How to achieve digital marketing milestones keeping your sight on the finishing line
If you thought digital marketing was tougher, then you should read how simplified it could be if you breakdown to different milestones.
Achieving your mission or your goal is an accumulation of many milestones. While you keep your sight on the finishing line, you go on conquering each hurdles with strategy and in style. Before we get into the requirements on how to reach these milestones in B2B OR B2C, we have to first identify the milestones which will help us reach our mission
Let us go back few years and recollect the best examples of thinkers and leaders who have kept their vision and mission without losing sight of it. It has a high potential learning for us all
760 Kms, 59 stations, 92 tunnels, 2328 bridges & …E. Shreedharan
The one Man with a mission of building, connecting and holding them all together to put-up one of the finest railway tracks which has brought the travelling time close to half, making life easier and merrier for travelers.
He also taught us a classic strategy of how to achieve bigger tasks by dividing them into smaller milestones and leading by example for others to follow. It also led to connecting of smaller routes and merging and connecting to make the biggest and longest track for travelers and enthusiast.
The only way to achieve the target was to “Do the hard work harder”. Strictest measures were adopted, no micromanaging at lower levels, top level posting were based on strength of character, honesty and integrity, power delegation, and most importantly the entire project mission was attached to the “Reverse Clocks”, which gave a sense of deadline for each milestone to be achieved.
Konkan railway had to pass through several districts, spread across 3 states, dividing them into 7 zones, he appointed chief engineers to each zone to oversee the project in their domain. The zones and district further appointed revenue officers, law enforcements to solve issues locally.
Sreedharan’s experience, policies and practices made his colleagues trust him, encouraged accountability, filled them with passion to be a part of the great project, built confidence in the leadership. Above all, the team spirit was great all around.
Interesting? Read the entire story here
Coming back to our topic our marketing plan for an inbound marketing… well yes, digital marketing is similar to an inbound marketing using pull strategy, an organic way or a search marketing to rank high on relevance on google search, rather than the paid or influencer marketing, or Google Adwords, ppc, conventional or traditional marketing to achieve the desired results.
A data driven approach using measurable analytical tools like Google analytics and optimizing text, site optimization to increase conversion rate through website, social media platform, blog…
Digital Marketing is all about a Mission and there is no short cut or one time application, it’s a continuous process, using personalized content. You can break down the same into multiple disciplines or sections to make it easier and achieve the milestones smarter. Your marketing program or online marketing strategy and marketing communications has to be in alignment with your business goals.
First let us identify the different channels to meet your marketing objectives in Digital Marketing which can help your business grow. In fact digital marketing is a cost effective and an essential tool for small business owners, managers, entrepreneurs, startup, manufacturers, professionals, individual who are looking to gain brand exposure, find new customers while retaining your existing customers, increase web traffic and develop a loyal following.
The few essential channels for your marketing success are as mentioned below:
- Content Marketing
- Social Media
- SEO
- Website
- Blog
Content Marketing
A content can be an image, a copy writing (text), statistics, a video, a podcast, a story, a pdf file, a white paper, a research paper, a PPT presentation, a table, anything and everything which is useful and helpful for your target audience to help them reach or help them to take an informed decision
In fact the aim of content marketing is to reach your target audience with content. Content which will be helpful to your target audience. Cater them with content which delights them. Content which updates their knowledge, which helps them to take an informed decision.
It’s like an “Indian Basmati Rice Seller”, displaying different Biryani recipes and other rice recipes like “Best Pulav in the making” on their website. Or “How to cook rice” or “How to wash rice before cooking without breaking the rice” on their website. These content with step by step instruction would be most cherished by the Basmati rice consumers and they would frequent your website often. Your website visitor may even go a step ahead by sharing the content with friends and loved ones. More the visits to your website your brand gets registered in their minds and they gradually become brand followers. During the journey your team will have ample opportunity to convert them into sales by offering services your potential customers cannot refuse or which could definitely benefit them.
Another example would be of an exporter or a CHA, explaining different schemes, different sections, different schemes, policies under which the “Exporter” or “Manufacturer” could benefit from the scheme like “MOOWR”. Such content creates curiosity among your target audience and they frequent your website often to find more informative content and ultimately trust the source. With this digital transformation act you have already created a primary market for your product or service .i.e. “Your Brand Followers”.
A Major part of your work is already done when your target audience visits your website and stays longer, they are your potential customers, and each individual who have visited and remained on your website is a potential customer, whom you can convert through webchat, data collection forms, popup forms, messages
Social Media
Social Media Marketing is all about community, content, communication, connection and conversion. It’s about connecting and engaging the right target audience, building and nurturing relationships, through economical, non-invasive, consistent and compelling content.
Increase brand awareness, bond with your target audience, build brand value. SMO helps you boost your leads and sales.
Creating followers of your brand. Social Media content helps you to stand out & differentiate you from your competition, as well reinforce how your business care about its customers.
Know more: Social Media Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, which means the content are optimized for search engine. When you design a website you have to make sure the content are optimized. Optimization helps you to be found on search engine and on the contrary a potential customer can find you on search. For an SEO friendly website certain technical measures has to be taken, a process to be followed to qualify, and to be found in search engines.
SEO is one of the most important factor for your website, blog traffic and blog ranking. SEO can help you place your website on the top of everyone’s mind or let it be forgotten in the google pages behind.
Content are created for your target audience, and some for Google search engine. Google crawls every page of your website through Google bots and store the information on Google search engine index.
Know More Here: Search Engine Optimization
Backlinks
Backlinks are votes from any other sites which tell Google about how valuable your content is. Backlinks are the most effective way to increase your site domain authority, page authority, and traffic.
Website Submission
Website submission on major search engines like, Google, yahoo, Bing, yandex, Pinterest, Facebook will help your potential customer find you on search. It is the most effective way to increase your domain authority
Guest Post
Guestpost helps you increase your website traffic. It helps in redirecting the potential customers to your website by clicking on the url placed on the writers blog.
Broken Links
Checking out the broken links, URL, titles, is of utmost importance to keep the website from being abandoned by potential customers.
Email Marketing
Email marketing helps you connect directly with your target audience nurturing and building relationship and gradually converting them to customers. Having a subscription form embedded on the blog, home page or footer of your website will help you capture database of your potential customer, helping you build a database for email marketing with their consent keeping them updated and continuously in contact. Email marketing is cost effective and leaves a big impact with low investment, moreover email marketing gives best ROI nearly 40-50 times better than other channels.
Know more here: Newsletter Marketing | Bulk Mailing Solutions
Website
Your website connects and speak to the world in a unique way. Whether you choose to create a website to share your passion, inform people of your business, or sell products, there are no limits. By having an online presence through your website, you are able to reach your target audience, your potential customers. The more customers you reach online, the more opportunities you have to make a sale. One of the most interesting growth hacking methods is to reach your target audience with multi-channel efforts and then prioritize your approach to drive best results…
Customized compelling content and excellent design boosts your business in search engines by playing a major role in the search engine optimization process. … Mobile Responsive Websites helps millions of mobile users to view and interact with your website. An Informative website helps your prospects to interact and become potential customers. A good website helps in Google Analytics It helps in Branding.
A website for your organization A website for your resort / hotel / restaurant / café / food court A website for event managers A website for sports and recreation clubs A professional website for beauticians, speakers, photographers, musicians, artist, consultants. A website for agencies a website for NGO’s. A website for pets. An online store, any individual or enterprise can build a website, in fact if you are in business you must have a website. You can promote your website in an organic way, with an effective digital marketing strategy.
If your website content haven’t been revamped, it’s time to update content to the latest market trends.
Blog
Blogs allow you to talk about any topic you are interested in and express your opinion. It gives its users great, quality content consistently, enriching the readers’ lives, and giving them something to look forward to each time they visit a blog.
A major benefit being you could reach millions of readers at a time with one post. Gradually with advancement in technology blogging or blog writing, or bloggers became more interactive with posting comments and opinions.
Many questions in mind – How blogging works? How blog is beneficial for small business? Does blogging work? We have tried to answer in short, on how blogging works? And how blogging helps you to communicate, standout from the crowd?
The above are the most essential channels for a digital marketing approach, to enhance your online business reputation and to meet your business objectives.
Now that you have the channels / platform, and you have identified the target audience, what you require is the CONTENT and the best format to suit the particular need. Once you have got the content ready, plan, publish and schedule them.
For e.g. You have 4 task in hand, get the 1st content ready publish and schedule it for a month, mark it on your calendar for a month by analyzing what time would be better to promote the content. Similarly take up the second task in the second week, publish and schedule it for the next 3 weeks. repeat the same for 3rd and 4th task for 3rd and 4th week. By end of 4th week, you will have all the task published on the channels and scheduled them perfect. Here you have enough time to get the content ready as well schedule them conveniently. Pick up the 4th week content schedule and replicate them for the coming months. Next is to monitor and fine tune content and schedule as per the response, market feedback you have received.
There are many contents posting calendar available online, in case if you did not find the same, please do write to us and we will mail you the schedule calendar.
