Motherload Series: Best Investments for Digital Marketing

Not everyone has millions of dollars to spend on their marketing activities – we can’t all spend $211 million to change a logo like BP once did! That’s why it’s vital to consider what’s most important in your marketing campaign and funnel your resources towards it. 

It can be scary prioritizing something, as it naturally pushes something else aside – what if that thing was the key to a successful campaign? This constant conundrum can confuse growing businesses that don’t have time to make careful decisions about digital marketing. 

So, our new Motherload Series will answer your questions, allowing you to maximize the value of each project. 

If you don’t have the capability for such endeavors, Integrate Agency is ready and waiting to take the wheel. Our digital marketing expertise has helped businesses go from zero to hero in a matter of months.

Write Valuable, Helpful, Engaging Content

It may sound corny, but helpful content that offers genuine value is the best way to improve reader enjoyment and search engine rank simultaneously. The more care you put into each web page, blog and social media post, the more likely readers are to relate and engage with your brand, therefore increasing the likelihood of a sale.

If you’re throwing money at your content without much care for quality, you’re likely wasting a lot of time and money. When it comes to content, begin with “less is more” or “quality over quantity.” Then, if you have the time, expertise, patience and consistency to get it right, you may progress to fulfilling both quantity and quality.

Post to Social Media

If you are really pushing your onsite content – blogs, product descriptions, whitepapers – make sure to get the most value from them as possible. Content is never dead until it’s been shared on social media. Whether you post this organically or in a sponsored post, there may be thousands of new audience members ready to be exposed to your brand. 

By gatekeeping all of that content on your website, you’re not allowing yourself to grow your audience on the biggest exposure machine ever invented. It’s important to recognize which kinds of content best suit each platform. 

Naturally, visually stimulating content belongs on Instagram where users can put an aesthetic and an emotion to your brand. Differentiating between LinkedIn- or Facebook-bound content can be trickier, however, as their audience and purpose begin to blur a little more. 

The former is certainly more for entertainment and socializing, while the latter is a professional, informative, networking platform. Ultimately though, it will all depend on your audience. 

If they are young business leaders, for example, perhaps you want to meet them where they are on Instagram and nurture the relationship from there. These are all factors to consider as you invest in your social media strategy moving forward. If you get it right, it is sure to pay dividends – or bitcoin, or whatever your audience is paying in.

Begin a PPC Campaign

As the middle ground between initial capital expenditure and organic content, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to pay for only what you get. This is a great way to open a new campaign, as it puts your content in the eyes of a targeted audience from the beginning. 

You can’t expect organic traffic to flood in when few people know about your business, so PPC gets your foot in the initial awareness phase of the marketing funnel. Choose how much you want to pay and therefore how long the ad is likely to remain live, then design an enticing and relevant ad for your chosen audience. 

You may have noticed us mention the target audience a couple of times here and that is because PPC ads allow you to finely segment the viewers of said ad. This ensures each dollar spent goes towards users who are most likely to engage with your brand. This is just another factor supporting the use of PPC as a strong initial investment in your next digital marketing campaign.

Create Remarketing Ads

Often confused with retargeting – where old users are targeted with ads simply because they had visited your website or you’ve gained their contact details – remarketing is specific to past customers. Far less intrusive than retargeting, remarketing is an innocent way to re-engage and entice those who have already shown a serious interest in your product. 

Remarketing can come in the form of an email or Facebook DM offering exclusive discounts to former customers, or perhaps in a search engine result targeted towards the same. 

The more personalized you can make these ads, the better, as customers will already recognize you at a base level and will require more familiarity to commit to another purchase. Show how you understand their pain points and have committed to improving for them.

The time and effort put into this endeavor are sure to benefit your campaign, as customer retention can have an exponential effect on total revenue, according to HubSpot.

Optimize Your Website

If your social media pages and search ads are like digital billboards people pass on the information superhighway, then your website homepage is your shop-front window. The homepage gives a broad look into what your business is about and what you offer. A good one entices your audience to wander inside and shop around, while a bad one will scare people off for fear of catching a virus. 

As you invest in digital marketing, ensure your landing page – wherever it may be on your website – looks fine-tuned and in line with whatever your ad had promised. More than that, invest in the entire user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) to ensure a seamless journey for each customer. 

Poor UX design would be like having super creepy in-store staff, while poor UI design would be similar to uncomfortably narrow aisles and a counter that’s surrounded by boxes. In either case, they relate to the user’s journey from arriving at your website to confirming their purchase at the checkout. 

A professional UX/UI web designer will know the ins and outs of these specialist areas and will talk you through your website’s performance in navigation, imagery, accessibility, layout, hierarchy and so much more. 

We highly recommend doing further research or hiring a professional in this area, due to its importance, complexity, and consequences if executed poorly.

Step Up Your Email Marketing Game

As referenced in “remarketing,” email marketing can be a game changer for retention and customer loyalty. This is a platform to get more comfortable with your audience, get to know them better and inform them of your brand. This is where your brand really develops its personality and reminds the audience exactly why it initially invested in your product or service.

Exclusive discounts, brand story development, industry trends, and customer hero stories are all great functions of email marketing. Each one adds value to the reader’s subscription, going beyond what could be effectively offered on social media or in traditional marketing.

To improve your email marketing, segment your email lists to provide only the most relevant content to each reader. There’s no use wasting an email about a given product, if the chosen recipient has expressed that they’re only interested in another. 

Ensure each email is mobile-friendly, as HubSpot has found that 41% of email opens now come from mobile devices. (Despite this, SuperOffice has found that 1 in 5 emails are not considered mobile-friendly.)

Some simpler tips for effective email marketing lie within the sender, subject, and the preview. Try sending the email from a real person’s name, rather than from noreply@address, as it adds a human element that users are increasingly craving. 

Use the subject and preview to appear relatable, relevant, and personalized to the audience segment. Users are far less likely to open an email with a subject line that is broad and impersonal, such as “See What’s New This Month” or “Experts give this product 5 stars!”

Both of these examples could be sent to an entire email base without the promise of holding anything particularly valuable within. It may be a 5-star product, but it’s not suggested that the user will benefit from it. Likewise, it’s assumed your brand has something new every month, but that doesn’t make us flock to your website on principle. 

Keep subjects short and urgent, and slide in a discount if applicable.

Contact Integrate Agency

We may be biased, but we believe the best investment you can make towards your digital marketing is a partnership with us. 

We have expert services in SEO, PPC, content strategy and more. Explore our website to learn more about us and get in touch if you feel like we’ve got what you need.