Since the onset of the Internet, businesses have been expanding products, services, and creative inventions in the hopes of reaching new customers and possibilities, and many have done it with great success. It’s not uncommon to hear of one-man/woman shops scaling to thousands or millions, only a few months after getting started. There is no doubt; taking advantage of the right digital marketing strategy by using the right tools the right way, is profitable to the business.
As time goes on, the digital possibilities available to us as business owners is mind-boggling. It’s time to take full advantage of every opportunity digital marketing presents to us.
In this article, we highlight types of businesses we’ve personally seen success with the right digital marketing strategy. Not only that, but we reveal our suggestions for a few of the digital marketing strategies that have helped businesses in each category to scale and grow!
Special Note: we list only a few samples, but there are many pieces to a successful digital marketing strategy plan, which is why we always first suggest speaking with a knowledgeable marketing expert who can build out a solid plan, with all the needed pieces, for you.
Business Categories That Have Successfully Used Digital Marketing Strategies To Grow & Scale:
Financial Services
Building trust is exceptionally important for people in this industry, especially as a personal connection is still extremely vital in order to make a sale. Also, savvy consumers do their research online – everything from the types of products they believe they need, to researching everything they can find out about you. That is why reputation management and information provided are key.
Essential Digital Marketing Strategies For Those In Financial Services:
- A full website or landing page: besides information providing, any page you put online should have information about you as a person – people need to be able to “connect” with you before they are ready to buy.
- PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising): PPC ads, specifically a Google ad campaign, is one of the quickest ways to bring in new leads to your landing page or website.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Search engine optimization is a must for people in this industry as more people nowadays, especially millennials, are doing their financial research online first before selecting what they want or who they want to work with.
- CRM with artificial intelligence (AI): AI is where your email list can use intelligent data to “tell” you when anyone on your list is ready to buy (think: hot buyer alerts!)
- Email marketing: a strong email marketing campaign to keep your list warm, informed, interested and engaged is crucial.
- Reviews management: you need to be on top of what people are saying about you online. A good reviews management system will find where you are mentioned and pull that information into a central system for review and managing.
E-commerce
People in E-commerce sell physical products and obtain the products from a supplier at a cheaper rate than what it was sold for. If you are in e-commerce, your most important solutions revolve around having smooth running systems that are reliable and that can automate sales processes for you, and using strategies to showcase your products to as many of the right target audience as possible.
Essential Digital Marketing Considerations For Those In E-commerce:
- Shopify store or WooCommerce: both of these can be set up to offer your customers ideal shopping experience. Each has its own advantages. If you are unsure which to pick, just ask!
- Paid Search and Social Media Ads: This can include Google Search Ads, Display Ads, Shopping Ads, and Facebook Ads, just to name a few. One of your best strategies is to hit the market and hit it hard with stunning visuals that people will see across various different channels within a certain time period. Yes, you can use one channel and have great success, but multiple platform advertising has been shown to maximize that success (…and more on the reason why in an upcoming blog post!)
- Retargeting/Remarketing: The power of retargeting is incredible. This is where the real sales happen! The results are always impressive. It’s a must for you if you are in e-commerce.
- SEO: as mentioned above, SEO is a must for almost any business in today’s world as people are doing their research online. A lot of SEO is content-based – ensuring your products have solid, keyword-rich, descriptions, articles created around the products, links coming into your product pages, and more.
- Social media: a solid social media strategy will help you introduce new products to waiting raving fans! You simply need to tell them how to order.
- Funnels: funnels are where it is at, and with good reason. Funnels allow you to successfully sell more. The idea behind funnels is to maximize a sale – so think about adding upsells, downsells and bundles, for example, buy 3 for an even better deal!
Education:
Providing a steady stream of information is critical for those working in this category, in order to build trust. online authority and a reputation as the knowledgeable go to business in your industry.
Essential Digital Marketing Considerations For Educators’:
SEO: Since this category of business deals with information providing, SEO works exceptionally well! Whether it is a blog post, video, infographic or podcast, each can be used to scale up your on-page results.- Video: Video will be your best friend if you teach anything. If you are a resource that answers questions in any niche, you can build a following on YouTube and other video channels.
- YouTube advertising: YouTube advertising is one of the few places left where you can still achieve amazing results for a low ad rate! With the right message, YouTube ads work well and work fast.
- Content marketing: Ongoing content production is more essential to this group than any other. If you help others through content, you need to be willing to offer free content samples to help people connect with you and to build up the need to work with you.
- Reputation management: this is a category of digital marketing that helps those building online reputations, to collect reviews, online mentions, and links, all in one place. It is vital to always be on top of everything people are saying about you online.
Real Estates
Since this industry is exceptionally competitive, it’s all about attracting, collecting and nurturing leads that you can stay connected with.
Essential Digital Marketing Considerations For Those in Real Estate:
- Long-term lead generation campaigns: Leads are crucial to those in real estate, thus a long term strategy to attract a stream of qualified leads is essential.
- One-Off Promotions: Stand out in this highly competitive industry by doing interesting and engaging on and offline promotions to showcase what you’ve got! Ie, pre-construction condo promotions done right, will build hype and attention for your project.
- Website and Landing Pages: A full-blown, photo-rich, website with attractive opt-in forms and incentives, is your base for where to always send people to. Though quite popular, we do not recommend building a website for each separate condo project.
- SEO: SEO endeavors, especially local SEO, will help you get discovered with the right message and in the right location!
- Google PPC or Facebook ad Campaigns: First, you want to be the first to capture people as they begin searching for either a new home or for information on how to sell current home. Both ad strategies have its strengths: FB ads for capturing people’s attention and leading them to helpful information (and helping you build a list of warm leads), and Google ads to grab people who are actively looking (hot leads).
- Reputation Management: especially online reviews. If you can collect and showcase positive reviews, it will be easier to convince people to work with you and it will also help to increase your referral rate.
- Text for info, mobile apps, QR codes, bots: all of these types of tools can help you to deliver information on demand to interested buyers, and we know we don’t need to explain how powerful that can be!
- CRM with AI: Please see our explanation above on how this can deliver hot leads directly to you!
- Lead collection and conversion: have you tried live chat? You are in a people business, where people expect instant service and answers. Live chat allows you to answer questions 24/7. Whether this is the answer to basic questions through a bot or a live chat service where people get to speak with a live agent any time of day, this quality of service will help you to stand out and build a reputation for quality service delivery.
Local Businesses (law firms, dentists, optometrists, chiropractors, massage therapists, naturopaths, restaurants, shops, etc.)
Local businesses should love the online world as if used properly; it can deliver ongoing new customers, easier than ever before. Here are some must-have digital tools:
Essential Digital Marketing Considerations For Local Businesses:
- Local SEO: Local search will be one of your new best friends when it comes to getting new business. Best of all, most local search strategies are easy to implement, for example, you can offer a % off for every review left.
- Mobile apps/text messaging campaigns: people are on their phones all day long. Apps are a great way to keep people reminded about your business. Build-in attractive features such as exclusive promo alerts or fun loyalty programs, and you can build repeat customers in no time.
- A website with forms: websites are essential for local businesses. You will need to direct people to a central place where they can read up on your services or products, read reviews and comments, find your address and contact details, watch your videos, check out your menu, or make appointments or reservations.
- PPC: Bring instant targeted traffic to your website or direct to a call with you through PPC ads, which bring in customers fast!
An important thing to keep in mind, especially in 2019, is that it is rare to be able to stick with and succeed through using only one digital marketing strategy. One thing is certain with digital marketing in today’s world, it is a constantly and rapidly changing. Couple this with the fact that each part is inherently reliant on the other, and it becomes clear why it is more dangerous than ever to put all of your eggs in one digital marketing basket – especially with all the recent Google changes taking place and about to come (and more on our recommendations on how to prepare for SEO in 2020 in a future article!).
Whatever type of business you own, we hope this article provided some helpful ideas of digital solutions you may want to test out. If you’ve used digital marketing strategies in the past, with success, we’d love to hear about them in the comments below!
Click to see a full list of digital marketing strategies you may consider testing out for your business!
