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May 29, 2018
5 Essential Digital Marketing Solutions to Help Drive Traffic
Digital advertising expenditures reached 4.8 billion CAD in 2016.
In fact, the digital world is only expanding. As time goes on, your digital marketing strategies will only become more essential to your business.
Think of it this way; digital marketing strategies are the new billboards of the world. Here are 8 essential digital marketing solutions to drive traffic to your business today.
1) Make Search Engine Optimization Your Friend
Search Engine Optimization commonly referred to as ‘SEO’, is essential for driving organic traffic to your website. By literally “optimizing” your site to Google’s ranking and sorting preferences, you’ll be able to increase your traffic and audience reach.
Readability
You’ll want to start by making your website readable and easy to understand. Aim for a reading level of grade 8 or below, unless you’re offering a technical or specialized product or service. Be sure that any specific services you offer, especially ones related to a specialty industry, are easily understood by visitors.
Consumers come to you for a service or product that they cannot or don’t have the time to complete themselves. Aim your copy at this fact, reminding visitors why your brand is the best choice.
Using Keywords
Another area of SEO that is important to address is the use of keywords. You’ll want to come up with a list of keywords and phrases related to your website and business. Next, to start ranking for these words on Google and other search engines, you’ll want to ensure use of these words throughout your website.
Be careful of “overstuffing” keywords. Use them in-context and clearly to best show search engines the relevance and high-quality content your website provides.
There’s a lot more to SEO than these few tips. Take some time to delve into more SEO tactics for your website or partner with SEO experts to improve your results.
2) Connect with News Giants
While optimizing your own website is essential to driving traffic, you can’t do it alone. Search engines prefer websites to be “backed” by other known and trusted websites.
When trusted websites link back to your website, search engines learn to trust your website a little more. This is known as landing backlinks! While there are many unethical ways to land backlinks, that doesn’t mean backlinks themselves are bad.
Aim to partner with journalists, other brands, and bloggers to be featured and linked to from their platforms. By creating media pitches and news releases, you can make your company and services easily accessible.
Remember that these parties are often in need of content to publish, and your brand could be the next big post for them.
3) Social Media: Your Free Consumer Contact
Still today, brands are increasingly using social media as a tactic to connect with buyers. In addition to time-specific promotions, keeping a consistent schedule of regular content keeps your brand present in the mind of your target audiences.
People are receptive to brands on social media and brands continue to expand their presence on these sites. By 2015, over 90 percent of Canadian marketers promoted their brand’s presence on Facebook.
Social media has become an increasingly popular way for consumers and potential buyers to keep up with and follow their favourite brands and companies.
As far as traffic goes, traffic from social media sites is second only to organic search traffic from SEO. With easy link-sharing, social media pairs audience contact with unlimited sharability.
4) Have A Clear-Cut Branding Strategy
It’s next to impossible to come up with an effective solution without a clear-cut branding strategy. What kind of business do you have? How do you want to brand it? Be sure to determine whether you want a personal or corporate brand to be the backbone of your business.
But what’s the difference? A personal branding strategy relies on your own identity and individuality. Products and services are often signed with your name, and you’re the main, if not only, point of contact. This is a popular strategy for bloggers and consultants.
A corporate branding strategy, however, creates a brand around a third-party company name. This is great for partnerships or corporations with multiple shareholders.
5) Create a Consumer Persona
Create an ideal target persona to better orient your content and pitches. Also known as a target audience persona, using targeted tactics can increase website traffic by appealing to someone personally.
You’ll want to be as specific as possible when creating this persona. Know all of their details: their gender, likes, dislikes, age, income, and as much as possible about their lifestyle. Then, figure out how your business’s products, services, or blog fit into that lifestyle.
Lastly, explore the best options for reaching that target persona. Use market research and current consumer surveys to see what mediums, websites, stores, and brands your target public is loyal to.
Next, aim your following promotion toward those mediums and channels. That’s where you’ll want to focus your time and energy.
Consult the Experts for Digital Marketing Solutions
Working on your own in-house digital marketing solutions and goals are a must. But sometimes, consulting an expert is just what you need to get your business on the right track.
Hiring a Brand and Search Engine Marketing agency can give you the time flexibility and expertise you need to drive real traffic and customers. At the very least, exploring different agency options can give you background information essential to crafting your own solutions.
Ready to start researching digital marketing agency options? Here’s what to consider when exploring an agency option.