5 Questions to Improve Your Digital Marketing Are you using every available resource to make your digital marketing a success?
By Yatin Khulbe
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Every online company needs to use marketing effectively to generate traffic and leads. With so many platforms available to publish the content, though, it can be difficult to pick the best option or figure out why your strategy isn't working.
Those quickest to identify the latest developments and implement them in their marketing strategies have the strongest potential to convert their vision into a real brand.
Ask these five questions to overcome your digital marketing challenges:
1. What is your strategic outreach plan?
If you invest in the wrong channel or platform, you can't expect to generate the returns you want.
Should you invest in content marketing? How about YouTube Ads? Is there any possibility of making more sales through paid advertising? What is the impact of direct emails?
The answers to those questions depend heavily on your target audience. Don't expect to multiply your campaign growth by investing heavily in textual content when your customers prefer visual.
Related: New to Digital Marketing? How to Keep 'Face Time' With Customers
Before starting any campaign, focus your energies on audience identification and segmentation. Research where your customers hang out, what they like and what they hate.
After outlining the outreach goals, answer the following questions with ease:
- Is the chosen channel the right medium to reach the target audience?
- How are we going to refine our plan to bring in more leads and sales?
2. Are you focusing on the non-buyers?
That is, people who could benefit from your offer but don't buy your product/service mainly due to:
Lack of time
Lack of knowledge
Cost
Trust issues
Successful digital marketing campaigns don't just reach buyers -- they also implement a persuasive follow-up campaign for non-buyers.
Most marketers never follow up and they miss out on an opportunity. 80 percent of all potential opportunities are lost due to lack of follow-up. Focus on your non-buyers by analyzing the buyer's journey. Tell them how your product or service recognizes and addresses their pain points.
Buyers make the purchasing decision by looking for factors like customer support, alternative options and positive reviews from customers, so be prepared for that.
Related: The 4 Digital Trends That Are Reshaping Advertising
3) Do you live up to expectations?
A strong digital marketing research plan incorporates psychographic factors to capture the emotions of the target audience, because you cannot create value without knowing your customer's expectations, and for that, you need accurate profile knowledge of an ideal client.
The "value proposition" is a promise made by a company to assure the better quality of their product/service over similar offerings in the market. It answers the buyer's fundamental question: Why should I buy from you?
Develop listening, observation and learning skills. The more you listen, the more you minimize the gap between your offer and customer expectations. Watch the latest trends within your industry. Learn to fill the missing gaps from your competitors.
Marketers must propagate the company's value to the masses. What's the use of delivering value if it doesn't get delivered to the right set of people?
4) Are you building human relationships?
A teacher buys your product -- let's say a video editing tool, to make learning both fun and engaging.
What's your next plan? How can you capitalize on that sale?
You could create an free educational content to help the customer understand your product, then choose an email marketing platform and put the course on an autoresponder sequence.
But, that shouldn't mark the end of the process. Real engagement begins when your customer raises concerns. Improve after-sales services. Attend with care.
What else should you do?
After launching your social media ads, devote time to responding to reader's queries. Don't forget to reply when someone comments or share your stuff online. Appreciate the constructive feedback. You can't automate every process. Build human connections.
Related: 10 Free Marketing Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know About
5) Are you learning from your key performance indicators (KPIs)?
Make sure you understand the difference between click through rate (the percentage of people who see an ad and click on it) and landing page conversion rate (the percentage of people who make it all the way to the end of the process, whether that's to a sales page or somewhere else).
Understanding the difference between performance indicators can tell you where customers are getting hung up in the process, and whether you need to change your process or use a new platform.
