Your business exists because it has a purpose, and the marketing decisions you and your team make for your business should be based on clearly defined goals. The question is, do your marketing objectives support your goals and objectives? Take a look at these 10 common business goals and appropriate digital marketing platforms to use for each goal.
For definitions of the digital marketing platforms mentioned here, take a look at our article “The Glossary of Frequently Used Digital Advertising Campaigns”
If your goal is to…
Increase sales
If you’re looking to meet short-term sales goals, Google Ads and Facebook Ads can be great platforms to utilize. If your business includes e-commerce, Google also offers Shopping Ads that help your relevant shopping ads to show up at the top of the search results page.
Generate leads
Depending on the type of business you’re in, LinkedIn and Facebook Lead Ads can be a great way to generate leads directly on your advertising platform. Another tool that is vital for a lead-generation campaign on almost any platform is utilizing a custom landing page. When creating landing pages for your website, they should be straight-forward and contain messaging that matches the ad message. The form should appear above the fold.
Acquire new customers
“Targeting” is key if you want to attract new customers. Various advertising platforms available today offer customized ways to target your audience. Interest-based, look-a-like, and geographic targeting are just a few ways of targeting to get in front of new customers. When running marketing campaigns to acquire new customers, be sure to keep track the percentage of new customers visiting your website and see if that increases over the lifetime of your campaign.
Retain customers
Campaigns that include valuable and interesting content marketing are great for customer retention. E-news, social media, print pieces, events, and other types of marketing are great ways to engage current customers. Retargeting is also a key way to stay in front of current customers for repeat purchases or other product or service promotions.
Improve awareness
SEO improves your visibility in organic search results. Display advertising, impression-based social ads, and PR work can also be used to increase brand awareness.
Increase customer satisfaction
The first step to improving customer satisfaction is knowing what they think. Thus, getting feedback from your customers is key to increasing customer satisfaction. Consider hiring someone to perform a 3rd party survey or focus groups to get honest feedback from your customer base. The results will provide valuable information to help make business decisions and create marketing strategies.
Launch new product or service
If your goal is to launch a new product or service, answer these questions first: 1) What problem does this product or service solve for your client/customer? 2) What makes this product or service better than anything else on the market? 3) Who is the audience for this? 4) What level of sales and activity can your current team handle? In other words, if marketing is highly successful, are we ready to follow up with leads, sales, etc.? Without answering these questions, don’t try to market a new product or service. If you are ready, some of the marketing strategies you can use to market your new product or service include SEO, website, remarketing, email marketing, and digital advertising.
Re-brand or re-position
What’s important when re-branding is to keep your current customers in the loop and help them understand the benefits of your rebranding. Begin with updating your website, print pieces, and signages. Then, implement e-news, social media, PR campaign, and content marketing. Lastly, utilize paid branding ads.
Increase web traffic
One of the great ways to boost website traffic is click ads that are available on many different platforms today. SEO is also a vital long-term strategy for increasing web traffic. When you measure your total web traffic, remember to review bounce rates, average time spent on site, and where your visitors are located. Increased traffic is only beneficial if they are the right visitors.
Gain subscribers
To gain subscribers to your mailing list, offer an incentive or some other promise of valuable information. What can you provide that will be valuable to them? Once you have prepared the incentive, use it to request email addresses to add people to your mailing list. Ensure your emails are interesting and valuable, or you will be hit with spam complaints, lose subscribers, and possibly hurt your domain authority.
Thanks to modern technology that enhance advertising platforms and marketing tools, we are able to reach an audience more easily and with more flexibility. But it will be very important to know what methods and platforms to utilize and how to use them for different goals and situations.
If you would like further guidance on digital marketing specifically for your business, feel free to schedule a free consultation with a digital marketing specialist here.