Industries across the board continue to embrace the digital age. All businesses must maintain a strong digital presence to extend awareness and generate sales for their products and services.
This guide details effective strategies for achieving this goal by implementing an online mode of marketing, commonly known as digital marketing.
Read on or “jump ahead” to the sections below:
What is Digital Marketing and Why is It Necessary?
What is a Digital Marketing Channel?
Step by Step Digital Marketing Sales Funnel Process
The Differences Between Various Digital Marketing Channels
Why Employ a Professional Digital Marketing Agency?
Organizations can employ several digital marketing channels at once as part of a multi-pronged online marketing and sales strategy. Measures taken to ensure customers can easily reach you increases the likelihood of generating multiple quality leads for your business.
Once identified, leads must be nurtured to ensure a sales conversion and establish customer loyalty, as evidenced by return business and client endorsements. A strong digital marketing strategy using multiple communication channels grants companies access to a large potential customer base. It also assists businesses in customer retention efforts.
What is Digital Marketing and Why is It Necessary?
Digital Marketing is a form of marketing aimed at establishing communication between a company and its potential customer base. Digital marketing uses a variety of internet-oriented technologies:, smartphones, TVs, and electronic billboards.
Digital marketing includes numerous channels and tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, social media, influencer marketing, etc. Using a combination of these digital marketing tools, any individual, brand, product, or service can be effectively marketed all across the digital landscape.
Presently, an estimated 4.5 billion people use the internet. After COVID-19, total internet usage has surged by up to 70% globally. The digital world is the new open market for companies and brands.
Through digital marketing, you can target a large pool of customers at once. Digital marketing offers you the tools necessary to analyze consumer behavior and adapt your brand reputation accordingly. This type of marketing allows you to expand the reach of your products and services in a cost-effective manner.
Digital Marketing is often confused with internet marketing, a sub-branch of the former. Internet marketing is concerned with promoting the digital presence of products and services across the internet only.
Internet marketing is done through relevant content flow and social media channels. However, Internet marketing does not include digital advertisements or the use of other electronic mediums such as televisions.
What is a Digital Marketing Channel?
Digital marketing channels include any communication device or platform between a business and its prospective clients that are used to market the company brand and its goods or services. It is used to generate leads and move potential clients through a step by step process, also known as the digital marketing sales funnel.
Step by Step Digital Marketing Sales Funnel Process
The sales process through the digital marketing funnel is nearly identical across all digital marketing channels and it consists of five primary stages:
● AWARENESS
The first stage is to create awareness among potential customers. Through extensive research and marketing strategies, customers are attracted into the funnel.
Building awareness is a crucial first step to building trust between the consumer and the brand. Advertisements webinars, email marketing, content, and viral social media postings are designed and implemented for lead generation at this stage.
In this stage of the marketing funnel, it is vital that your content reaches the maximum target audience. For example, a car cleaning company will target anyone and everyone who currently owns or uses a car.
Channels used in this stage include SEO and search engine marketing (SEM), which are used to improve website visibility and bring attention to its content. Social Media Marketing (SMM), both paid and unpaid, may also be used as a channel to create awareness and bring about that crucial first contact with prospective leads.
● INTEREST
After lead generation, interest is created among the pool of potential customers regarding a company, product, or service. At this stage, brands have a chance to develop an effective relationship with their target audience.
After the initial contact has been established, additional content must make its way to the prospective lead to help guide them through the marketing funnel, resulting in successful sales conversions. This is done through email subscriptions, blogging, social media posts, newsletters, press releases, articles, free webinars, and LinkedIn marketing.
● DECISION
At this stage, clients are encouraged to make a decision. They are subjected to targeted ads and personalized messages highlighting the major reasons they need a particular product. Customers are also encouraged by mentioning the unique selling point (USP) of the product.
The ads sent at the time of decision making are different from those sent during the previous sales stages in terms of selective content and appeal. These ads are more specific to market trends and demands followed by the customer.
● ACTION
At this point, there are two approaches: The first is applied when the customer has purchased your product or service and has become a part of your business’s ecosystem. There is much more work to be done following the completion of this first step.
In the second step, action is crucial for the brand and the marketer. The goal now is to convert one purchase into 10, 10 into 100, and so on. In other words, it is about focusing on customer retention by expressing gratitude for the initial purchase.
The business must also focus on inviting customers to reach out with feedback. For instance, it is imperative to make sure customers have easy access to tech support, if applicable.
In cases where potential clients have still not responded to a call to action, personalized plans are drafted. Strategies to encourage reluctant buyers should include multiple approaches including promotional offers, advertisements, email marketing, social media messages, etc.
● ADVOCACY
Leads that have been fully nurtured and converted can be convinced to aid in further lead generation. It is preferable to use email marketing in order to draft a more personalized message demonstrating appreciation for their customer loyalty and encouraging them to ask others to try your product as well.
The Differences Between Various Digital Marketing Channels
Each digital marketing channel is designed to serve a specific purpose. The particular function a channel is meant to perform differs. This should be taken into consideration when deciding what role it will fill in your overall digital marketing strategy. Detailed below are a few of the factors that cause this variation in function as well as tips about how to choose the channel best suited for your needs:
● THE EVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING
Trends in digital marketing are constantly evolving. New features are routinely being added to all digital marketing channels—even emails are used a bit differently now compared to how they were envisioned at their inception.
Such changes are intended to help marketers boost traffic to their marketing funnels. However, sometimes the effects are limited, or may even backfire.
The history of meta keywords provided a great example of this. In 1995, Google launched meta titles, descriptions, and keywords for indexing web pages. However, meta keywords soon became so overused, they were declared redundant.
Some SEO experts still believe in using meta keywords, but many do not even bother using them anymore. This illustrates one of many ways SEO has evolved. It also demonstrates how a feature on a digital marketing channel can cease to be effective when it is overused.
● TYPE OF BUSINESS (INCLUDING BUSINESS CULTURE)
A business will utilize different digital marketing channels based on its target market. For example, a business to business (B2B) company has different marketing needs compared to a business to consumer (B2C) operation. Company culture is another important factor to consider when deciding which channels best fit into your digital marketing strategy.
In cases where the company under consideration is a more prestigious one, a more formal tone is often preferred. Thus, more traditional digital marketing channels such as email marketing will be their go-to choice. On the other hand, SMM is used by companies with a more modern, visual-heavy approach to marketing.
Whether an organization prefers inbound marketing, outbound marketing, or a mix of the two, this choice determines which marketing channels should be used. For example, inbound marketing is primarily done via organic methods such as SEO, blogging, and consistent posts on social media platforms. Outbound digital marketing is done through the use of advertisements, whether they be through cold emails, social media, or paid search engine rankings.
● OTHER SUB-STAGES OF THE DIGITAL MARKETING FUNNEL
The process that takes place between ‘interest’ and ’decision’ is called consideration. At this point, prospective leads are converted into leads or market qualified customers. These are subjected to more information about the brand through benefits such as free subscriptions and content.
After the consideration process is complete, prospective leads keen on a brand’s products or services respond to a call to action or in some other way illustrate intent to become customers. This is where the marketing units can show why the particular product they are suggesting stands out from the rest.
The next stage just before ‘decision’ in the marketing funnel is the evaluation. In this stage, marketers concentrate on evaluating a customer’s decision and work accordingly to nurture the lead.
The stage where the product is purchased by the prospective lead is a part of ‘advocacy’. Transactions are managed here. If the customer has received a positive experience throughout the process, it helps in pumping up the various stages of the marketing funnel.
All of these nuances feed into a complex system. Understanding them is necessary to identify which channels to use in order to optimize lead generation for your business.
Why Employ a Professional Digital Marketing Agency?
An individual may have knowledge of the various digital marketing channels available and a basic understanding of how to leverage the unique capabilities of each. Still, many business owners choose to use a digital marketing agency to meet their marketing needs.
Jawfish Digital offers a comprehensive package of the expertise and resources necessary to create a customized digital marketing strategy for your business and target clientele. The marketing professionals at Jawfish Digital seamlessly streamline the marketing process to achieve maximum lead generation while minimizing the cost per lead.
In the post-COVID-19 era, effective digital marketing has become an increasingly critical component of any successful business sales strategy.
Contact Jawfish Digital today for a free consultation on how to optimize your digital marketing strategy.