gain exposure for your brand.
Blog Posts
Top quality, optimised blog posts are a convenient way to drive valuable traffic to your site. And the more often you post, the more traffic you get. It’s worth noting that with blog posts, quality trumps quantity, so it’s better to post two fantastic articles a month (with good back links), rather than churning out posts every few days. Also, the better quality your content is, the more website visitors (and search engines) will associate it with valuable information.
Digital Advertising
Promoting a brand, product or service online has never been easier. Google Adwords incorporates keyword research to create text ads, image ads and banner ads, among others. With Facebook advertising, segmentation is so specific that you can target not only different age groups and genders but also those with specific interests, so ultimately you’re reaching the right people.
Analytics
All the good, hard work that you put into optimising your website, driving traffic and increasing conversions may not be of any benefit if you aren’t able to track your efforts and see what’s working, what isn’t and what metrics you need to pay attention to. Most analytics programmes present extensive insight into website performance, so you can focus on any number of metrics. It really is an indispensable part of the digital marketing process and without it, it’s near impossible to gauge the success of your campaign.