7 Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies and How to Use Them in 2021
Knowing that digital marketing is essential for growing your business and staying competitive in today’s online marketplace is one important thing. Being able to develop and implement the right digital marketing strategy for your business is another.
So, how well do you know your digital marketing strategies? To fully enjoy the benefits of digital marketing, you need to implement the right strategies. In other words, not every digital marketing strategy is ideal for your business. Some will give you more results than others, so it makes sense to focus on the top-rewarding ones.
In case you're wondering how to build an effective digital marketing strategy, you can see our post on the subject to empower yourself with the requisite understanding for succeeding in digital marketing. Here, we discuss in detail, 7 most effective digital marketing strategies and how to use them in 2021.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
About 64% of marketers invest in search engine optimization. SEO is the best way to drive organic (unpaid) traffic to your website. The goal of SEO is to make you very visible to people searching for your products and services for free by ranking you on the topmost part in search engine result pages (SERPs). You achieve this using keywords and phrases related to your business (which people are searching for) to publish insightful content on your website.
But first, you need to understand which keywords and phrases people are searching for, then incorporate these keywords and phrases into the content on your website. The result of SEO is that when users come searching for these keywords, you will rank high in search results, and if your SEO practices are correct, you’ll probably rank higher than your competitors.
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEO is similar to SEM, only that this time, you pay to rank. SEM is also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and very powerful too. SEM/PPC is one of the most cost-effective forms of paid advertising. The aim of SEM is to reach as many searchers with transactional queries as possible.
What this means is that you are targeting people who are searching for and ready to pay for your products or services. You pay each time a user clicks on your ads. Each time a user clicks on your ad, the person is directed to your landing page, where they'll see more details on what they're looking for and see a call-to-action (CTA) prompting them to make a purchase, signing up for an email update, a follow-up call, or contact you directly.
3. Social Media Marketing
Most SEO and SEM digital marketing strategies involve using social media platforms to drive traffic to a website. The opportunity here is the increasing number of people who use social media for both business and friendly interactions every day.
So businesses can also use platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to direct more customers to their websites, where a captivating CTA is waiting to convert them into paying customers. Others include Tik Tok, Snapchat, Reddit, Quora, Tumblr, and YouTube.
4. Content Marketing
Content marketing is another very effective digital marketing strategy in existence today. This probably explains why 70% of marketers are using content marketing strategy today. By and large, the goal of content marketing is to share highly engaging, relevant, and insightful content on your website. You can complement your content marketing strategy by sharing them on social media and using it to drive traffic to your website.
Content marketing does not aim to convert customers and visitors but to provide helpful information. However, it can be incorporated into any marketing strategy for improved conversion rates. Content marketing can be in the form of blogs, infographics, round-up articles, ebooks, and lead magnets.
Content marketing actually generates more leads than traditional marketing. The reason people create multiple blogs is to improve their content marketing efforts. When users realize that your blogs always provide the answers they need, you can expect them to come looking.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective and popularly used digital marketing strategies in play today. In fact, up to 80% of SMBs say email is their most important customer acquisition/retention channel. This supersedes traditional marketing or any other marketing plan.
Email marketing aims to make your brand or product/service top of mind to both existing and new customers. It aims to constantly keep in touch with customers who visit your site but are not ready to make a purchase yet. It uses the same tactics as content marketing to consistently provide industry news, leading thoughts, information on new products, improvement in services, and other relevant information to the people on your subscriber list.
For email marketing to work, you need to build a continuously growing email marketing list by encouraging your site visitors to subscribe and stay tuned for more info, until and even after they become paying customers.
6. Video Marketing
Video marketing is another very effective digital marketing strategy that digital marketers and businesses use in 2021. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok, etc., use video content to drive increased traffic to a website. These videos can also go on other channels and your website. But keep in mind that effective video marketing requires video making and editing tools.
Fortunately, there are quite a number of these tools available on the market today. However, because of the complexity of the skills required to create beautiful narratives and captivating videos, it is better to have a professional handle your video production, that is, if you choose to use video marketing.
7. Affiliate Marketing
You might have heard about affiliate marketing and probably wondered whether it is ideal for you or not. If you are incorporating affiliate marketing into your digital marketing strategy, then you'll either be paying others to promote your business on their website or collecting commission from other people to promote their businesses on your website.
Although some marketers consider affiliate marketing to be more of a monetization strategy, still 40% of online marketers consider it a crucial skill. To get started with affiliate marketing, you need to join an affiliate marketing program where you will find products that you are willing to promote on your website and also connect with other businesses that are willing to promote your own product or services. But you can decide to earn a commission without selling any product or promoting any service.
Final Thoughts
If you want to succeed at digital marketing, you should take some time, study, and invest in the digital marketing strategies that appeal best to you. Whatever the case, keep in mind that users are looking for the best content, products, and services, so if you can provide solutions to that, you will be glad at the end of the day.
Finally, endeavor to learn each strategy and master it before moving on to the next. This way, you discover which one works best for your business. To learn more, you can contact us today at The Mission.
As leading growth strategists, sales, and digital marketing experts, we are here to take through every step to creating smart digital marketing goals. We provide you with help on how to implement them successfully. Also, as leading partners in the PEO, HR, payroll, and benefits outsourcing marketplace, we provide result-oriented services for small and medium-sized organizations and government contractors, serving as a trusted partner in integrated human resource compliance, risk management, employee benefits, employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), and payroll processing.