A lot of people misunderstand the purpose of having a digital marketing strategy. Before signing up, you should ask yourself – what type of outcome do I wish to receive from having one? It is too easy to say that you want to make more money (everyone wants to do that).
Business owners don’t always want to know the processes involved in the marketing strategies that help improve their income. Many are quite content to paying their monthly fees to someone who will manage that all for them – as long as they see a positive return on investment.
The fact is, all business owners should take the time to understand what their digital marketing strategy is about – because a lot of small to medium sized businesses misunderstand the purpose of a digital marketing strategy. From my previous working experience, I learnt that it is important for a business to align primary goals with the end goals of a user. In other words, your online presence should meet the needs of your audience.
Online marketing is similar to that of regular offline marketing. You have to clearly define the type of industry you are catering for. You have to make the time to properly identify and understand your competitors. Always remember that the minute your business is exposed to the online world – industry competition becomes infinitely difficult.
Having an effective digital marketing strategy is not entirely about getting your business to rank on the first page of Google. Here at MyWork Australia we believe it is more important in getting your phone to ring more often, rather than getting that first page ranking online. Allow me to explain…
Typing in and searching for something such as ‘plumbers’ into the search box of Google will return every single website that is either related to, or mentions the word ‘plumbers’ somewhere in its content.
The best way to understand how Google works is to remember the expression “Content is King.” Google respects websites with more content. The greater the quality of content – the better your search engine rankings. In addition to this, the company which manages your digital marketing strategy should always be discussing the ‘targeted keyphrase content’ which your website should be facilitating online. It is this particular content that ultimately separates you from your competitors.
Once your competitors have been identified and your content has been refined, the next step would be for you to predict where you see yourself in the near future and decide upon the route to get there. This can be either in the long term or short term. But again, it is entirely dependent on the processes in place for your digital marketing strategy.
Truth be told, most people plan for the long-term. While there is nothing wrong with a short-term plan – it could always potentially lead to a better return on investment in the long term. The online advertising tool Google Adwords is a perfect example of this. It is a much more aggressive form of digital marketing as it allows business to display their products and/or services directly at the top of Google search results.
In order for that to happen, your professional business website should include any one of the following:
- Your website should have a consistent design accompanied by good quality content for Google to index.
- Visitors (aka potential customers) should have the opportunity to contact you via a contact form (quick enquiry form) that is located on every page.
- Your website should have a clearly labelled direct contact number that is prominent on every page.
- Your business website should already have an established reputation on Google for target keyphrases.
These are all factors that help contribute to the basics for an effective digital marketing strategy.
So which do you prefer? More direct enquiries? Or a better search engine ranking? Let us know and we can create an effective plan to help you reach your goals.