Digital marketing is powerful but if you want to generate sales opportunities online, it’s important to have a strategy in place. There are a number of different ways you can do this – social media marketing, search engine optimisation, paid advertising and email broadcasting to name just a few – and if you use them all in unison, you’ll get the best results possible with the least amount of effort. Here’s how to generate sales opportunities online with these five powerful tactics.
Digital Marketing – Maximising your website search engine visibility
Research has shown that most people will opt for a local business when they’re looking for a new service or product—and your search engine rankings could be what determines whether you win or lose those potential customers. So, if you don’t have search engine optimisation (SEO) in place, it’s time to get started. SEO is an inexpensive way to get more exposure and traffic from your website—so it makes sense that you should put SEO at or near the top of your priority list.
8 out 10 buyers research on social media
Social media is now a key part of B2B and B2C buying decisions. A recent report from McKinsey and Company found that, on average, eight out of 10 buyers now use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter when researching their purchases. With so many customers doing their research online, how can you win new business? It all starts with using digital advertising to capture your audience’s attention. Here are four types of ads you can deploy to generate sales opportunities online.
Facebook advertising is a great way to get your content in front of a wide audience. Facebook reports that more than 2 billion people log into their accounts every day, making it one of the most popular websites on Earth. With an ad campaign, you can show specific audiences your offer by targeting users based on factors like their job title and interests. By using Facebook’s powerful targeting features, you can increase your chances of turning those interested customers into paying clients. For example, if you run a gym that serves adults and teens, you can advertise to adults only or add in teens as another target group within your ad set.
Get yourself in front of the right audience for digital marketing
You can’t expect to make sales from an audience you don’t have. Before you worry about how online marketing will generate sales opportunities, you need to focus on getting yourself in front of an audience. People looking for what you sell will be out there and your job is to find them where they are spending their time—especially when it comes to social media, email and search engine marketing. If people are searching for information on how to buy a new washing machine or how much money they can save by switching providers, you should be presenting yourself as a go-to resource so that when they buy something in your industry, they think of you first.
Maximise conversions from your digital marketing budget
To generate sales opportunities online through a combination of Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Posting, Digital Advertising and Email Broadcasting, you need to use your digital marketing budget wisely. No two businesses are identical but your market demographic, maturity of the business, brand recognition and budget drive your strategy. For example, for a smaller start-up, you might want to consider a strategy to maximise conversions from your digital advertising budget: 1) If you are just starting out with a very small budget, it might be wise to focus on social media first as it is low cost. 2) Once you have built a following on Facebook/Instagram etc. get them over to your website via social sharing and provide value in exchange for them signing up for updates from you. 3) Once they are actively engaged with your brand via email and social media it’s time for paid search (Google ads), pay per click campaigns with LinkedIn and display advertising campaigns on Google AdWords or other platforms including Facebook Ads will help you gain more brand exposure.
The power of email marketing
Email marketing is still an effective digital marketing tool. There’s no better way to establish a long-term relationship with customers and prospects than through email, but you can do it right only if you plan your campaign carefully. How do you create an effective digital adverting campaign? The first step is formulating a strategy; when planning a strategy, it’s critical that you include SEO and social media in your plans. This will ensure that your content isn’t just seen by existing users but also shared among their networks. It will also help position your business as an authority on its subject matter, which means search engines are more likely to rank its website highly in their results pages.
Where to start?
Outside The Square has a range of digital marketing services that kick in from as little as £300 a month with a range of packages. If you would like to know where to start – contact us to start a conversation.
