Digital Marketing Tactics To Create Brand Awareness & Get More Leads

As more and more businesses are moving online, digital marketing has been one of the most effective ways to connect with customers and reach new markets. It enables businesses to flourish and spread more awareness for their brand. In response, the marketing and advertising industry has been constantly adapting and trying to keep up with this ever-changing digital landscape.

For those who have just started to explore the benefits of digital marketing, we have listed a few strategies and tactics that would help you jumpstart your marketing success in the digital world.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is essentially the process of increasing traffic to your website by improving your visibility in search engines. Examples of search engines are Google, Bing, Baidu, and so on.

Since consumers nowadays would most likely search for products or services on the internet before availing it, then improving your websites’ visibility in search results is one of the surefire ways to increase your exposure. You would be able to generate more leads if consumers are more exposed and familiar with your products or services.

Customers can also easily find your website with the help of SEO. For instance, when they search for “antique shops in Seattle,” they would then see search results of antique shops found in Seattle. Thanks to SEO, those shops that appear on the first page of the search results already gain a new potential customer or lead.

However, you should note that gaining higher search rankings is not that easy. There are several factors that come into play like user’s location, previous search activity, language, search engines, and so on.

Take Google and Bing, for example, they both have different algorithms.  When you search for “antique shops in Seattle,” they would have different search results. By simply looking at the top result, you can immediately see the difference.

It may not look much, but search results like these greatly contribute to consumers’ behavior as well as purchasing decisions. According to data cited by Forbes, the first five results receive 67.6% of clicks, whereas the remaining five just receive 3.73%.

So when your landing page ranked first on search results, then you have a better chance of gaining a new potential customer.

Look at this top search result for “shoes” with a country filter on Canada. The top results are the landing site of the Designer Shoe Warehouse e-commerce site.

By gaining higher rankings, Designer Shoe Warehouse has a better advantage over their competitors and their website traffic would most likely increase as well.

With that in mind, we have listed some general tips on how you can improve your rankings in different search engines

•       Optimize your website
•       Improve your website’s interface and users’ experience
•       Allow cross-device or cross-browser compatibility
•       Make user-friendly content
•       Use keywords effectively
•       Build high-quality backlinks
•       Use data analytics effectively

Social Media

Some underestimate the power and influence of social media in marketing. In America alone, 72% of the public uses some type of social media, which in turn opens a lot of opportunities and markets to explore. With that, the importance of social media has become more apparent. Almost all businesses and companies have social media accounts. Nowadays, it has become a prerequisite for new businesses to have their social media handle.

Social media marketing is not just about posting or sharing content. It is about reputation, influence, trends, and among others. Social media helps businesses determine trends, lets customer service improve brand image, and allows marketers to reach new markets. It has become an essential element that allows consumers to interact and connect, not just with each other but, with the sellers or businesses as well.

Given the potential reach of social media, it is no wonder why marketers are capitalizing on it. For that purpose, we have listed a few ways on how you can maximize the benefits of social media

1. Social media as a supplementary tool for traditional marketing

Traditional marketing mainly relies on offline strategies, which can mean printing advertisements on billboards, handing out flyers, organizing events, or even getting trade show models to promote your product. These are still heavily used by other businesses, especially small businesses and those who have a niche market.

So instead of drastically changing your overall marketing strategy and completely pivoting to digital marketing, you can gradually introduce and integrate social media into your traditional campaign.

For instance, whenever you organize live events, you can reach out to social media influencers to increase attendance. Aside from that, you can also use a targeted campaign on social media to promote it for only a specific market.

2. Social media as a source of news and updates

It has become evident that social media has changed the way we get the news. Most of us probably get the latest trends and news through our social media accounts.

Because of that, marketers are starting to utilize the power and influence of social media to their users. Just look at Apple as an example. Every time they release a new product, everyone who is on social media is aware of it. Just look at how they greatly utilized the power of social media last month for their launch event.

Apple had a custom ‘like’ button for every tweet with an #AppleEvent. This further illustrates how social media plays a big part in their marketing campaign. Even other brands took notice, which in turn amplified the magnitude and reach of the campaign even more.

Any business, whether big or small, can use social media to increase their brand awareness. Apart from that, they can also use social media to connect with consumers and update them with the latest news about their products or services.

3. Social media as a customer service tool

Customer service plays a vital role in every business. It improves brand image and allows businesses to adjust to the ever-changing needs and requests of the consumer.

With the help of social media, marketers like you can now analyze the trends, behavior, needs, likes, and dislikes of the consumer. Social media have made it possible to get direct feedback from them. As a result, you can now create a more tailored marketing strategy that is best applicable to your target audience.

Online PR

Digital or online public relations is relatively similar to traditional PR. In a way, it is still influencing people to buy your services or products rather than selling them. The only difference now is that you have to influence users, create more contents, and establish a reputable name for your brand on the internet.

There are several ways to influence users to buy your products or services like

• publishing press release;
• gaining mentions from the press or any reputable source online;
• acquiring awards and high-quality listings;
• building better connections on social media;
• joining affiliate programs;
• getting mentions from social media influencers; and
• curating timely and user-friendly content

PR means building an online following for your brand and allowing existing customers to sell your brand.  Rather than simply advertising or marketing your products or services, you can instead create and establish a reputable brand that consumers would surely trust. This way, you can boost traffic to your website, generate more leads, as well as gain authority and loyalty in your niche market.

One of the best examples of online PR is skincare products. Having your product mention by any reputable online source, even the reddit community, really makes a big difference.

More than that, you can use social media to have two-way communication with the consumers. By engaging and establishing a real connection with them, you are essentially allowing them to get to know your products or services even better.

Choosing the right marketing strategy

Aside from the ones mentioned above, there are still other digital marketing tactics to choose from. Regardless, finding the most applicable strategy for your business would ultimately depend on you. There are several factors that you have to consider like What are your goals? What brand identity are you aiming for? Do you have the right marketing tools? Does it fit your budget? and so on.

That being said, before starting on your digital marketing journey, you should have a clear idea of where you want your business to go. You need to understand the different channels, mediums, tools, and platforms used in online marketing so that you can plan and strategize the most effective campaign for your brand.