6 Things You Need to Be Doing for Effective Online Marketing in 2016
The digital marketing industry is so fast paced that is can be remarkably hard to keep up, let alone stay ahead of the pack. Here at Blue Cherry Online Marketing, it’s our job to keep tabs on this stuff for our wonderful clients, so we decided to share some of our key insights for effective online marketing in 2016.
1.Focus On Building Customer Relationships
In today’s digital era, customers are on the ball when it comes to marketing. They don’t want to communicate with a Twitter account that’s completely automated or deal with a ton of spammy email content just for signing up to your service. Your customers want to get to know your brand; they want to know who you are and what you’re about, they want to be heard, and they want to feel valued.
Social media offers more than a platform for you to advertise your services, it provides a means for you to really get to know your customers and build a strong, loyal, and engaged audience. By personalising your social media outreach and really getting to know your customers, you’ll create brand advocates who will be a massive asset to your business in the long-term.
2.Marketing Automation: Do It Right
A solid marketing automation strategy will help your sales team to transform cold leads into qualified leads and then convert those prospects into sales. Using marketing automation platforms, you can schedule content, emails, social media, and track your customer lifecycle - but don’t forget too that you also need a human at the helm of your social media accounts on a daily basis.
3.Put More Emphasis On Visuals
According to a recent study by Hubspot, content with images receives 94% more views. Images have their own search index in Google and YouTube, so they can really amp up your brand visibility and business development. The best way to start using more visuals in your content is to start building up a content bank of visual assets, such as infographics, visual storytelling, and video content. To find good quality images that are free to use, check out sites such as Pixabay, Creative Commons, and Upsplash. Pablo by Buffer is also really useful for creating custom social media images.
4.Be Mobile Friendly
With Google's mobile algorithm in place, ‘mobile friendliness’ is now key to increasing your mobile search ranking, so it’s something that you definitely need to focus on for 2016. When it comes to the user experience, mobile really is key, and you should be focused on creating the best mobile user experience possible for your customers.
5.Create Engaging Content
It’s not just about creating quality content anymore, it’s about creating engaging content. This ties in with our very first point - 2016 is all about really connecting with your customers. In the 2016 Content Marketing Benchmark, Budgets, and Trends for Australia report 84% of businesses say their top priority for the coming year is to produce content that genuinely engages their audiences.
6.Employ A More Data-Driven Strategy
If you want to see a decent return from your online marketing investment, then you have to employ a data-driven strategy. By focusing on digital media monitoring and analysis of the customer lifecycle, you can really hone in on what’s working and what’s not. You can also conduct market research with marketing tools, social media channels, Google Analytics, mobile surveys, email campaigns, or open surveys. These findings will really help you out when it comes to developing your customer personas and online marketing campaigns.
Interested to read more from Karen Dauncey? Follow my business blog at Blue Cherry Online Marketing