Digital marketing has become more important than ever! If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy, you won’t be competitive – so read on! Take steps to develop, streamline and optimize your strategy by checking out our list of digital marketing ideas to help accelerate your business.
Start by reviewing these common digital marketing ideas before we detail the more exciting nuances of your strategy.
1. Brand Websites & Web Pages
A confident online presence is essential and can have an unprecedented impact on your company’s success. However, some businesses still don’t realize that most of their customers visit their websites before purchasing. If you want to grow your business and increase leads, you need to build a great website with an immediately attractive and informative landing page. Check out some great landing page examples from HubSpot that can inspire your business.
2. Microsites & Topic Hubs
A microsite is a website separate from your main website, which focuses on branded content or a single topic. It has a different URL, and its primary goal is to centralize relevant content where readers can easily find the information they need. Content hubs offer a collection of content aimed at specific types of customers published by your company to target the right audiences. They can be a website, a microsite, or a blog but not a page where you just pitch your services or products. Check out a content hub example here.
3. Blogs & Blog Posts
The main purpose of a blog is to connect with your customers and answer their potential questions. Having a blog with high-quality and relevant blog posts can impact your overall website’s performance in search engines. Additionally, a blog is an excellent source of content that can be repurposed into content pieces for various social media channels.
4. Videos
Another common digital marketing idea is to include video in your content marketing strategy. Aside from being efficient and convenient, video content marketing offers companies a versatile and shareable tool to reach their target audience. You can use many types, including product, explainer, onboarding, promotional, social, and company culture videos. Some businesses go further and even create their own shows for their audience. For instance, a California-based IT company, Exadel, has recently launched an IT quiz show where players compete against each other for a cash prize. Check out their example here.
5. Ebooks
EBooks are a great way to strengthen your brand and reach a broad audience. They are digital, so people can download hundreds of eBooks to their devices and read them anywhere. Ebooks are also versatile, and you can offer them in different formats. They can be downloadable gifts to prospects and generate more leads, or you can incrementally increase revenue by selling them. A downloadable eBook feels like a personal object of value you’re giving a customer and can enhance your business professionalism. If you’re not familiar with how to create eBooks, you can get inspiration from Hubspot free eBooks. You can find them here.
6. Social Media Marketing
Powerful marketing on social media can bring remarkable results and generate more significant leads and sales to your company. Start with following your competitors’ social media content. Note down which of their posts work better and incorporate their techniques into your digital marketing strategy. You can also study their customer service and compare it with yours – giving you solid ideas for improvement. Don’t flippantly reject this digital marketing idea – it’s an invaluable self-reflective step. You can learn some helpful strategies for analyzing your competitors here.
7. Email Marketing
Another great digital marketing idea to incorporate into your business is email marketing. Unlike other digital marketing tools, email marketing allows you to be in touch with your customers regularly. When it comes to email marketing trends, there are a host of ideas that you can immediately incorporate into your marketing strategy. They include the use of artificial intelligence, mobile optimization, data privacy, user-generated content, and much more.
8. Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads
Pay Per Click, or PPC, is a type of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time you click an ad. Search engine advertising is the most popular form of PPC advertising. It allows advertisers to pay for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links. For example, if you bid on the “digital marketing ideas” keyword, your ad may pop up at the top of the Google results page. There are tons of ways to manage your PPC campaigns.
Recommended: Ad Generator
9. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the main source of digital traffic for companies that make their websites more visible and increase their overall ranking. When you know what your website users are searching for, you can incorporate that into your digital marketing campaigns, social media channels, etc. There are a lot of SEO trends that are forecast for 2023 – more focus on images and quality visual content, user intent, automation, localization of SEPRs, to name a few. Learn more about the upcoming trends in the Search Engine Journal.
10. Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching a target audience through mobile devices – via SMS, email, websites, apps, and social media. When you plan your marketing strategy, it’s important to keep devices in mind and integrate the use of SMS/MMS marketing and mobile applications. It allows you to reach a larger audience, be more personal with your customers, and easily track your campaigns’ results. Mobile marketing is also more economical than other marketing tools, making it a good fit for all businesses. Learn more about mobile marketing and its uses here.
If you have already been implementing the digital marketing ideas described above, now is the time to move to the more advanced techniques.
11. Invest In Local Search Marketing
Local search marketing, also known as local SEO, is one of the digital marketing services that companies utilize to rank higher in search results in a geographic area. For example, if you type “grocery near me,” you will find the local results listed before the organic search results. To build a local search presence, you need to optimize your information online to appear in the right searches.
12. Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
Google My Business (GMB) is a great tool that helps companies manage their online presence across the search engine. It provides you with a list of businesses nearby and necessary information to find a specific company, including reviews, category, business address, and business hours. What does it mean for your business? In simple words, you will attract more customers. Note that Google regularly changes its algorithms, so you always need to optimize your Google My Business listing to stay relevant. To do that, study this step-by-step guide by Neil Patel.
13. Publish Videos On YouTube
According to Semrush, Youtube is the world’s second most-visited website due to the platform’s simplicity for sharing all types of content. Latest Youtube statistics show that 2.3 billion users are using it worldwide. That’s why if you haven’t already set up a Youtube channel, it’s high time to sign up for a business account and upload videos. You can start with repurposing your current blog posts, presentations, and infographics in short videos to attract a new audience.
14. Publish Keyword-Driven Content On Your Domain
SEO keywords matter for your website’s success. If you want to bring your content closer to your audience, try to develop a smart keyword strategy that will allow your readers to find your posts. Start by incorporating relevant keywords into title tags and meta descriptions, focusing on keyword density, internal links, anchor text, and the URL slug. Read more about combining SEO and content marketing strategies in this article.
15. Build Links To Your Website
Another digital marketing idea to strengthen your SEO is incorporating a content cluster strategy into your marketing. If you haven’t already done it, you can simply start with a pillar page (it can be a landing page) and generate topic clusters with multiple internal linking opportunities. If you follow the topic cluster model, you will enjoy a lot of benefits for your business:
- More comprehensive topic. With a content cluster strategy, all of your pages will be well-organized.
- More organized content. Pillar pages allow your organization to organize your content. Pillar pages are designed to organize your blog around topic cluster pages.
- Improved SEO. Linking topic cluster pages to pillar pages will eventually improve your SEO by giving your blog authority over a particular topic.
16. Share Content On Social Media
Social media is more than just a trend but an effective tool for digital marketing campaigns. We’ve spoken about Youtube as one of the most popular social media platforms. However, there are a bunch of other social media platforms that will help you reach a larger audience and establish strong connections with potential customers. Forbes highlighted a few platforms that your business can benefit from, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
17. Test Influencer Marketing
Today influencer marketing is the fastest growing and the most pocket-friendly way to reach customers. Many might think that the trend is pretty recent, but it’s already been around for 15 years. You should try to establish an influencer marketing strategy – it will breathe new life into your business. Here are a few steps to build an effective influencer marketing strategy:
- Identify your goals and key performance indicators.
- Understand the influencers in your industry and map out the different segments.
- Choose proven acquisition channels.
- Find the right influencers to market your products.
- Measure influencer marketing performance.
18. Launch Social Media Audience Lookalike Ads
If you’d like to reach new people on Facebook, try to tame Facebook Lookalike Audience. A Lookalike Audience initiative is a way your ads can reach new people who are likely to be interested in your product or service because they share similar characteristics to your existing customers. With Lookalike’s social network, you can build brand loyalty, increase revenue, and engage with new customers. Facebook utilizes the following resources to build your audience: engagement, application activity, offline activity, customer file, and website traffic. Taking this data into account, Facebook explores similarities among your audience. The idea is that your business is likely to engage with audiences with similar traits to the ones already following your brand.
Another digital marketing idea for your list is developing the art of maximizing the percentage of visitors by taking these steps:
19. Invest In Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) A/B Testing
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) creates the most efficient path for a user to take the desired action on your website and get converted into a customer. It can be achieved through workflow improvements, content enhancements, and split testing. A/B testing, also known as split testing, compares the effectiveness of different content types, overlays, or notifications against defined goals to understand which one performs better. If you’d like to learn more about the power of CRO and where to start, follow the guide prepared by the Hubspot team.
20. Build An Email List
The best way to stay in tune with your customers is to build an email list. According to OptinMonster, email marketing sees a 4300% average return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the US. Why is the number so huge? Sending emails to your customers is about building trust between you and them. Unlike social media posts and messages on billboards, email messages look more personal and are delivered to the private inbox. People are more likely to return to your website if they receive an email in their inbox from your company.
21. Implement Live Chat
It’s a universal truth that customer service is the backbone of any business. Implementing live chat will come with an array of benefits both for your company and customers. First of all, live chat allows for 24/7 customer support which means that your customers will have less reason to complain. Secondly, the live chat will enable you to build rapport with your customers. Agents can look at a customer’s tone, adjust their style accordingly, and create a friendly, helpful relationship. You can also leverage live chat to create positive experiences for your customers and encourage them to return.
Our last digital marketing ideas pertain to customer engagement marketing. Customer acquisition is one of the major goals for most companies, and there are many ways that businesses choose to communicate and engage with their customers.
22. Engage Your Followers On Social Media
To engage your current customer and draw a new audience to your profile, use the power of social media. Social media engagement includes clicks, likes and shares, mentions, comments, and direct messages and replies. These components help businesses measure whether the content they share resonates with their readers. There are numerous ways to increase social media engagement. They include:
Ways to Increase Social Media Engagement
- Running contests and giveaways
- Posting multiple times daily
- Asking questions
- Optimizing and creating captivating headlines
- Using emojis
- Publishing video content
23. Monitor Your Brand Reputation With Social Listening
Among other digital marketing ideas, we’d like to highlight social listening. Social listening identifies and assesses what is said online about your business, product, or service. Usually, the social listening process incorporates the following steps:
Social Listening Process
- Monitoring: This step includes monitoring competitors, mentions of brand names, keywords, and products across various social media channels. You can do it either manually or using specific automatic tools.
- Analyzing: Here you analyze information collected during monitoring to determine what customers like and dislike about your services and search for trends and patterns.
- Responding: Businesses may then choose to respond. It can be communicating with a customer online or refactoring the entire marketing and brand strategy
24. Host Online Events Like Webinars & Classes
Promoting your business with virtual events is a great investment in your digital marketing strategy. Usually, they include webinars, online classes, virtual conferences, and livestreaming videos on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and other channels. There are many ways that your business can benefit from an online event. Let’s explore some options.
Ways Your Business Can Benefit From Online Events
- Create an online conference. You can reach a wider audience because you are not limited geographically.
- Develop an educational webinar. One of the main advantages of hosting a webinar is generating leads for your business. You can also ask participants to leave their contact details, including email addresses and phone numbers. See this example of a well-structured, advertised webinar here.
- Promote your online event. Create a special landing page for your event, advertise on social media, share the news about your event in blog posts, stories on Instagram, podcasts, and Facebook groups, and notify your email subscribers about it.
25. Send Emails & Newsletters Regularly
Some companies consider email and newsletter marketing an outdated digital marketing idea. However, newsletters remain an important element of email and newsletter marketing. Usually, they contain information about important updates and news your audience should be aware of.
They can also include a list of educational and informative articles and blog posts, and tips and tricks from your experts. For examples of newsletters, check out the following links:
- Agile Newsletter
- Artificial Intelligence Newsletter
- AEM Tech tips Newsletter
- QA Best Practices Newsletter
- Content Marketing Newsletter
The golden rule here is to publish or update your newsletters regularly. The best average frequency is no more than twice a week, or at least once a month.
26. Start A Podcast
Are you still hesitating about starting podcasting? The benefits of having a podcast are numerous. You have a chance to come across in a more personal way than in written or video content. Listeners can download the episodes and listen to them whenever they feel like it with minimal effort. Like other types of content marketing, podcasts help your company grow your audience. Consumers can recommend your podcast to other listeners in the long term, increasing traffic and generating even more leads.
27. Publish Interactive Content Like Free Tools & Calculators
End-users and consumers are constantly changing the way they interact with content online. More and more people switch from prolonged ebooks and whitepapers to captivating content that is easy to digest. Interactive content includes generators, assessments, calculators, and quizzes. Check out these 13 interactive content examples that will engage your audience here.
