Digital marketing is an element that every brand needs to take seriously. Whether yours is an online business or not, digital marketing should feature heavily in your advertising campaigns. Digital marketing is an element that every brand needs to take seriously.
Whether yours is an online business or not, digital marketing should feature heavily in your advertising campaigns. There are several tenets of digital marketing that will have an impact on your target audience, more importantly, predictive analytics.
When it comes to digital marketing, there are several aspects that you have to take seriously, such as different elements of data science. It is no secret, that there are lots of factors to be considered. Each marketing team, guru, or enthusiast you come across will address different factors depending on their perspective or perception of the same, so the importance becomes a matter of relativity.
The fact remains that each business analytics strategy you come across will be effective, and efficient, but only to the extent of its utility to your needs as a brand, or an entity.
Given the advancements in digital marketing and technology as a whole, there are some basics that should feature in your plans, especially if success is something you yearn for.
Here are 8 of the best that will guide you in data analysis.
1. Go Mobile
2. Build Apps
3. Brand Managers and Branding
4. Social Media Approach
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
6. Flexibility
7. Analytics
8. Planning and Budgeting
1. Go Mobile
The internet audience has in the past devolved into different categories. Brands have to establish niches to eke out a solid following, and hopefully turn these into revenue streams. If your brand has not gone mobile yet, you are missing out on a lot.
“Review your website and make sure it is responsive to mobile devices.”
Photo by: Pixabay
Based on data analytics records in the recent past, mobile audiences are the in thing. People spend so much time on their mobile devices than anything else today. In fact, more than 50% of internet users access the internet through mobile devices. Besides that, at least 70% of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices.
Review your website and make sure it is responsive to mobile devices. This is the one thing that most brand managers are not doing right. Did you know that you get penalized on search results if your website is not mobile responsive?
Other than the damage that Google will do to your traffic, you will also end up with an audience that is frustrated with your website, and consequently, move on to better things.
2. Build Apps
How often have you seen ads on TV or otherwise, where brands keep advertising their apps? This is the norm. Instead of advertising the core business, they are engaged in, a lot of companies spend a fortune advertising their apps.
Apps have come a long way in data science. They are currently one of the easiest ways for users to interact with the brands. People do not want to load websites anymore if they can get everything they want on an app.
The concept of using apps was primed by the advancement of business analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT). While this idea might still be in the early stages, a time is coming when it will be the norm. Getting your brand on board right now is definitely something you should be mulling over.
3. Brand Managers & Branding
Branding is no longer about printing your business cards and creating a website with an insane logo. Branding currently involves all aspects of your business. To be precise, branding is about how you communicate with your audience.
You have to take a holistic approach to branding, involve your clients and a few experts. Why do you need professional brand managers? Because branding has advanced to include things like crisis and reputation management.
A brand that is successful and plans to stay that way in the foreseeable future must have plans in place for every possible scenario, at the very least.
We have seen cases in the past where ex-employees spew harmful words after their exit, or an employee having one too many and saying things or posting things on their social media handles that affect the brand. Managing such scenarios effectively demand the presence of an expert brand manager.
4. Social Media Approach
You need a solid presence on social media. However, it is not just about being there. Your approach to marketing your brand on social media will go a long way too. It is a pity that so many brands take this for granted when for as little as $1 a day, you can advertise your business on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Photo by: Pixabay
Other than marketing, you should also use social media as an outlet through which you learn more about the challenges that your audience is facing, especially when interacting with your brand. This could be about your products or services, or any other concern that they might have.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Why and how is it that people are able to interact with your page through Google search results? This all comes down to SEO. The goal is to make sure you rank as high as possible. This is not just about ranking, but about authority.
Over the years Google has been rolling out updates to their algorithms as and when necessary, in an attempt to make the internet a safer and consumer-centered place. Gone are the days when webmasters would stuff keywords all over their websites to hoodwink the Google bots into pushing their websites higher.
At the moment, your focus should be on generating content that adds value to the lives of the users. Such content, therefore, should be written with the end-user in mind. It should be content that they can share, and inspire others too.
Quality content creation is one of the best ways to become an authority figure in your industry. Coupled with other important items like photos and videos, this should be an important part of your digital marketing plan.
6. Flexibility
In the marketing angle of business analytics, you must be flexible. All the way from your desired tools, you need to explore other alternatives. There are different tools that you can use to achieve your goals. Other than that, you should also look at different platforms.
The idea here is to maximize the potential return through all possible avenues. On the same note, you might need to use more than one marketer. Their collective efforts will go a long way towards making sure you can get the best outcome.
Each marketer has different skills. In digital marketing, you might need the help of different experts at different levels. You need a very good graphic designer for your campaigns. You also need a talented writer to give you amazing copies.
You will need a professional in social media marketing, and so forth. For the success of your digital marketing strategy, therefore, you need the collective support of different professionals.
7. Analytics
There are different analytics software that you can use. However different their results and approaches might be, the core concept behind predictive analytics is to understand the numbers. In business intelligence, it is impossible to make any progress on your marketing end when you cannot interpret the numbers you are getting.
“Everything that we have discussed comes down to planning and budgeting. You must be realistic and reasonable when going about this.”
Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd.
In web analytics, we will look at metrics like the number of visits to your website, and what these visitors do when they get to your website, among other things. There is so much information that you can deduce from this, which will go a long way in helping you with the next step, planning, and budgeting.
8. Planning & Budgeting
Everything that we have discussed comes down to planning and budgeting. You must be realistic and reasonable when going about this. Research on what some of the players in the industry are spending on their digital marketing campaigns. From this, you can scale up or down your budget for marketing.
Some of this information might not be easy to come by. Therefore, you will also need to consider coming up with an in-house assessment of what you might need to spend on this. One of the reasons why a lot of brands fail is because they fail to budget and plan accordingly for their marketing.
With budgeting, you also have to set realistic deliverables. There is nothing wrong with having an ambitious plan. However, it should be something that is feasibly achievable. When you bring on an expert brand manager, analytics expert, or whichever digital marketing expert, you can also ask them to advise you on the ideal budget, based on their experience, and what you need from them.
There is a lot of collaboration required to make this work. You need to brainstorm with experts and other core members of your team. More importantly, this is a venture that is best attempted by a close working relationship with all the parties involved. If you can prepare adequately for this, nothing will stand in your way to success.
Conclusion
Digital marketing as we know it is not something that any brand can afford to ignore at the moment. This would be a mistake that would only succeed at pushing your brand into the depths of oblivion.
The internet is awash with resources, useful tools that can make a big difference in what your brand is today, and what your brand will be worth a few months down the line. Remember, even with the most advanced marketing approach, it will count for nothing without proper analytics and business intelligence practices in place.
You have to know what you are doing, how, and get tangible results. Through web analytics, you should also be able to quantify returns for every marketing effort you invest in your brand.