Eight actionable digital marketing strategies for your business in 2021
What’s your digital marketing plan for 2021? If you’re ready to drive more traffic to your website, and convert to sales, here are eight actionable strategies to try.
Every business needs a marketing strategy. And if you’re running a business in 2021, it’s pretty much guaranteed that that strategy will need at least some digital element.
And whether you decide to go it alone, or hire an expert for help, for example recruiting an agency to help you with SEM services (search engine marketing services), you’ll need a plan to follow.
To help you come up with a digital marketing plan for your business in 2021, here are eight actionable strategies to explore.
1) Focus on social media marketing
Social media marketing can help with everything from brand awareness and building, through to conversation and loyalty. Few businesses today can afford not to have some kind of presence on social media – both to attract new customers and to build relationships with and serve the ends of existing ones.
It’s important that your social media presence accurately reflects your brand personality, and that your activities on there are consistent. Choose the platform that your customers are most likely to be on, and don’t spread yourself too thinly by trying to have a presence on every platform. It’s far better to do one platform well than three poorly.
2) Maximize your search engine optimization
If there was a gold medal during a competition focusing on online marketing, then search engine optimization would probably take it home. Search engine optimization (more commonly known as SEO) is the process of improving your website’s ranking so search engines place it higher up their results pages.
And if improving your SEO isn’t part of your 2021 digital marketing plan, it should be. It doesn’t matter how great your products or services are, how competitive your pricing, and how beautiful your website… if no one is able to find your website online you’ll struggle to compete.
And if your website isn’t reaching the top for your preferred search results, then you’re pretty much giving business away to your competition. So how DO you improve your SEO?
It all starts with choosing the right keywords and search terms – the phrases, questions and words people put into search boxes when looking for what you do or sell. Then building pages on your site that stand a chance of ranking for those words.
Your site’s general SEO health is also important. Make sure your site is well written and designed, so that when people visit it they usually stay. Ensure it’s optimized for mobile and loads quickly. Get quality links into your site from relevant websites, and link out to authority sources yourself. And ensure that your site is regularly updated (for example with new blogs) to let search engines know it’s up to date.
These are just some of the ways you can help boost your website’s SEO in 2021, and help it to climb up the rankings.
3) Try running a pay-per-click (PPC) advertisement
Done properly, pay-per-click (PPC) can a powerful marketing tool that can help get your business in front of the right people, and drive high quality traffic to your website.
But like all paid advertising, the key here is ‘done properly’. PPC can also be a black hole in which you invest a lot of money for little reward! So while PPC can certainly help to put your business on the map and generate sales, it’s important that you get expert help with it.
4) Remember that content marketing is the key
Great online content will help your SEO and give you excellent content to post, which in turn will attract new customers to your website. It also helps build your relationship with people who already know about your business.
Online content includes videos, blogs, infographics and more. Content marketing involves telling an engaging story to consumers through videos , words and sound. Content not only attracts researchers but also ‘sells’ your respective website. This is why writing educational and engaging content, or creating similar video content is an added advantage.
Technically, content marketing involves acquainting the audience with what you do and know. Good content provides valuable information to your audience, which in turn will help to increase your conversation rates and traffic.
5) Create email marketing that targets a specific audience
Today, an email is a standard form of communication, both formal and informal. But it can also be a powerful marketing tool if you understand how to engage with people through it, and use to reach out to new customers and nurture people who already know about you.
One way to maximise the power of email marketing is to create a lead magnet – something that incentivises the right people to sign up to your mailing list. Once they do, send a welcome email sequence helping them get to know more about you.
Then send regular emails about what you do, but also emails containing information that is interesting and useful to your audience. Don’t make everything a hard sell or you’ll quickly put people off and have them hitting the unsubscribe link fast!
Email marketing is all about growing relationships and building your know, like, trust factor. It’s also about ensuring you stay front of mind, so that when people are ready to buy, you’re the first company they think of.
6) Use voice search optimization to drive your marketing strategies
Voice search optimization is similar to SEO, but replaces words with sounds. A company uses voices to create recognition on new or existing websites during a voice search.
Voice search is becoming increasingly popular – as many as 26% of people in the UK were using voice search or voice commands in 2019, thanks to the popularity of devices like Alexa and Siri. So you can’t afford to ignore Google when planning your digital marketing strategy.
While general SEO and voice search both use words, you need different strategies for each. That’s because the way we use words when we speak is different to how we write. It’s worth doing a bit of research on specific advice for voice search to ensure you get it right.
7) Embrace video marketing
For years people have been hailing video as a must-have digital marketing tool, and its importance hasn’t declined in 2021. Companies use video to share information, create awareness, and build relationships with customers.
Videos are a great way to convey your personality, get customers to see what you and your company are really like, and to demonstrate what you do or when they get when they buy from you. In addition to this, you can opt for creating video testimonials which are a powerful marketing asset for the majority of businesses using platforms, such as Vocal Video.
Videos are popular content on social media, and can be a great way to get found in search if you publish on platforms like YouTube and use the right keywords.
8) Focus on employee engagement
Last but not least, the people who work for your business are your best brand ambassadors, and a powerful marketing asset. Ensure that your team really understand what it is that you do, and why it’s the best. And also ensure that they believe it.
If your employees are your number one fan, their enthusiasm will be naturally infectious. So look after your employees well and give them adequate training. By hiring the best people, equipping them to do their job well and keeping them engaged you’ll create your best possible marketing tool, whatever the year.
Ron Evan is a digital marketing specialist and a writer who writes articles about traveling, psychology, and digital marketing. He learned about the digital marketing industry accidentally almost four years ago.
He is currently based in Taiwan, taking up an MBA degree with a focus on Marketing. During his free time, he enjoys going to karaoke, traveling, and watching Netflix.
