By John Hogg
A few weeks ago we blogged about the importance of defining your digital marketing strategy in order to clarify your aims and objectives.
In this second blog in our series of five blogs on Achieving Digital Marketing Success For Your Business we will be looking at how we go about attracting the right audience.
How can digital marketing help to attract and build your audience?
It goes without saying that an audience is vital to the success of your business. Without finding your audience and building traffic to your website you're going to find it hard to sell your products and services. You just can’t rely on the customers you already have if you want to expand your business - you need to identify your audience and start to attract relevant traffic to your website.
You may already have a whole host of online customers who click in and out from time to time, but do you have a database that you’re not really doing anything with? Do you send out the occasional email newsletter with no real tangible results? Do you often look at your Google Analytics and see hundreds or possibly thousands of visitors and no-one ever gets in touch? You need to stop this ineffective behaviour and start thinking about how you build your inbound marketing funnel. To us, the first step of your funnel or TOFU (Top Of FUnnel) as some people call it is ATTRACTION. What have you got that your visitors (potential customers) might want and what can you do to get them to come and get it?
Content is Still King
To answer the first point, you need killer content! Content is still king in our eyes and it is your job to work out how you develop high quality relevant content... regularly! At the top of the funnel you can offer content such as an ebook.
Something you know your particular target audience might want. They fill in a few details on a special landing page and download your ebook. Simple, you now have a lead to nurture and convert into new business. Of course, it doesn't have to be an ebook, you could offer a white paper, an infographic or even a podcast. But if you blog regularly it should be quite easy to pull a good ebook together and use it to Attract and Build your audience.
To get started you need to make a few choices:
- Do you try to attract traffic organically?
- Do you try and attract traffic through paid means? or
- Do you do a bit of both?
This will very much depend on your business, your timelines and the types of product or service you are selling. Once you have everything set up and your strategy in place we would advocate you at least try both and see what works for you. We lean towards organic traffic as we believe in the power of good quality content, however, give it a go and you may be surprised by the results!
Organic Traffic
Driving organic traffic can be very satisfying as it is the product of your good work and in particular your content. It may take a bit longer and involve a bit more thought but the end results will be worth it.
Social Media
With the explosion of social media in recent years this can be a very useful way to build your audience. As well as working to build your own followers, fans and likes, you can exploit other people's audiences through retweets and shares. The bottom line is that your social media posts need to be so compelling that people feel the need to click the link and find out more. If you have a great offer in place and have your landing pages set up correctly this could be the beginning of a very lucrative relationship. To find out more about how social media can help you, why not check out some of our earlier blogs:SEO
Search Engine Optimisation may sound a bit technical and to be honest there are a few snake oil salesmen about. Either way though, think of your approach to SEO being the simple steps you take to help the search engines understand what you do. We don't advocate setting up hundreds or thousands of false backlinks, excessive article marketing or even keyword stuffing on your page. What we do advocate though is that you ensure you have the basics in place.- Identify the main keywords for your business
- Fill in the metatags and descriptions on your pages (including images)
- Use proper H1 and H2 headings on your page
- Create meaningful URL's for each page (try to include one of your core keywords)
- Include keywords in your text, but not too much. All you want to aim for is a keyword density of 2-3%
- Legitimate backlinks - try to cultivate relevant links with relevant partners
- Submit your site to key directories such as Dmoz and Yahoo
If you start your SEO with these simple tips you should start to see the benefits. Overtime though as you get more comfortable with these steps you should also explore other areas to improve your SEO performance. (Check out our blog on "Back To Basics For SEO Success".)
Email Marketing
Whilst this may invoke some initial concerns over spamming, if done correctly email marketing should be at the core of your digital marketing strategy. You could be using emails to spread the word about your latest blogs to try and drive traffic towards a particular offer, or perhaps you have emails going out to remind prospects about a particular action you would like them to take e.g. to join a webinar or to schedule an audit of some description. So whether you are trying to grow your email list, nurture your leads or convert them into sales, if you approach your emails sensitively (and with a bit of savvy) you will be rewarded through happier visitors/customers and ultimately more leads and sales.Paid Search
Paid search, or Pay Per Click (PPC) as it is sometimes known, can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your website. As with all your 'attract' activity you need to understand who you are targeting, how you're going to reach them and where you want to bring them to. Having specific landing pages are a surefire way of increasing the likelihood of your visitors doing what you want them to do, such as downloading your ebook; signing up for an audit; or even just making a purchase!
So where do you start and what type of PPC should you do?
To summarise...
Attracting and building your audience is an ongoing digital marketing activity. Unless you're in an extremely esteemed position, you're always going to need new traffic and new customers to grow your business.
Digital Marketing is all about trial and error and finding out what works for you. There is no silver bullet so you need to draw up your plan and work hard to see what is working and what doesn't. So go on, jump in and try to improve your Organic traffic whilst at the same time experiment with your PPC ads - and don't forget to reach out to those people who know you best - your staff, contacts, suppliers and even some of your existing customers.
Digital marketing also works best when it is integrated with your offline activity, so take look at what you're doing offline and see if it can help to drive traffic to your website landing pages.
No matter what you're going to do, be prepared for it to take time and effort before you start to see the fruits of your labour. Like anything good in life you need to put in the hard yards before you really see results.
If you would like to discuss the Attraction phase of your Digital Marketing Strategy and how you can build a profitable stream of relevant visitors, feel free to leave a comment below, or get in touch. We'd be more than happy to grab a coffee and have a chat! If you can't wait that long, why not grab a free copy of our Guide On How Your Law Firm Website Can Help Your Firm To Grow?
photo credit: Viktor Hertz via photopin cc
John Hogg
John is managing director of Enlighten IC and has been involved in legal marketing and technology marketing for over 25 years. He is passionate about how an inbound approach to marketing can help firms to drive leads and grow their business.
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