Your best bet for a successful online marketing campaign calls for an integration of social, local, and mobile strategies since your target audience is active on all three platforms. Research has found that users are regularly active for both personal and professional reasons on all these channels. Some examples: users regularly search for products and services near them, which comprises over 40% of all Google queries on mobile devices, Instagram, the mobile-first social media platform, has nearly one billion active users, and more than 425 million people access Facebook via smartphones or tablets.
But keep in mind that social media can’t exist in a single silo. Your brand needs to have an effective link between your web-based campaigns, mobile strategies, and the rest of your marketing efforts. Your social strategies need to be integrated with other digital and marketing programs and, most importantly, need to be based on and aligned to business goals where it can make the greatest impact.
Here are some ideas on how to work towards an integrated marketing plan:
Differentiate What Makes Your Brand Better
Marketing should celebrate your brand’s strengths. It should communicate your superiority over your competition in a way that is relevant to the needs of your target audience. Your marketing should tell people why they need to care about your brand and how choosing to engage with it will improve their lives. Be sure to provide compelling, relatable reasons people should select your products or services.
Offer a Responsive Design Website
According to Impact, almost half of responders to a survey said they are frustrated and annoyed when using websites that are poorly optimized for mobile devices. 52% of consumers indicated that a poor mobile experience would make them less likely to interact with a business. Furthermore, they found that when a site isn’t optimized for mobile, consumers are 5 times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete.
Responsive design is entirely flexible regardless of the type of device being used to view the site. Websites that are responsively designed literally respond to the screen size of a user’s device, unlike mobile optimized sites that react to the specific browser or device type. Responsive design utilizes a combination of reformatting and re-optimizing to present all aspects of the site.
Responsive design provides amazing flexibility and usability for all site visitors. Website hosting platforms like Squarespace offering responsive design website templates. This allows businesses and web designers alike the opportunity to place their focus elsewhere without having to worry about what their site will look like on variously sized screens. In addition, ensure that all your online properties are equally appealing across all channels.
Keep Content Fresh to Avoid Messaging Fatigue
Messaging fatigue happens when the same update is posted across multiple channels at precisely the same time. It’s important to remember that many consumers stay logged in on social media and websites across multiple platforms and a number of those people have push alerts activated to allow them to receive real-time updates. As you structure your mobile marketing game plan, tailor your messages to each specific platform to make sure you are using the most suitable tone for each.
Make Content Easy to Share
Create sharable content to allow your followers to share with their tribe information about your brand. Go a step further and encourage readers to share promotions with friends and to invite others to brand events by offering incentives to consumers who spread the word. Sharing is the fastest and least expensive way to expand your brand’s online reach and maximize exposure.
Engage with Local Customers
If you have a brick and mortar location, including a focus on the local area around the target market is an effective way to boost local advertising results. Develop marketing messages based on events, news, and other things happening in your neighborhood. Involve your brand in as many ways as possible to show your interest in the community and develop local relationships.
The popularity of smartphones allows the use of geolocation to better tailor ads and notifications based on specific user’s location. Brands can use this technology to deliver hyper-targeted placements, ads, and suggestions based not only on location but also on usage patterns.
Another strategy is to be listed in online directories and review sites as your profile can offer a link to your website. Google, Bing, and Yahoo have the largest online directories but being (accurately) listed in other, smaller directories will give the big three search engines more reason to show your business in search results. It is important to ensure that all listings are identical and highly recommended that you track your listings for an easier time of checking for accuracy and updating when needed.
Don’t Forget Email
Email marketing remains effective for all businesses. That being said, communications that offer no value will quickly be ignored or deleted. Offer a mix of informational content, special promotions, and loyalty offers. This may mean segmenting your messaging a bit. Potential customers who have requested information should be sent different communication than existing customers with whom you have a relationship.
Vary the types of emails that you send to keep consumers interested in your content. Alternate plain text with images or interactive emails. Consider using a specific format for each type of communication.
Metrics and Analytics
It is important to measure the progress of your marketing efforts. It only makes sense that if we integrate multi-channel marketing that we should then also look at all the data together at the other end of things. This holistic approach to analytics will help us make better sense of the information we gather from all of our marketing channels and better inform how we target and segment consumers as a result of those data.
Measuring the results of your marketing efforts can make the difference between taking shots in the dark and actually seeing a return on your marketing investment. There are hundreds of statistics and analytical combinations that might be tracked. The key is to understand which of these metrics will provide insight into customer behavior and the performance of your marketing campaigns. Here are links to a few articles you might find helpful:
If You Still Think KPI Involves Peeling Potatoes, This One is For You!
Essential Metrics to Measure Digital Marketing Efforts
Conversion Rate Optimization: What It Is and How to Go About It
Key Takeaways
Differentiate what makes your brand better by marketing should celebrate your brand’s strengths.
Offer a responsive design website to provide the best flexibility and usability for your target audience.
Keep content fresh to avoid messaging fatigue and tailor your messages to each specific social platform.
Make content shareable and shareworthy.
If you have a brick and mortar location engage with local customers and your community as a whole.
Include email campaigns in your marketing plan to take advantage of this still effective low cost, high impact communication channel.
Measure the progress of your marketing efforts.
Wrap Up
A truly integrated marketing campaign will combine online and offline initiatives to effectively reach a brand’s full target audience. Be sure to develop engaging and compelling offline marketing messaging as well since some consumers are not online at all. Just remember that it is the overall brand experience that counts to consumers and not the source of the marketing message. Customer experience is everything and every brand touch matters.
The experts at Strategy Driven Marketing understand the importance of meeting segments of your target audience on the platforms and channels they love, speaking directly to them, and helping them understand how your products or services will meet their challenges and fulfill their needs. Whatever your marketing needs may be, the team SDM can help. Contact us today to get started!