Digital marketing campaigns when properly designed and managed lead to increased brand awareness, better quality leads, and more sales.
Listed below are 14 strategies to dramatically increase your digital marketing campaigns effectiveness and return on investment.
I’ve also posted a couple videos along the way for those of you who prefer watching to reading.
And lastly, aside from littering little money making marketing gems through the article, I’ve also included a free download to help make your marketing that much more effective, so you’re going to want to read all the way through to the end.
So let’s get started.
1. Understand changing media consumption
I’ve found that understanding changing trends in media consumption is the single most important element in designed and executing a high performing digital marketing campaign.
Are you aware of exactly how your target market is consuming their information?
No other strategy or tactic will matter if you’re barking up the wrong tree.
2. Consumer Behavior
It’s important to design your digital marketing campaign around proven customer behaviour patterns and decision making criteria.
While many factors are different in the online arena, the human brain is the same, and as Jeff Walker puts it, so are the mental triggers that create action.
Be sure to incorporate at least one of the following (and ideally more) into every digital marketing campaign you run:
- Authority
- Reciprocity
- Trust
- Anticipation
- Likeability
- Events and Rituals
- Community
- Scarcity
- Social Proof
3. Facts Sell
While storytelling is an integral part of most marketing campaigns (and is often touted as the be all and end all) at the end of the day facts and statistics based marketing can often perform better in regards to proving expertise, and increasing conversions.
Leverage and test both factual and emotional advertising in your marketing campaigns, and try to find a way to use relevant and authoritative references.
How To WOW Your Audience Every Time
4. Images Are 80%
The success or failure of your digital marketing campaign largely comes down to the images you decide to use.
The most important tip in choosing an image is first making sure it catches your prospects attention, and next making sure it’s relevant.
Irrelevant images and ads may get clicks, but they rarely get conversions.
[Tweet “Irrelevant images may get clicks, but rarely get conversions”]
Stock images can also be effective, but they are most effective when customized and optimized for your audience.
5. Split Testing
Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of digital marketing is split testing, or AB testing, which is the ability to test one campaign against another in order to quickly cut lower performing ads, and scale up higher performing ones.
Split testing should be done in stages, starting with your images, followed by your headline, and finally your body copywriting.
The end result is a higher performing and more cost effective ad.
6. Respect Attention Spans
Attention spans have been getting shorter year after year, and nowhere is this more evident than online.
This isn’t a bad thing however, as the odds are good that your competitors are failing to recognize and capitalize on this, which leaves the door open for you to create eye-catching and engaging ads.
What To Do If You Don’t Know What To Say
7. Lead With Value
In today’s market you need to “give to get”.
Not only does providing value first help establish your authority and credibility, it also leverages the mental trigger of reciprocity.
Truly useful marketing campaigns are also more share-worthy, engaging, and help build trust and show expertise better than any other form of advertising.
8. Entertain
Even stereotypically “boring” industries can still benefit from an element of entertainment in their digital marketing campaigns.
This can be done though design, creative ad copy, humor, statistics, or novelty.
[Tweet “Educating while entertaining is a winning combination”]
How To Leverage Digital Marketing Opportunities
9. Understand The Funnel
To create a truly outstanding digital marketing campaign you need to understand where your audience is in regards to their relationship with your business, sometimes referred to as a marketing funnel.
We use the terms, cold, warm, and hot, to describe those who don’t know you (cold) to those that do know you (warm) to those who have bought from you before (hot).
Each audience requires a different message and strategy.
10. Effective Targeting
The key to keep your advertising costs under control comes down to effective targeting.
This is where you decide exactly who you want to see your message, and how you can isolate them from the masses.
Fortunately, marketing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, all have highly sophisticated and laser focused targeting options so you can be sure your message is reaching the right people.
11. Optimization Principles
Properly optimizing your marketing (both design and budget) means the difference between a good campaign, and a great one.
As I mentioned before, you want to cut the losers, and scale the winners.
Through research, analysis, and split testing, you are able to create “super-ads” that will outperform all others.
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12. Don’t Reinvent The Wheel
When it comes to marketing, rarely do you need to completely reinvent the wheel.
Start with proven and effective ads and customize from there. While each business, industry, and market are different, there are still many similarities that you can draw from.
If a certain advertisement has worked well for others in a different market, the odds are good that a similar ad structure could work just as well (or better) for yours.
13. Call to action
Be direct in what you want your audience to do.
If you want them to call, ask them to call.
If you want them to fill out a form, ask them to fill out a form.
If you want them to click and buy now, ask them to click and buy now.
There is a time and a place for fancy and artful copywriting, but the call to action isn’t it.
14. Never Say Goodbye
Thanks to the magic of retargeting, when a potential customer:
- Finishes viewing your ad
- Finishes reading your online article
- Finishes looking through your website, or
- Finishes viewing your promotional video
They aren’t really gone.
In fact, their journey is just beginning.
A single point of contact is all you need in order to continue to serve them different messages, in different ways, until they become lifelong and loyal customers.
These follow up messages are more targeted, more specific, and more cost effective and result in significantly higher returns over time.
How Can You Run A Digital Marketing Campaign That Sells?
These techniques will dramatically increase the quality of your digital marketing, and it will cause even brand new customers to immediately view you as an authority in your market.
But you still need to make sales.
That’s done by having a crystal clear plan on who you’re trying to reach, what you’re going to say, and where the best place to reach them.
I’ve created a simple One Page Marketing Plan that will help you deploy your marketing strategy quickly so you can easily move strangers to become customers, and customers to become lifelong loyal brand ambassadors.
You can have it free here.
Any Other Ideas?
So now I turn it over to you…
- Are you using any of these strategies in your business?
- Were there any strategies you saw that excited you? Confused you? Intrigued you? Or that you disagreed with?
Leave your thoughts in the comments section below now.
