Identifying and fine-tuning your online marketing goals is essential to a digital marketing strategy. Lead generation, a strong e-commerce platform, and a solid brand are among many businesses’ top online marketing goals, as the three typically combine to develop a viable long-term approach. Let’s dive into these three components of a comprehensive online marketing strategy to help you realize the most bang for your advertising bucks.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of gather key customer data during their process of exploring your brand. The idea is to turn interest into revenue by attracting a target demographic while taking strides to maintain consumer loyalty. Sales, discount codes, online coupons, and engaging online content are among the many ways to attract new leads.
Lead generation is about cultivating relationships with your target audience instead of merely inundating their inboxes with advertisements, making cold calls, or putting a “sale” sign in front of a brick and mortar store. The buying process has changed significantly over the last few years, making competition for consumer attention fiercer than ever. If you don’t make a serious point of forming relationships with your target audience, how will you stand out among your competition, most if not all of which provide their consumers with a variety of incentives to patronize their brands?
Ensuring your leads are real people is also a challenge in today’s market, as one of every four leads is invalid according to 2018 statistics. Some 27% of invalid leads are due to fake names, with incorrect phone numbers and emails also to blame. This means you have to be as meticulous as ever about your incoming leads, such as by creating online forms so you are able to spot mistakes quickly.
E-commerce
Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, is something most retail brands utilize these days whether they have brick-and-mortar locations or not. Consumers purchase products and services at all times of day using their phones and tablets in addition to their laptops; the days of waiting until you are home to power up your desktop and make online purchases are long over. More than one billion people shop online according to recent statistics, and that number is not expected to dip anytime soon. Amazon remains the e-commerce juggernaut; however, numerous other B2B and C2B sites continue to wrestle for dominance, including Asian competitor Alibaba and one of the original e-commerce sites: eBay.
Bug-free, easy-to-navigate, visually-appealing e-commerce sites provide new leads with something to click on after peaking their interest with a landing page or social media promotion. Marketing an e-commerce website is not unlike lead generation since you are appealing to consumers based on great content and assorted specials/discounts. You will need to hone your content marketing strategy before advertising your e-commerce site, such as making a list of the many ways you will appeal to consumers (blog posts, social media giveaways, exclusive email newsletters with coupons, etc.)
If bigger e-commerce business is among your online marketing goals, implementing a loyalty program continues its reign as one of the best ways to enjoy more sales. And while creating a loyalty program will not necessarily make you different from any of your other competitors with a similar program, it will help your brand stand out if you get creative. Customers who spend $50 every time they shop at your online store, for example, could work towards a free shopping spree up to a set amount.
Branding
A brand is defined as an idea or image of a specific service or product, used to engage an audience. Once upon a time, branding was little more than a slogan or logo, or perhaps a combination of the two. Nike’s logo and “Just Do It” campaign is a now-classic example of a winning logo/slogan combination. In today’s marketing world, branding is a much deeper, more complex topic. It provides a lasting impression that promotes consumer interest (lead generation) and encourages them to buy (e-commerce). The best brands clearly define what they are all about while simultaneously connecting with their customer base on an emotional level and motivating them to buy in various ways, such as the aforementioned loyalty program.
Identifying your online marketing goals in terms of branding does not have to be challenging, especially if you ask yourself what your brand would say if it was a person. “I exist because….”, “I relate to my target audience because….”, and “I am….” are among the fill-in-the-blank sentences you’ll want to ponder as you continue to craft your brand voice. If you sell motorcycle accessories, for example, your brand is not going to feature the pastel colors and soft images associated with baby product brands.
Creating a brand takes time via lead generation, e-commerce advertising, and similar means, but it is much easier if you know exactly what your company is about and who your target audience is. It is the well your entire marketing campaign springs from–without it, you will not enjoy the success you deserve because consumers will not have a clear idea about what your company represents.
Branding is also a way to establish your business as a credible source for products or services. Networking with similar brands, for example, and touting each other’s products or services online is a way to establish credibility, as are white papers and similar documents. Whatever you can do to show you are an authority within your niche that consumers should trust will assist your branding efforts significantly.
Help your branding activities, and subsequently your lead generation and e-commerce efforts, by asking yourself questions such as “Does my brand relate to my target demographic?”, “Does my brand showcase what makes my products or services unique?”, and “Will it reflect the values I want to represent to my consumers?”
Get Help With Your Online Marketing Goals
A little research and a lot of brainstorming before creating an online marketing strategy is the way to generate leads, see more e-commerce traffic, and establish your brand as one that consumers love.
Softline Solutions helps brands reach their marketing goals every day. Find out what we will do for your business today.
