The Importance of Digital Marketing

When you think of traditional marketing tactics, you might imagine billboards, TV and radio commercials, and paper handouts — which are great for some businesses, but can be expensive and not reach a very wide audience.

Chances are if your brand or business has any kind of marketing strategy, you’re already incorporating digital marketing of some kind. Digital marketing is everywhere, but knowing how to strategically incorporate it into your marketing strategy will be the key to reaching your marketing goals this year.

Here are some of the key digital marketing tools that your business should be using in 2022:

Businesses can run advertisements on platforms like Google and Facebook, which can be more attention-grabbing and reach a much wider audience than traditional advertisements on a billboard or in a newspaper. The ads can be specifically targeted to your desired audience and will link directly back to your social media or website, offering an efficient pipeline for interested potential customers to find out more about your business.

Email newsletter marketing is a great tool to reach your customers at regular intervals with business or product updates, critical information, or engaging content. Most email marketing platforms can offer you an insight into new customer leads and outline what content is being clicked on by readers.

Social media is key to a successful digital marketing strategy and can be used to accomplish many different marketing goals. You can use social media platforms to get new information to your customers, reach new audiences, network, and promote your business’ style.

Using social media from a business marketing standpoint also offers helpful analytics and insights that you don’t see on your personal social media accounts. You can see how many people viewed your post, how they’re interacting, and what time you should post in order to best reach your target audience.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is all about ensuring your website is found by users looking for information through search engines. Search engines use keywords and phrases from web pages to offer users relevant information and results.

Optimizing your content for search engines shouldn’t be a guessing game. With tools like Google keywords, SEMRush, and others, you can uncover how to angle your website’s pages towards potential future customers.

Marketing Resolutions You Should Adopt

On the eve of every new year, we make resolutions that will drive us towards our goals in the months to come. While many of us may give up on our promises to only eat salad early on in the year, keeping your promises to your business can make the difference between growth and decline this year.

 Many businesses throw marketing to the wayside and don’t understand how strategic marketing resolutions can truly propel your brand’s success. Whether it’s January first or the middle of August, it’s never too late to adopt a marketing resolution so we’ve rounded up some common goals and the resolutions you can adopt to make 2022 your brand’s best year yet.

Goal: Gain a social media following
Resolution: Stay consistent with social media

The secret to a top-tier social media strategy is no secret: it’s all about consistency. This means interacting consistently, posting regularly, and taking the time to create unique and memorable content for your audience. It can be time consuming, but the increase in engagement and conversions is worth it.

Goal: Get your brand recognize
Resolution: Maintain brand consistency

Brand recognition takes time, effort, and- you guessed it- consistency. It’s important to know your brand’s identity inside and out so you can build upon a solid foundation. Keeping your logo, brand colors, and style the same while you build your brand will help your audience build recognition.

Goal: Spend marketing dollars more wisely
Resolution: Set a marketing budget

While you can do all your marketing yourself, it can be a time-consuming endeavor if you already have a full schedule running your business. Your marketing dollars can be spent on social media management tools like Hootsuite or Sprout, improving your ad visibility on Google and Facebook, and/or hiring an outside marketing team to help you meet all your marketing goals.

Goal: Increase conversion rate
Resolution: Regularly analyze marketing data

To increase your conversion rate, start by collecting as much marketing data as you can so you can analyze your strengths and weaknesses. If you understand where your website visitors are clicking on your website, you can learn where they are when they decide to leave your website and focus on creating new content, landing pages, and calls to action that keep them interested. Make sure that you’re collecting enough data to make informed decisions — 10 page views or a week of social media engagement is not enough.

Goal: Generate new content
Resolution: Start a blog

Starting a blog for your business’s website can have numerous benefits for your brand. A blog offers your audience a glimpse into who you are, your expertise, and can act as a conversation between you and your audience. You gain credibility with your audience by writing about your products and services. Plus, blogs are a wealth of content that you can share over time on your social media accounts.

Whatever marketing resolutions you choose, sticking to them all year round is the key to helping your brand grow and reaching your goals. With consultation services, marketing campaign assistance, outsourced marketing, and so much more, the marketing professionals at Hoyden are always here to support your marketing goals and help your brand have its best year ever.

The 4 P’s of Marketing

Promotion

Complex marketing tactics implemented by an inexperienced team can lead to jumbled messaging, confused customers, and low brand awareness. If your team is bogged down with overly complicated marketing, it might be time to get back to the basics.

Simple marketing begins with the 4 P’s, which come from the “Marketing Mix”— a model businesses use to capture their unique selling points in order to create a strategic marketing plan.

A product is a solution to a problem. It meets the needs of a potential customer, whether that need is software development or information about local real estate properties for sale.

You know your product like the back of your hand but you also need to know what makes your product unique so you can tell potential customers not only why they should buy it, but why they should invest their time to learn about it. You need to be able to explain why your product should be chosen over every other product like it.

When deciding the price of your product, you should assess supply costs, competitor pricing, and how much profit you need to make to sustain your business and potentially grow in the future. You should also consider how much you would be able to offer for a discount during future seasonal or promotional periods. If your initial price is too low, you won’t be able to generate excitement with discounts.

Unfortunately, your customers aren’t going to come to you, begging to give you money. Understanding the unique facets and niches of your target market is the first step to reaching them.

Here is what you should know about your audience:

• • • Age range
    • Gender
    • Geographical location
    • Education level
    • Interests/hobbies
    • Unique qualities that make your product of interest to them

“Place” will be where and how this target audience can get your product. Many products and services are completely advertised and purchased online, and thus require a strong digital presence with social media, an impressive website, and eye-catching advertisements. Others have storefronts and must consider display design and in-person sales teams.

Your promotion should be strategic and thoughtful. It should reach your target audience, tell them the problem your product will solve, and explain exactly how to get it while working in the confines of your budget and advertising space.

Wow Your CEO with a Strategic Marketing Plan

No matter what business you’re in, implementing a strategic marketing plan can boost your sales, drive your website traffic, or grow your brand’s social media presence. Without a strategic marketing plan, all your marketing efforts (and money) are spent hoping for a marketing win while you miss opportunities for consistent growth and leave your brand subject to threats that can damage your image.

 Your brand isn’t the same as it was a year ago and your marketing plan should grow and evolve with your business. If you’re ready for a refresh, here are the first steps to developing a strategic marketing plan:

While your current marketing plan may be working just fine, there’s always room for improvement. Get objective about your marketing situation, even if that means being critical of your own work.

If you’re struggling to analyze your marketing objectively, try making a list of your brand’s:

Strengths: How is your marketing successful?
Weaknesses: Where is your marketing not getting results?
Opportunities: What opportunities can your brand take advantage of?
Threats: What outside influences may hurt your brand?

Strengths and weaknesses are internal to your brand while opportunities and threats are external. Understanding your current marketing situation will help you move forward with a strategy.

Your goal should focus on your weaknesses or address an upcoming opportunity or threat and have a great impact on your brand. Your goals will drive all your marketing efforts and give each step of your marketing plan a concrete purpose, so make sure you set a goal that’s:

Specific
Measurable
Realistic
Time-bound

For example: Increase our website conversion rate from 13% to 17% within the next 6 months.

Not: Get more followers on Instagram.

Market research is an opportunity to learn more about your audience, your competitors, and the trends that can affect your brand’s success. Tailor your market research to your goals — use it to find what type of content, products, or information is most and least successful amongst your target audience. Then, you can use that data to influence your marketing strategy.

Now that you have a specific goal, an understanding of your current marketing plan, and data from your market research, you’re ready to develop a strategic marketing tactic.

Developing a smart, effective, and budget-friendly marketing tactic can be overwhelming. Depending on your goals, your tactic may mean focusing on a new audience, exploring a new topic, or rebranding your business altogether. Your new marketing plan should include specific actions you’ll take, a timeline, and a budget.

Executing a marketing plan is no easy task and the more help you have, the better. Including your team in your marketing strategy will lead to more ideas, more content, and more confidence in your brand’s future. Your coworkers are your greatest brand ambassadors so their buy-in to your brand and your goals is essential for success.

Strategic marketing is a continuous process that requires consistent effort.

The job isn’t done with a website refresh, new social media content, or a catchy new advertisement. For long-term success and brand growth, you need to track your data and monitor your feedback, all while continuously adjusting your marketing plan based on the information you receive.

If all of this sounds like too much to handle on your own, it might be time to ask for help. Hoyden offers project-based, month-to-month, and consulting services to help you develop and implement a personalized marketing strategy based on your brand, your goals, and your budget.