introduction
In 2024, a small brand that sold handmade notebooks via the Internet went global overnight because it had a strong value proposition and a well-placed social media post. The experience of this brand is no longer an outlier; it has exemplified how quickly and dramatically the Internet can influence someday. With consumers conducting an increasing number of their pre-purchase purchase evaluations and transactions online, there is no longer a choice in not investing in digital marketing. It has evolved into a critical business success component for all companies.
Digital marketing enables companies of all sizes to expand their market reach outside their local marketplace to a worldwide audience, establish brand loyalty within that worldwide audience and compete with larger, well-established brands. Many businesses, however, have believed that by simply developing a website or running a few advertisements, they would be successful in marketing their products online. The purpose of this article is to explain how to successfully market your products online through the use of three essential components: understanding your customer, developing a strong digital footprint using content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), and developing data-driven promotional tactics to convert and retain customers.
Understanding Your Audience
Why Audience Insight is the Base of Online Marketing
Every effective marketing plan begins with an understanding of the buyer. The average online buyer is bombarded daily with 1000s of advertisements. In a sea of competing advertisements, the only ones that attract the buyer’s attention and motivate the buyer to take action are the ones that are relevant and appealing to the buyer. It is essential to understand who your target audience is, what their needs are, and how they think.
Studies have shown that Custom Marketing has a much higher rate of Ever-present Sales and Engagement than generic marketing techniques. Businesses that utilises Audience Segmentation & Customisation approaches, typically out-perform other businesses in the same industries that use generalised mass marketing techniques.
How do I find the best audience for Custom Marketing?
The best audience for Custom Marketing is determined by quantitative & qualitative data analysis and insights.
These methods include:
- Buyer Personas: Profile Your Ideal Customer; Include: Their Demographics, Pain Points, Motivation, and Their Behaviour Online.
- Analytics Tools: Use Tools Such As: Google Analytics To Determine How People Find Your Website, Interact On Your Website (e.g., See Which Pages They Viewed, How Long They Stayed, Where They Clicked To Leave Your Site, etc.), and IRR (Internet Return Rate)- Conversion Path.
- Social Listening: Read Discussions, Comments, Reviews, and Rating, To Find Out What Your Customers Love Or Hate About You!
Example:
An online seller of home fitness equipment segmented their audience and created 2 unique advertising landing pages and assets to sell to home users & professional trainers, and the conversion rates increased by more than 30%!
Marketing Targeted Happenings vs. Mass Marketing
Traditional methods of mass marketing send everyone the same generic message, whereas online methods of Digital Marketing strive to Target (Deliver) relevant advertising at the right time to Customers, and effectively eliminate wasted advertising expense, therefore maximising customer interaction and enhancing customer experience. This level of Precision is not replicated as easily through offline/ traditional methods of marketing.
Building a digital presence with good content and optimized for search engines
Creating Content Builds Trust
Content gives online marketing its foundation. Providing high-quality, helpful information builds a brand as an authority and builds trust with the buyer even before they make their final buying decision. Every piece of content—blog entries, photos, videos, blog posts, etc.—is a way to connect and inform the potential buyer.
Search engines rank high-quality content higher than low-quality content; therefore, businesses that invest in a content marketing strategy create more leads than those that rely on only paid advertising long term.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Makes Your Product Findable
SEO helps to ensure that customers can easily find your company’s content and products while they’re searching online. SEO connects a site’s technical performance to its user intent.
Practices to Optimize Content Marketing for Search Engines:
Include the words (keywords) that are most relevant to your company and product categories naturally within your content. Use headlines, meta descriptions and internal linking to increase the effectiveness of the content on your site.
Incorporate a variety of techniques under technology-related techniques to improve the site’s loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and site security.
An example of how effective content marketing with SEO can be:
One eCommerce brand in the skincare space created their blog posts around what most of their customers were asking. Within six months, that site saw the number of organic visits increase by 100%, reducing the brand’s reliance on paid advertising and providing a much better long-term return on investment.
Utilizing data to drive promotional and conversion strategies
Did you know that paid marketing can drive business growth? If implemented properly, paid marketing can have significant effects on the speed of growth for a business. Today’s online paid promotional channels like Google Ads, Social Media Advertisements, and Influencer Marketing allow you to specifically target customers based on their interests and behaviours.
Three examples of Paid Marketing are:
Retargeting Campaigns: You can re-engage visitors who have viewed products, but did not complete the checkout process.
Email Marketing Automation: Sending out targeted, personalized promotional emails, follow-up emails, and educational content.
A/B Testing: Constantly testing the effectiveness of different advertisements, headlines, and calls to action.
You can also use marketing automation tools to create efficient and personalised marketing campaigns at scale.
Data to Optimise the Customer Journey
The biggest advantage of digital marketing is the ability to track results and measure success. For every click, view, and conversion, you will learn something about what works, and what doesn’t.
These are the most important metrics to monitor:
- Conversion Rates
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Customer Engagement & Retention Rates
For example, an online subscription service identified where they lost customers in their checkout process by using data analysis. By simplifying their checkout process, they were able to decrease their cart abandonment rate by 20%.
Why Marketing with Data Way Outperforms Marketing with Gut Instinct
The traditional way of thought in marketing has been to rely on gut feelings and experience. While both of these factors are extremely important, marketing with data takes the guesswork out of the equation and allows marketers to make continuous improvements. Marketers that continuously utilise data to improve their performance greatly outperform those that rely ONLY on gut instinct and past experiences.
In Conclusion
Marketing Products Online Requires More Than Just Being Able to Be Seen; It Requires Strategy, Relevance, and Continuous Improvement
The pillars referenced above are:
- Know Your Audience
- Develop a Strong Digital Presence with Content and SEO
- Use Data-Driven Promotional Strategies to Convert and Retain Customers
As Digital and the Environment for Competitive Businesses Continues to Evolve, Businesses Cannot Continue to Rely on a Short-Term Tactics Approach. Sustainable Marketing Systems Will Be What Future Markets Drive Global Marketing Trends, and the Future of Online Marketing Will Be Driven by Value-Related Content, Personalized Interactions, and Effectively Utilized Data.
Call to Action
If You Are Preparing to Launch a New Product Or to Scale An Existing Business, Now Is The Time to Review Your Online Marketing Strategy. Review and Understand Your Audience, Develop Your Content and SEO, and Let Data Direct All Your Marketing Decisions. Strategic Actions Taken Today Will Put You Ahead of the Competition Tomorrow.