The Importance of Social Media Marketing

If you want to increase brand awareness and gain new leads, it’s not enough to simply maintain an official company website. These days, most businesses rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to get higher rankings on search engines and thereby grab the attention of their target customers. Surveys show that a good number of consumers use the Internet to find local products and services, a factor that solidifies the importance of online marketing.

Aside from straightforward SEO, a lot more businesses also tap the power of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Businesses that actively participate in social media and successfully build meaningful relationships with their consumers get positive buzz about their products and services in return. Once you’ve set up a cool new Facebook or Twitter page, you need to constantly update it so your customers can get the 411 on your products and/or services.

According to Statistics Brain, there are now 1.2 billion Facebook users worldwide. The market is already shifting, and you risk missing out on this huge potential if you don’t have a solid social media marketing plan. If your business is not big enough to maintain a social media marketing, you can simply outsource this function to a reputable online marketing firm that can manage multiple social media accounts on your behalf. This way, customers regularly get to see new an exciting posts on your Facebook, Twitter, and blog.

How Digital Marketing Agencies Succeed

Online marketing follows almost the same principles as those of traditional marketing in terms of tools and monitoring systems. However, when it comes to online marketing, some approaches may be a little more complex considering the platform used, and the allowable methods of reaching target consumers. Here’s a look at some digital marketing best practices.

Reaching one’s target market is the most important part of any marketing strategy. Ads should not be thrown randomly at any site and must instead be correctly placed. Many businesses easily increase their sales because they use the Internet efficiently by posting ads on sites frequently visited by their customers. Most of them go to social networking sites where a huge chunk of Internet users spend most of their online browsing time each day.

Marketing does not end with posting ads as it also entails carefully monitoring the impact of every ad on sales. In this regard, one must have access to hard data that reflects the overall effectiveness of one’s marketing efforts. This way, it is easier to determine which parts of your strategy needs to modified for better results in the future.

Among other things, effective search engine optimization is a powerful key to online marketing success. By enhancing your site’s online visibility and Google ranking, it is easier for your target customers to find your website and thereby recognize your business as a leading authority in your industry.

Upgrade your Social Media Status Updates

Your status updates may not be seen by all of your contacts at any given time, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put some thought when you make one on your local business’ Facebook page. By following certain strategies, not only will your updates be visible to many people, they will also be more effective tools for marketing.

Scheduling your posts is the best way for your updates to be seen by the majority. If you post when people are about to go to work or are about to sleep, the next time your followers log-on to their accounts your update is already going to get buried underneath other posts. Post them at a time when most of your followers are likely to be online. If you are online when most of them are also on, you will be able to interact with them by posting replies to their comments in real time.

More often than not, a post with an image attached to it is deemed more interesting than one that’s in plain text. An accompanying image would also help your post look like more effort was put into it. A post that looks interesting and well-put will always collect likes from generous Facebook users.

Balancing Offense and Defense in Marketing

The German invasion of Poland in September 1, 1939 was so fast that the latter couldn’t respond as an effective fighting force. It only took 35 days for Poland to capitulate, which was expedited by the Soviet invasion from the east. By annexing the country, Germany didn’t have to worry about its eastern flank while it prepared to conquer France next. However, there’s a limit to what a general can do when all he does is attack.

The same applies to marketing; success is not so much about the nature of aggressive marketing strategies as the way marketers use them. In his paper on defensive and offensive marketing, Peter Yannopoulos, an associate professor at Brock University in Ontario, says rival companies often switch between sword and shield. When an aggressive strategy fails, the company on the defense can mount an effective counterattack. In this case, improving a product that’s already a major hit.

Say you developed a new genre for a TV show, which the rival company attempts to emulate due to the former’s success. Your best defensive strategy is to further capitalize on the gains the show has earned over time, writing better skits and the like. When your rival’s show doesn’t gain much appeal as yours, you can keep the initiative by using the improvements as a counterattack. In the end, there’s truly not much of a difference between marketing and war strategies.