I’ve still yet to come across a marketing strategy that can’t be summed up in three words: attract, convert, and keep.
With digital marketing, your goal is to get people to your website, landing page, or web properties (attract).
Once there, you want to give them a compelling reason to take some sort of action so you can continue marketing to them (convert).
And of course, you want to keep your new followers, subscribers, prospects, or customers engaged with your brand (keep).
Attracting
This is by far what most companies spend the majority of their digital marketing budgets on: acquiring more traffic, prospects, leads, etc.
Some of the main channels used to attract visitors include:
- Google AdWords
- Display Ads & Videos
- SEO
- Content/Inbound Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Social Media
For most companies, I’d recommend trying and testing all of these channels. However, I wouldn’t spend more than 60-70% of my marketing budget on these tactics (which most do), because you can drive all the traffic you want to your website, but it’s gotta convert.
Converting
Companies spend $92 attracting visitors to their website for every $1 converting them. But doubling your site’s conversion rate is probably a lot easier than doubling its traffic, and for a lot less money.
What is a conversion? I define it as any action that a visitor can take on your site that allows you to continue marketing to them, such as:
- Complete a purchase
- Sign up to a newsletter
- Download a Free Trial or eBook
- Book a webinar
- Follow a social media account
Conversion often involves testing, testing, and more testing:
- Offers
- Prices
- Headlines
- Copywriting
- Colours and Images
- Subscription Forms
To optimize your website, it’s important to understand that your website is never done. It needs constant testing, tweaking, measuring and optimizing to increase conversion over the long-term.
Keeping
Keeping your audience engaged is crucial.
It helps to segment your audience both by type (e.g. follower, subscriber, prospect, customer), but also by the channel they like to engage with (e.g. blogs, email, social media).
Your content strategy should target who your audience is, where your audience is, and how they prefer receiving content. But most importantly, and to restate what we all know too well, for every audience segment the content must be valuable to their specific needs in the buying cycle.
Some ways to keep your audience engaged:
- Blogs
- Social Media (e.g. Twitter chats, Periscope, blabs, LinkedIn discussions)
- Email drip campaigns
- How-to guides and videos
- Comparison charts
- Case Studies
- Reviews
- Webinars
- Q & As and FAQs
- Surveys and feedback
- Advocate marketing & loyalty programs
And don’t forget, the best way to keep your audience engaged is with an outstanding customer experience and service.
That way, they’ll tell others about your company, which starts the attract, convert, and keep cycle all over again 🙂