7 ways business owners should adapt digital marketing to maximise revenues (A Primer)

You are probably in 3 states with your website -

A. Planning to build one,

B. Have recently launched one, or

C. Already had one for some time

You may be in the business of D2C (Direct to Consumer) or B2B (Business to Business) and could be delivering goods and/or services either as digital-only, traditionally or a combination of both (phydigital).

You anticipate product purchases to happen on your website or look forward to inbound email enquiries requesting to schedule meetings.

But without a sound digital presence in this world “wild” web, your success to achieve any of these two would be akin to running a marathon without practise.

As a business owner or as a digital marketer you live by 1 goal, which is to increase the leads and facilitate conversions for your business.

In these unprecedented times, without a sound digital outreach in mind and consistent practise could leave you stranded. Your competitors have probably covered more grounds by now.

Here are 7 ways business owners can adapt digital marketing to help maximise your revenues

People are always seeking information and the key to satisfying them is to provide trustworthy content.

Relevant, delightful and helpful content not only attracts peoples’ attention but also keeps them engaged with your brand.

70% of people would rather get information about a company or learn something from an article or a blog post rather than from a traditional advertisement. (Demand Metric)

Effective digital presence a.k.a. Content Marketing requires consistently creating and propagating inspiring content

Engaging blogs, Bite-sized Infographics, Successful Case Studies, Insightful Whitepapers, Knowledgeable Podcast and Informative Videos are some of the content forms you should consider.

These are some but not limited in content forms that are useful for the reader.

Imagine a day when you haven’t searched for information using your favourite search engine (Google, perhaps).

It is unlikely that a day goes by that you haven’t asked Google for help.

35% of product searches start on Google. (eMarketer).

Wouldn’t it be thrilling to see your website getting ranked on the first page of Google when someone is searching for information that your company specializes in?

More useful and relevant your content, the likelihood of the searcher clicking to visit your site.

The key to getting ranked well is by continually applying techniques of Search Engine Optimisation a.k.a. SEO for your Content and for Google.

SEO is your magnet that will pull the needles from the haystay.

Getting your content listed on Page #1 of Google requires heavy lifting and patience.

More competition to the same keywords makes it tougher to get you immediate ranking.

Consider another option to get you on Page #1. You can intermittently use Google’s Ad Network a.k.a. PPC (Pay Per Click) for placing Text Ads on the search results for those keywords that are relevant for your business.

In fact, as of July 2019, Google holds 92.18 percent of the search market share (Gs.statcounter, 2019) and in 2020, Google's ad revenue amounted to 146.92 billion US dollars

Paid advertisement should be a part of your Marketing Mix.

It allows you to display ads, product listings and service offerings across Google’s extensive ad network (properties, partner sites, and apps) to the web users.

When was the last time you checked your email ? Maybe, just before you started to read this article.

Even today, the average ROI on using Email as a marketing channel earns you $40 to every $1 spent.

This makes it a cost effective medium to get more juice from your marketing budget.

According to Business Insider 38% of Americans check their email throughout the day.

You cannot ignore this channel a.k.a Email Marketing that will help you in consistently creating brand awareness, move traffic to your website, generate more leads and get you to increase revenues.

Information moves fast and what better way to propagate your messages than on social media.

In 2020, the global social penetration rate reached 49%, with East Asia and North America having the highest penetration rate at 71% and 69 % respectively, followed by Northern Europe at 67%.

With such increased adoptions, as a business owner you will need to think about promoting your company’s presence on social channels a.k.a Social Media Marketing for free or sometimes pay to promote.

Know where your prospects are and act on those channel(s). New social channels will erupt and become popular, but harness what can be used for now.

More the visibility, better for your brand awareness and for your sales.

Analysing, measuring and improving on what is working, or dropping what isn’t in your marketing efforts is the key to your digital marketing success.

Traffic on your website provides you with insightful information.

Some of the statistics that you should measure on your site would be the Visits, Visitor Demographics, Traffic Sources, Popular Pages, Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Exit Pages and Cost Per Conversion. This by far is not an exhaustive list that you can track and analyse a.k.a. Web Analytics.

To analyse, Google provides you with a tool called Google Analytics. This should be your go-to tool to know everything that is happening on your website.

As a leader, your digital strategy will dictate the success or failure of your digital outreach.

Before you start, do plan your Objectives and Goals on each of the first 5 must-dos in your arsenal.

(I have skipped Analytics here, since it measures what has happened & not what will happen)

However, the success rate of strategy execution is incredibly low. The fail percentages found in scientific studies range from as low as 7 % to as high as 90 %, with an average of about 50%

These statistics were not meant to dishearten you. To see yourself succeed, you could start by adopting these 5 in a steady and measured manner. Big bangs do not work.

One way to succeed in your year long goal is to break down the goals of the 5, down to each quarter and down to each month. More important would be to measure the ROI on each of your spend.

You may choose to change tactics mid-way, but never lose focus on those 5, including your strategy. The sum of these parts makes it a complete whole.

Back in 2016, Google announced at Pubcon Labs Vegas that they will start indexing sites based on mobile version.

Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide.

In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 50.81 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017.

If Google’s crawlers can’t see your website in your mobile version, it might as well not exist.

A responsive design method is the most efficient way to have a mobile-first website.

In my closing, let me summarize the specializations you should give a thought in maximising your digital outreach to increase your revenue.

To your success. Until then, Stay Safe.

P.S.

Since Google & it’s services are market leaders, I have referred to it to briefly explain each of the areas. People do trust them to serve information.