Whether you recently launched your own business or have been managing a marketing team for years, there are certain digital marketing services and skills that you need to have under your belt.
Keep reading to find out what skills you should be honing, including:
- Email marketing
- Getting your content to do the work for you
- Writing a social media post with potential to go viral
- Assessing your success with data and analytics
- Giving your customers what they want
1. Email marketing
Are emails a thing of the past? Not even close — email is still one of the best ways to engage with your customer base.
Exploring a few simple strategies — like building your brand’s LinkedIn presence or tightening up your sales funnel before you craft your email — can make a big difference in the effectiveness of your campaign.
The key is to do your research first and personalise the email as much as you can. Every element of personalisation makes the email a little less cold. Every degree of personalised ‘heat’ you can insert into the email increases the chances of a positive response. So how can you warm your cold email up? As a minimum, use the person’s first name and direct email address. Then try to mention a common contact, or someone they know of, who suggested you get in touch. Show that you understand their needs and concerns. You can even do this with a mailshot to lots of contacts. Just set up a spreadsheet with personalised elements that you can mail-merge into each email.
2. Getting your content to do the work for you
That’s right, we’re talking about content marketing. Every time you put a piece of content out there, it’s doing work for your brand. The key is making sure your content is working effectively and to maximise your efforts by multi-purposing each piece of content through the various social media channels.
It’s also worth taking the time to learn about search engine optimisation (SEO) and how to improve your rankings on Google search results. For online or ecommerce businesses improving SEO is essential. This expert guide will take you through everything you need to know.
3. Writing a social media post with the potential to go viral
Social media is obviously a huge part of our lives, but do you know just how big? According to a recent study, the average person spends two hours on social media every day. Younger audience? Teens more than quadruple that figure. If you want to get your brand in front of your audience, mastering the art of social media posting is essential.
‘Going viral’ just means that the piece really connects with your audience. And if you don’t connect with your audience then clearly your marketing strategy is not fit for purpose. Check out competitors that are succeeding on social media. What can you learn from them? Experiment with different approaches until you find something that delights your followers so much that they like and share it much more than anything else. With this, they will show you, what they value most about your business and its image. Whatever goes viral will help you to shape up your brand and marketing strategy.
4. Assessing your success with data and analytics
Knowing what works (or doesn’t work) and to what extent will set you up for future digital marketing success. Planning and executing digital marketing initiatives is all fine and good, but if you can’t identify what went well and what went wrong, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to learn from your results.
Learning how to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts — whether it’s measuring the performance of a piece of content, tracking social media engagement, or analysing the time users spend on your landing pages– having the numbers will guide you to make better digital marketing decisions in the future.
5. Giving your customers what they want
We just covered how important it is to understand your own efforts, but it’s also essential to understand your customers. Who are they? What problems are they trying to solve? What are they looking for in a brand? Where are they spending their time? How can you deliver your solution to them? Answer these questions, and you’re a big step closer to an effective digital marketing campaign.
Take a huge step towards digital marketing success when you master or outsource these skills. Getting an online masters in marketing degree is optional, but can make a big difference.