There are more than 300 million internet users in the United States alone, with that number reaching more than 4.5 billion worldwide.
With so many people browsing the web, it’s no surprise that businesses are more eager than ever to establish and grow their presence online as well. However, with increasing competition, merely having a website is no longer enough.
To make your business visible online today, you need to use a variety of different strategies and be visible on multiple platforms. What’s more, you need to have a deep understanding of who your audience is if you want to break through the clutter and create meaningful messages that people actually respond to.
To help you make 2020 the year when your online efforts finally pay off, let’s go through some of the most important digital marketing strategies you should consider.
Get the Most Out of Your Content
Everyone knows the old saying that content is king. But unfortunately, simply posting articles on your blog will no longer cut it, as without promotion, no one’s likely to read them.
Sure, you should, by all means, use SEO to get your articles ranked for relevant keywords, but that can often take months, and with today’s competitive markets, you might never reach the top spot on Google that gets the majority of the traffic.
If you want to make the most of the time that you invest in creating high-value, unique, and engaging content, you should put it in front of as many people as possible.
For one thing, that means promoting your articles like crazy. Syndicate it through relevant blogs and websites, and try to get it shared on social media channels.
You should also use your own social media profiles to achieve an additional boost of traffic, and make sure that you take the time to create appealing headlines and descriptions to entice people to click through.
If you want to really ramp up your content marketing efforts, you should consider repurposing your content into other formats.
No matter how informative your article might be, a significant portion of your audience will simply not bother reading a long text, as it’s just not how they’re used to consuming their content.
The majority of users want to see more video content from the brands and businesses they support, so if you don’t want to alienate a large part of your audience, you better get with the times and start creating videos.
Luckily, if you already have a great article, that will be much easier, as you can just use the information that’s already available and repurpose it to suit a broader audience.
If you want a simple approach, just get in front of your smartphone’s camera and talk about some of the points that are discussed in the article. The personal touch of these types of videos makes them extremely popular, and you might even tap into audiences that haven’t heard of you before.
Another great approach is creating an engaging “how-to” or explanatory video that’s full of visuals, graphics, and other engaging elements. These types of videos are not only watched by broad audiences but also very easy to consume, meaning that the information you share has the best chance of having an impact.
Finally, when developing content ideas in the first place, make sure that they are relevant to your target audience. Look at the most pressing problems that the people you are trying to reach are facing, and break them down into actionable steps that could be explained in articles, videos, or any other type of content that you choose to create.
For many businesses, it can be beneficial to hire a PR agency that can help to focus the messaging, attract the people that are the best prospective buyers, and ensure that you get as much coverage as possible with the resources that you have available.
Utilize Social Media Effectively
Social media is essential for any business wanting to succeed online. That’s something most business owners understand, which is why almost every company now at least has a Facebook page, if not multiple social media accounts.
But besides being a huge time drain, social media marketing doesn’t produce any other consistent results for a significant percentage of companies that are trying to leverage its benefits.
Sure, you hear about how social media is crucial for engaging your audience, but how exactly does that translate to real and tangible results?
Well, even though many companies are actually just going through the motions when it comes to their social media strategy, there are effective ways how you can use it to dominate your market, even if you’re a smaller or less-established company with limited resources.
Succeeding on social media comes down to 1) having a clear goal that you want to achieve, and 2) putting together a plan that has been proven to work for others.
These two relatively simple steps allow you to manage expectations, allocate your resources more effectively, and map out a structured approach for measuring your progress.
Once you know who you want to reach and what your goals are, you can start looking at which social media platforms can help you achieve those goals. For most businesses, Facebook will always be an essential part of the equation, but Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even TikTok could be viable options.
When creating content on social media, it’s crucial to not only cater to your audience but also match it with the user expectations on the platform that you are working on.
For instance, creating social media videos can greatly differ depending on the platform you want to publish on, so you should analyze what others are doing and make sure that your content matches your audience’s expectations.
You should carefully measure your results and try to establish a consistent voice and frequency of the messages so that your audience becomes accustomed to your brand and actively engages with it.
Use Influencer Marketing
Even though the internet is used by the vast majority of people in the country, the sheer size of the web has actually resulted in the formation of countless pockets where people with similar interests hang out.
So, while brands can still target broader groups using paid ads, reaching some pockets of people is becoming increasingly difficult, especially if you’re a smaller company that might not be able to scale up some of the paid advertising solutions that are available.
Luckily, influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to break through the barriers that you might be facing and reach audiences that might otherwise never be exposed to your messages.
If you can find an influencer with an audience that’s likely to be interested in what you have to offer, you could reach an agreement to promote your product, providing you with instant social proof and authority from leveraging the status of the influencer.
And the best part is, influencer marketing isn’t reserved for those with bottomless marketing budgets. There are countless micro-influencers with less than 100,000 followers, actively looking for partnerships with smaller brands that want to increase their web presence.
If you find the right influencer and create a relevant message, you can launch your brand into new heights in a matter of hours, even if it was virtually invisible online just hours before.
