By Robyn Yao, Digital Marketing Specialist

Are you a business owner looking to improve your digital marketing strategy? With so many options and tactics available, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. That’s why our experts at Tulip Media Group have put together the ultimate guide to digital marketing for businesses, with everything you need to know to succeed online.

Website Design 
As one of the first places prospective clients interact with you when inquiring about your business, websites must be easy to follow and understand. If customers can’t discern what your core offering is, the chances of them surfing over to your competitors increase. So, how do you ensure you boost your on-page time for users while relaying a clear, concise message? This all starts with having a well-designed, user-friendly website and understanding how to tell your brand story effectively. 

One way to ensure your customers have all the information they need is by creating specific landing pages. Incorporating landing pages in your website for lead generation purposes will help funnel new customers into your queue and take them from being a cold to a warm to a hot lead. When creating a landing page, think about the most important points that your consumers need to hear and put those first. From there, add any supplemental details they may need to make an informed decision regarding their prospective purchase. 

Having a user-friendly website not only means that the design is executed in a way that makes sense for clients but that it’s also optimized for mobile users. Remember, many people search on their phones nowadays, meaning that the mobile view is just as important as the desktop view. 

Now, what about the messaging you integrate throughout your website? We always recommend appealing to human emotions through exceptional storytelling to better connect with and convert your audience. To figure out your personal brand story, ask yourself questions like Why did I start this brand? What are my core values and mission? Who does this product or service help? and What need does this fulfill in the industry? The stronger your storytelling on your website, the easier it will be to capture and keep your customers’ attention. 

Beyond this, you’ll also want to ensure your website speed is running optimally so that your website is responsive and not lagging as your prospective clients peruse it. If you find that your website speed and responsiveness could use a little help, you might consider reducing the number of plugins, redirects, and fonts; reviewing your image sizing; using a content delivery network (CDN); or moving your website to a better host. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 
What is SEO? This is probably the biggest question we get asked by business owners. Essentially, SEO is the practice of improving your webpage to ultimately increase its visibility and ranking in search engine results such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. It involves not only optimizing a website’s technical configuration (like some of the examples we provided for increasing your website’s speed) but also working on things like content relevancy and link popularity.

One of the easiest ways to boost your website’s SEO is by integrating targeted keywords throughout your content. If you’re struggling to come up with keywords, we suggest making a list of broad topics related to your industry, expanding each topic with a list of phrases your customers use, and then analyzing the strength of these resulting keywords to determine which ones are best for your business.

Aside from keyword integration, there are several other ways to optimize your on-page SEO including using alt tags and meta descriptions properly, updating your headers and URLs to be more concise, integrating a robust backlink strategy, and consistently creating SEO-friendly content that your customers can’t wait to consume. If this is still overwhelming or confusing, you might want to start by conducting an SEO audit using free online tools such as Semrush, SEOptimer, or SEOmator (among many others).

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) 
Have you ever searched for something in Google and noticed the sponsored ads at the top of the results? These are businesses engaging in PPC advertising, a form of online marketing where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads. One of the benefits of running a PPC advertising campaign is that all the data you collect is trackable and can be reviewed using tools such as Google Ads and Google Analytics. Plus, with PPC advertising, you’re able to reach people who aren’t already in your audience as well as those that have been previously exposed to your brand, which means a strong PPC campaign can start seeing results almost immediately. 

If you’re looking to start a PPC advertising campaign for your business, we first recommend setting your goals, expectations, and budget before selecting a bidding strategy (we suggest manual bidding if this is your first time). From there, you’ll need to pull up your keywords and mindfully integrate them throughout the advertisement as you create it. And most importantly, don’t forget to include a strong call-to-action (CTA) at the end! Finally, once your optimized PPC campaign is live, it’s time to track and measure your ad’s performance and make any necessary changes to improve results. 

If you’re worried about whether or not your ad is targeting the right audience, you’ll want to get very clear on who your ideal client avatar is and watch the results of your campaign to see if it’s attracting the right type of client for your service or offering. 

Email Marketing 
Lastly, the final strategy you should consider if you’re a business is email marketing. Email marketing is a digital marketing tactic that uses email to share new products, sales, or updates with your contact list, thereby helping you increase your brand awareness, connect with your customers, and promote your business’s products or services. One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is that it’s a form of direct marketing, meaning you don’t need to go through a third-party provider (like Google, for example), and you can relay your message to your clients directly.

If you’re unsure where to begin creating an effective email campaign, one thing to consider is exclusivity. Ask yourself: What can I offer my clients through my email marketing campaign that they can’t find elsewhere? What information would my audience most benefit from? and How can I seamlessly integrate my product promotions within this structure to bridge a gap in their needs? You want to create a campaign that is not only personable and relatable (in other words, it doesn’t feel like it was sent out to hundreds of users, even if it was) but will also educate and intrigue your client to take that next step. 

In terms of formatting, there are many ways you can segment your email list and personalize your content, depending on the type of business you run. For example, you may segment your email list based on location data, sign-up date, email activity, or interests (information permitting). Platforms such as Mailchimp, HubSpot, and ActiveCampaign (to name a few) can help you categorize and organize this data to make the process go more smoothly. 

Final Thoughts
Although digital marketing can seem overwhelming if you’re unfamiliar with it, equipping yourself with the right strategies and tactics can allow your business to thrive online. We hope you found this guide helpful as a starting point for developing a comprehensive digital marketing plan that will help you attract and retain customers, drive sales, and ultimately grow your business.

For more information on using digital marketing to increase your brand awareness and authority, contact our team at Tulip Media Group today.