5 digital marketing best practices

If you feel as though you're yet to master an effective digital marketing strategy for your business, we're here to tell you that the digital marketing techniques that deserve your attention are the unsexy ones.

Forget AI-powered chatbots, automation and concerning yourself over the death of third-party cookies. What you need to focus on are the strategies and digital marketing best practices that you can master that will help you to engage your audience effectively online and win more customers.

But first off, how does digital marketing differ from traditional marketing?

What is digital marketing?

At its core, digital marketing is marketing carried out with digital tools. Search engines, websites, email, mobile applications – you name it: as long as it exists online, it fits into the sphere of digital marketing.

Businesses are well aware of the potential of digital marketing – the real challenge is doing it effectively, smartly and with your target audience always in mind. Below, we’ve rounded up five of the key digital marketing best practices that deserve your attention.

Develop a content marketing strategy

Marketing your content in the right helps you to turn visitors into prospects and prospects into buyers. It also a) impacts audience decision-making more than any other digital marketing technique and b) helps you to position your brand as an authority or thought leader in your industry.

But with content creation being such an essential aspect of digital marketing and a mission-critical growth method for most businesses, producing consistent, high-quality and measurable content depends on a carefully planned and well-informed content marketing strategy.

A content marketing strategy helps your brand set goals and objectives, track progress, spot opportunities and measure the success of your content marketing efforts.

Embrace SEO

Your website sets the stage for your business, painting a picture of your brand and gives your prospective customer a glimpse of what to expect. Your website needs to be user-friendly and pleasant to look at – but beyond this, you need to make sure your website is an active participant in securing new business.

By undertaking keyword research you can build and develop an SEO strategy that includes the best keywords for your business, assess keyword difficulty and create optimised content as a result. Whether it’s blog posts, infographics, e-books, white papers or videos, adding new content puts you on search engines’ radar and, by extension, your customers'.

With an effective SEO strategy, you can also improve your websites on-page SEO, with header tags, anchor text, internal links and unique meta data and descriptions.

Employ a personal touch with your email campaigns

Email is still your primary tool for conversions, with around 4 billion users and more than 300 billion emails sent every day. Not only is email marketing cost-effective, but it’s also an incredible tool for building trust and loyalty among your consumer base.

The best email marketing campaigns are tailored to a customers’ wants and needs. Businesses can segment their audiences into lists based on set criteria (eg different behaviours and interests) to maximise relevancy.

Make social selling a part of your digital marketing strategy

With more than 3.6 billion people using social media in 2021, it’s clear that this medium is the lifeblood of a successful digital marketing campaign. It’s your direct connection to your customers, and every post keeps your company fresh, relevant and on their horizon.

Rather than trying to spread yourself out across all platforms, think about the ones your audience is most likely to use. LinkedIn tends to be best for B2B audiences, while Twitter is better for joining in customer conversations and staying on top of ongoing trends– if you’re promoting a visual product, then Instagram is probably the best choice.

Analyse your online performance

…as how else will you know how well your marketing is performing? Marketing techniques such as A/B testing and reporting/analytics tools for measuring unique website visitors, search engine traffic and conversion rates have never been better.

Measuring how your marketing campaigns and websites are performing helps you understand which ideas you should repeat and which you should adapt. It also encourages you to keep up with any new digital marketing trends taking the world by storm.

Nutcracker takeaway

Digital marketing can be a tough nut to crack, but it’s crucial that you invest time into discovering the best digital marketing methods so you can boost your conversions, develop your brand’s reputation and maximise revenues.

Because the sooner you ‘wow’ your prospective customer, the sooner your business can really start hitting the mark.

If you’re looking to revitalise your digital marketing approach, email Nutcracker at hello@nutcrackeragency.com, and find out how we can get you on a path to success.