4 Effective Ways to break Into the Digital Marketing World
Do you find yourself struggling to grow your business? feeling that their isn’t enough time in the day to figure it all out? As a business owner, you have a pretty good idea of what you want & need, but you just don’t know how to get it! You watch your competitors gain hundreds of quality leads as you struggle to get even one. The struggle is real! You wonder how your competitors are able to bring in a steady flow of clients while your business suffers!
Want to know what your successful competitors are doing? You guessed it! Digital Marketing.
Now more than ever consumers are leveraging the power of the Internet, mobile phones, Apps & tablets to meet their needs. 2016 stats show that there are about 320 million Internet users in North America alone, and businesses that wish to tap into this massive potential need to get with the program and start implementing online marketing strategies today if they want to keep up, but I’m sure you already knew that, or you wouldn’t be reading this.
You are here because you understand that there is no way around technology and are ready to start growing your online presence.
If you think you have tried it all with no success, the problem may simply be that you just don’t know where to start when it comes to digital marketing. With so many resources online and people offering their solutions, I don’t blame you for being frustrated and confused.
Digital Marketing can be very complicated, and if you don’t know how to use these powerful tools to generate leads, all you will have left are wasted hours and loss of money, so keep reading to learn how to stop wasting money!
In this article, you will come across information that you may already know and have tried to implement, but don’t brush it off! Like I always say, it doesn’t matter how good the information may be if you don’t identify and fix underlying problems, you won’t find success.
Here you will learn to…
– Identify your ideal client & where to find them
– Find costly leaks in your sales pipeline before leveraging digital marketing
– Understand the power of your website
– Effectively leverage your website, social media & Google Adwords to generate quality leads
First things first!
Identifying your ideal client
Most businesses struggle with this. They think they know their client but in reality, they have no clue who they are trying to sell their services or products to. This just means you’re shooting blindly into the night and putting all your effort into people or businesses that just won’t buy.
To avoid wasting time with tire kickers you need to find out what type of client fits your product or service best.
For example, If you have an online fitness apparel store, you wouldn’t want to target every kind of demographic and location. You want to target potential clients that have an interest in fitness as well as locations where fitness is most popular. You can even further break this down by specific interests such as running, weight lifting, swimming and more.
Really knowing your client means you know their behaviors, interests, pain areas, where they are, how much money they make & what their needs are.
The best way to figure this out is to actually write it down.
If you offer products, organize your list by product categories & below each category write characteristics of your ideal client.
For example, if you offer specific products to cater to runners, you want to create the category, runners, and below that category write down their pain areas and how your product addresses it.
If you offer services, write down your top 3-5 clients, and again, write down the characteristics that describe your ideal client.
Remember to keep in mind their behaviors interests, where they are, how much money they make, what their needs are and overall demographic. To help you with this, you can look back at some of your best current clients and outline their characteristics.
Another way to figure this out is by looking at your analytics. Your analytics should show you some of the basics about your clients as well as advanced analytics if you have access to them.
Look at each of your ideal clients or products and the list you made below them. Do you see any similarities? You now have a better idea as to who to target meaning your success rate will increase.
Where to find your ideal client
I strongly believe that inbound marketing is in and outbound marketing is out. There are still instances where outbound marketing is necessary, but with the amount of resources, tools, and technology we have available to us today, there is no longer a need to cold call and go door to door to find clients. You can now easily target your ideal client wherever they are in the world and have them come to you with limited effort.
There are a couple of ways you can achieve this.
- Paid advertising: Requires reasonable budget & knowledge, but little to no time & effort
- Free advertising: Little to no budget needed, but requires maximum time, effort & knowledge
Both scenarios tend to scare some people off. The thought of spending money or a high amount of effort to get business is daunting but necessary.
I recommend a mix of both paid and unpaid (SEO & Social Media). Relying on paid alone can cost you much more than your competitors. You still want to focus on adding value to your site and ranking it organically. I can assure you that when you pay for social media marketing or Adwords and it is done correctly, you are paying for value. If you know what you are doing, it is hard not to get the business. If you don’t know what to do, then hire a professional Digital Marketing agency to help you.
Many successful business owners can tell you that they are currently using some form of paid advertising to generate valuable leads.
You might be wondering how much you should spend on paid advertising. I will have to leave the details for another post, but I can tell you that it all depends on a few factors.
- Your industry, service, product
- Your target audience
- Location
- Competition
- Google & social media suggested amounts
- The quality of your website & landing pages
- And of course your budget
You are more than welcome to contact us if you need help finding out how much you should spend on paid advertising.
Other ways you can find clients are of course through social media, networking events & trade shows.
Finding costly leaks in your sales process before leveraging Digital Marketing
If you have a sales process, then you know it’s importance. If you don’t have a sales process, then you don’t realize how much not having one can affect your business and digital marketing plan.
A sales process, AKA Sales Pipeline or funnel, is a repeatable series of steps that map out and track interaction with prospects from their first point of engagement with your business through to a close.
If you don’t have a well laid out sales process or track it, you will not know if the problems you’re facing with closing sales or gaining leads comes down to your business strategy.
For example, if you notice you get quite a bit of traffic to your website, but consumers don’t seem to engage or buy, the problem can be your sales process. Knowing your pipeline from start to finish and tracking it gives you the opportunity to identify where your leads drop so you can make necessary changes. Not knowing where they drop can cost you sales.
Start by mapping out your client’s interaction from start to finish. Go to your site and pick a few things you would like to do, such as purchase an item or learn more about a service. As you go through these processes, start writing down step by step the interaction you’re having. Do this until you reach the end of a successful close.
It is also very helpful to ask someone to go through this process once you have it written down. You can see if their experience is similar to your experience. Take any feedback they have to offer and make necessary changes. Repeat this as many times as you need to until you find a process that works. A professional can help you map out your processes and provide a visual using programs such as MS Visio.
Understanding the power of your website
It amazes me to see how many business owners really don’t care about their websites this day in age. It is mind boggling to see the amount of neglected or outdated sites out there. There is no wonder these businesses are struggling to get leads.
It is clear to me that many business owners just don’t realize what they have access to. If you invested in a good, digital marketing ready, mobile friendly modern website, good for you. You know the value of a dollar.
If you slapped one together without a care in the world or invested in a cheap site that looks like it was made in the 90s just to save some money, you have a serious problem on your hands. Not investing in your client’s user experience just shows them you do not value their business.
I’m going to sound like a broken record, but there is no point in having a website if it will not do what it’s intended to do. See the value in your website and use it. It doesn’t matter how much digital marketing you want to implement, if your website isn’t up to par, you won’t get many leads.
Start by having an analysis of your website done. An analysis will help you understand where it’s failing, why and what you can do to improve it.
Effectively leverage your website, social media & Adwords to generate quality leads
Now that you know how important your website is and how it affects your ability to generate leads, it’s time to learn how to leverage your website, social media & Adwords to generate those leads.
Yes, your website is an online visual representation of your business as well as social media, and if it looks good and trustworthy, then you are headed down the right path, but how else can you leverage it to gain more quality clients?
Digital marketing is how your most successful competitors are gaining more targeted clients. They utilize their website, social media & other online resources to implement a series of strategies, tricks, tools and expertise that will drive more traffic to their business.
You too can take advantage of this success by leveraging your own online tools and resources, and there are a few ways you can effectively do this.
- Start by having your website analyzed by a professional or get some basic statistics through Google Test My Site. Once you learn how your website is performing, you can begin to address any issues that may be present to assure your future visitors have a good online experience. A professional can assist with any necessary adjustments or fixes to your website.
- If you have not already done so, start a Blog and update it frequently with new and engaging content. This will help raise your quality score which can result in a better CPC (cost per click) when using Google Adwords, not to mention it will keep consumers engaged in your business.
- Rank your website in popular search engines by implementing SEO (search engine Optimization). This is a very important part of digital marketing and will help save you money in the long run.
- Build your client personas before leveraging Adwords or social media marketing to assure effective ads that are more likely to convert into sales.
- Create relevant landing pages for the ads you build to assure a higher conversion rate.
- When using social media streams like Twitter and Instagram, be sure to first do some HashTag research so your posts don’t go unnoticed.
- Contact a professional agency to help build you effective digital marketing plans and strategies as well as increase your online presence.
You can assure you are leveraging your online lead generation tools and resources more effectively when implementing the above.
Breaking into digital marketing can be frustrating and time-consuming if done on your own. It is constantly changing and there are years worth of knowledge & expertise involved to do it right, but regardless of this, you shouldn’t feel discouraged. There are many agencies out there that specialize in helping businesses in industries like yours break into the digital marketing world.
Mrkt360 is an award winning digital marketing agency and Premier Google Partner that has helped hundreds of small, medium and large businesses increase their online presence and sales.
With so many success stories under our belt, I don’t see why we can’t help you too! Give us a shout to learn more about how we can help you become yet another success story.
