Paid Marketing
Pay-Per-Click (Paid Media Management)
You get greater budget control (you only pay for clicks). Pay per click advertising is entirely budget based, for this reason, it offers a much higher level of control than traditional paid advertising strategies.
One of the main reasons for using PPC advertising is that it gives businesses very granular control over how their budget is spent. Plus, for popular paid ad styles like search engine PPC, you only pay for clicks! There is no paid barrier to entry and no minimum advertising budget. Businesses can spend as much or as little as they like. With Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising (Bing), marketers can create a campaign hierarchy divided into Account > Campaign > Ad group > Ads > Keywords/Audience.
Popular social media platforms generally have a similar hierarchy. This allows marketers to break down and adjust their budget however they want, with granular control over how the budget is spent on each campaign, group, or ad.
Traditional paid advertising offers PPC an extreme level of control that works because businesses can increase ad spend in areas/demographics/searches that are working and reduce ad spend in areas that aren’t, meaning the importance of PPC lies in your ability to squeeze every penny out of your budget for a better return on ad spend (ROAS).
This may seem daunting to many businesses, but it’s a big part of the reason many choose to hire PPC management professionals, especially when the benefit of a professional ROI is so enticing. But the amount of experience and collective knowledge that an agency brings can’t be compensated by a single person.
As mentioned, controlling the ad budget extends to other important ad metrics as well. Audience targeting. One of the reasons PPC is so important to many businesses is that few other advertising models allow for such fine-grained control. Most businesses know that audience is critical to driving more transactions and sales.
So why use PPC advertising?
PPC ads can be designed to target incredibly specific audiences. exact level. PPC allows marketers to control how, when, and where their ads appear, including on which days, in which locations, for which searches (and by excluding keywords they shouldn’t appear for), user demographics, user interests and previous purchases and more. For PPC on social media platforms, control over demographic target ads can be even more specific. They may offer ad options based on factors such as age, gender, language, and other demographics. Global, national and even local locations.
PPC can improve SEO performance
The importance of PPC on SEO is based on the fact that companies are directed to the same audience on the same keywords on the same platforms. Marketers can take the data they get from keyword research, keyword performance, A/B ad testing, conversions, impression share, etc. and use that data to fine-tune their SEO campaign. Additionally, since PPC search returns results much faster than SEO (weeks instead of months), it’s possible to test keyword strategies for PPC and then use conversion rate (CR) and traffic data to determine if similar strategies work for long-term SEO would work.
Social Media Marketing
Social networks are developing into shopping platforms. Younger people shop significantly more often on social media platforms. About 37% of shoppers aged 15-22 used the buy button on social media, and 30% made a purchase on a shop social story. Instagram is one of the leading social e-commerce channels. With the expansion of the social commerce space, social media platforms are likely to customize features that make shopping easier for users.
Shorter Attention Spans
Studies suggest that the average person’s attention span is 8 seconds shorter today than it was 12 seconds 20 years ago. People who access social media content on their computers tend to spend slightly more time on individual content than on mobile devices.
Increasing Use of User-Generated Content
Companies are increasingly incorporating user-generated content (UGC) into their social media marketing strategies. UGC images are also more likely to convert. There are several upsides to UGC for businesses, including that it is cheaper than traditional advertising, more relatable, and can help brands to be perceived as more authentic and socially conscious.
Authenticity is increasingly important to consumers.
A large number of consumers reported that authenticity played a factor in their shopping decisions, up from 86% in 2017 according to research. Consumers are 2.4x more likely to find UGC more authentic than traditional branding.
A higher number of consumers report that they trust UGC more than any other type of marketing content.UGC is thriving on Facebook and Instagram, which may lead other social media platforms to incorporate UGC in the future. Marketing companies find Facebook and Instagram to be effective marketing tools. Social media usage is expected to remain on an upward trajectory over the next 2 to 3 years. And the social giants (like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat) probably do not go anywhere despite the improving competition.
As a result, companies are expected to look for more ways to tailor their social media strategy around the changes that these platforms roll out.
Lead Generation
After you have identified your target audience, the next step is to determine how you will reach them with digital marketing.
There are two ways to do this: Outbound and Inbound
Outbound marketing is when you reach out to people to generate interest in your product, or it can be through cold calling, direct email, billboards, radio, television, magazine and newspaper ads respectively.
Inbound marketing focuses on attracting people by creating content that is relevant to them. You draw them into your business with content that fits their needs and interests.
Which should one choose?
While it’s a decision you need to make while keeping your target audience and buyer personas in mind, 86% of people skip TV commercials. 44% of direct mail is never opened. 91% of email users have unsubscribed from corporate emails to which they previously subscribed.
Inbound marketing not only helps generate leads but also increases customer acquisition. 3 out of 4 inbound marketing channels cost less than each outbound marketing channel. If we go by these statistics, it is obvious that inbound marketing is much more effective and offers a higher ROI than outbound marketing.
This is mainly because customers are bombarded with information from left to right and in the middle. This has made them more selective about what type of content they want to consume. Customers are also spending more time actively researching and identifying the brands they want to interact with. So now you want to make it easier for your potential customers to find you, rather than the other way around.
While inbound marketing is great, you definitely shouldn’t rule out outbound marketing. Depending on your target audience, certain outbound marketing tactics can be beneficial. Trade shows, conferences, events and content published in print media can help to reach specific groups of people.
Lead Generation Channels – Website, SEO, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing
Website
One of the easiest and most effective ways to generate leads for your business is through your website. Having an engaging website that looks good and is easy to navigate can help you build a pipeline of potential customers. It is important to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly as most users access websites on their mobile devices.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
People often use search engines to search for products and services. You can have a website and social media presence, but the only way a potential client can find you is if you rank high on a search engine results page (SERP). The ranking depends on how SEO friendly your website is.
SEO includes the keywords found on your website and the type of links included in your content. It is not enough to have a website. You need to make sure it’s search engine optimized so people can find you when they search for specific keywords and phrases related to your business.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is considered to be one of the best ways to generate leads. Most B2B marketers say they consider email to be one of their top free organic sales channels. It is also the channel that offers the best return.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is considered the second most effective when it comes to lead generation. You need to make sure your content is interesting, useful, and adds value to your leads to generate leads.
That alone does not guarantee traffic, because your content must also be easy to find on the platforms that your target group visits most frequently. You can experiment with different types of content like blogs, videos, and infographics to see what works best for your audience.
Luckily, it’s easy to keep track of engagement through various analysis tools. You should regularly evaluate the performance of your content to determine which of these formats is most effective at generating leads and focus more on that.
Social Media Marketing
If you’re looking for more leads, you need to take advantage of social media. 54% of social media users use this media to search for products. Not having a social media presence or not using it to generate leads is like leaving money on the table.
The above channels help lay a solid foundation for lead generation.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. SEO is the process of driving traffic to a website using what is known as organic search results. SEO allows a website to attract quality traffic as users tend to visit websites that are closely related to their specific search queries.
SEO is also one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website. If you run a business, the obvious traffic comes from people who are in the same area as your business. This means that location is very important to the thriving of any business.
You might be targeting global traffic, which is fine, but you have to keep in mind that your primary targets should be the people your business is easily accessible too. Therefore, attracting local consumers to your store is very important. SEO can effectively help you in such cases. A local business, like any other business, must have competitors. Your goal is to ensure that you outperform your competition by attracting customers to your store.
To achieve this, it is important to have a strong localization SEO strategy. Here are some of the reasons why you should use localization SEO. It allows you to target local customers. SEO is all about keywords. When targeting a local customer base, it’s important to make the most of local terminology. Local terminology for a product may differ from actual terminology. Use local search engines to get an idea of local terminology that can help drive traffic to your brand.
Using local terminology will help you reach local customers much more efficiently.
Once you know the right location-specific keywords, the next step is to use them in a way that improves the local user experience. Proper use of local keywords will help you rank higher in the local search engine.
e-search results pages or SERPs and you will likely increase the number of visitors to your site and result in some profitable conversions. This is because people are more comfortable, which means that even with an activity like shopping, customers prefer to use their native language and visit a place that is easily accessible and local. Catering to the local language also guarantees that visitors tend to spend more time on the site.
Localizing your SEO can also increase your reach, allow you to communicate with people from all over the world who speak the same language. For most people, SEO means publishing content regularly, picking new keywords, and getting links to those pages. But seasoned SEO pros know that you can more strategically grow your organic traffic by optimizing your existing content through a process known as “content optimization.”
Content optimization aims to optimize a page’s onsite meta tags, such as:
- Include primary and secondary keywords in the correct density
- A reasonable word count
- Ensuring good legibility
- Optimal meta tags for title and description