Sayan Biswas, Negosentro | Digital marketing lets businesses – even companies with a limited marketing budget – reach thousands of potential customers very effectively. Through instruments like SEO and social media marketing, you too can find your target audience online and start engaging them immediately. Digital marketing is also measurable; the results you generate from different campaigns can be monitored in real-time, allowing you to fine-tune those campaigns and boost their impact even further.
The effectiveness of digital marketing attracts more businesses year after year. In fact, the online marketing landscape is at its most competitive today. Hundreds – if not thousands – of businesses compete for similar market segments. You certainly need to bring your A game to succeed. That starts with optimizing your site for digital marketing purposes, and we have just the tips to get you started in this article.
Start with User Experience
One of the first things to focus on when you’re optimizing your site for digital marketing is improving the user experience your site delivers. User experience or UX is an essential metric. Search engines now monitor the time your visitors spend on your site and other UX-related metrics to determine your rankings. The effectiveness of social media marketing and content marketing campaigns depends highly on the effectiveness of the site itself.
You don’t have to do a complete redesign of the site to improve its UX. In most cases, however, refreshing the site is a great way to start your digital marketing campaign. Consistent navigation, short loading times, and positioning the main content of the site as the hero elements are some of the tactics you can use to enhance your site’s overall user experience.
Optimize for SEO
Despite the many new instruments available today, Search Engine Optimization or SEO remains a crucial part of every successful digital marketing campaign. You need your site to be discoverable through search engines for two reasons. First of all, users now turn to Google and other search engines to find the information they need. In fact, close to 70% of user journeys begin with a visit to search engines.
The second reason is credibility. This too is an essential part of your digital marketing campaign, especially in 2018. Businesses that are nowhere to be seen in search results are seen as less trustworthy than SEO-optimized ones.
Optimizing your site for SEO is a lot easier than you think. You can use this website audit template to review your current site. Once a review is done, you can start making tweaks to the site. There are even plugins for popular CMS platforms, all designed to make optimizing a site for SEO purposes much easier to do.
Fill It with Quality
The next big step to take is filling the site with quality content. The last thing you want to do is bombard the audience with sales messages; that’s not how you do digital marketing today. Soft-selling is the way to go, and the most effective way of marketing your products and services this way is by offering content that the audience will find valuable.
Value is the keyword here. Produce content that is not only useful for the audience but also practical and easy to follow. Use tutorials and how-to articles to attract those seeking information on specific topics. You can then add information about your products and how they can be useful as part of the article.
Just like the site itself, you can also optimize your content for digital marketing purposes. SEO optimization, making your articles shareable and adding cross-linking and discussions to them are some of the things you can do to further amplify your site’s digital marketing prowess through good content.
Share and Engage
Speaking of making articles and other contents shareable, social media is a big part of digital marketing today. You want to set up your social media pages so that they give off a consistent brand image. Adding custom designs and using a relevant and consistent avatar across all social media pages are the steps you can take to achieve that.
You also want to make sharing articles available on your site very easy to do. A floating set of social sharing buttons is an effective way to persuade visitors to share your content with their followers. However, floating buttons need to be implemented correctly so they don’t end up hurting the user experience.
Another tactic that is also effective is adding social sharing buttons to the beginning and the end of your articles. This way, visitors can choose to share your articles at any of the crucial moments (when they start reading and when they finish the article) without having to scroll back up or down to do so. Don’t forget to add a mention or a hashtag to the shared content so you can keep track of social sharing.
Build Relationships
Email marketing may be the oldest trick in the digital marketing book, but it is a trick that you don’t want to skip as you improve your site for digital marketing purposes. Set up a newsletter and add a strong call to action to the bottom of your site – or on the sidebar – to start attracting subscribers. You’ll be surprised by how many subscribers you can get in a short period of time with the right incentives.
Freebies, exclusive offers, and more valuable content are the kind of incentives you can offer to get your mailing list going. You can also offer coupons and extra discounts to new subscribers. Be sure to make subscribing as easy as possible; you don’t want to complicate the process since it will only scare your audience away.
Last but certainly not least, keep the Comments section open. Discussions are great because they allow your site to appear lively and active. Take the time to respond to comments and inquiries. Tailor your articles to stimulate user engagement and comments. Don’t forget to moderate the discussions happening on your site to keep them healthy and positive.
There are so many more things you can do to fine-tune your site for better digital marketing performance, but the tactics and steps we covered in this article will get you started and pointed towards the right direction. With these basic steps covered, you will see an immediate increase in digital marketing performance.
