Digital marketing has been something that has rapidly grown in the past 10 years. Businesses are getting tired of losing out on potential customers with no reason why. Digital marketing is at the forefront of every businesses success. Eminence has conducted some research in what is out there and how is it being used to entice customers and conversions. At the end of the day, happy customers lead to happy businesses.
We have all heard of push and pull marketing, but recently, there has been less of a push. Just to recap, push marketing is advertisements, promotional offers and emails all filling email inboxes with content that isn’t relevant. That is all being pushed to the client, somewhat unwillingly. This is wasting both your time and the company’s. But instead customers are wanting content that they feel is specifically targeted for them, making them feel unique and offering them something they are genuinely interested in makes the world of difference.
Digital Marketing pull techniques
These days, the has been emphasis placed on content marketing, which according to a study done by The Financial Brand (2017), 29% of marketers say that they will focus on content marketing and producing relevant content in the coming year. Realising that this method boosts engagement and helps build trust with a brand rather than sending endless information to the wrong people.
Looking at the study conducted by The Financial Brand, the top 3 digital marketing techniques are closely followed by Social Media Engagement, Targeting and Personalisation of content.
Social Media engagement is a growing trend in 2017, as we see more and more companies wanting to engagement customers online in a social environment, aswell as through other techniques such as website advertisement and SEO. Content marketing is part and parcel of social media, as you won’t receive the engagement and conversions from potential customers if you are not providing the correct information. It must be interesting and relevant.
Which brings us onto the 3rd and equally crucial element of digital marketing, which is targeting and personalised content. We are all familiar with brand following our internet searches and website visits, but this is a waste of money if ads are not showing to the right people. Having specific content that follows the customer journey is more likely to have a lot more success than constantly showing the same ads repeatedly.
Budget Allocation
Often in surveys, marketers often say one thing and their business often says otherwise when it comes to budget allocation. As marketers, we would all like to have unlimited marketing budget to invest and market the business as preferred, but we know that isn’t always the case. However, refreshingly, the study shows a similar level of alignment of budget and priorities, with social media taking the top spot.
One technique that has stayed the same throughout 2015-2017, is email marketing. There are mixed messages about the results of email marketing, but companies continue to see results, therefore email marketing has not yet been replaced. In contrast to this, having relatively low open rates, this technique is a numbers game, but does show conversions.
Online Analytics
Amazingly, marketers aren’t focused on this data analysis capabilities that becoming digital can provide, for customer insights and increasing conversions. Businesses continue to wave a finger in the air to put together a marketing plan without the analysis behind it.
While most ofbusinesses mentioned in the survey that they are planning to increase their budgets in marketing analytics, all data points in the survey related to analytics appear further down marketers’ lists of priorities for 2017 than what would be expected at this digital peak.