5 digital marketing pillars that will accelerate your business:

1. SEM - Search engine marketing including Search Engine Optimisation, SERPS, content marketing
2. Omni-channel Marketing & PPC
3. Growth hacking techniques & Scaling  - focusing on converting and retaining, revenue, client retention growth, and using data based decision making
4. Measurement, Analytics and data driven decision making
5. Marktech stacks & SAAS - for better productivity and workflow, eliminate silos, automate, convert and connect all your tools.

1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Key activities that work to increasing visibility of a website using, paid and organic methods including:

SERPS (Search Engine Results Page)

Your SERPS includes your paid and organic results (sometimes both on a SERP) based on a keyword search, Featured Snippets, Knowledge Graphs, Google My Business (maps), image and video results. This will require advanced skills in:

• Understanding buyer intent and  customer lifecycle (awareness, engagement, loyalty)
• Using Ad campaigns - knowing which platforms and channels your customers are on
• Auctions & Bidding  - using bidding strategies, ads structure, and specific platform knowledge
• Using Ad groups - How you organise your ads based on goals, location, demographics and keywords
• Keywords - measurement ranking tools, research, structure (taxonomy)
• Ad text  - variations, creative, audience
• Landing pages - the final url and content designed to convert.

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation 

Search engine optimisation helps you build organic unpaid search traffic to a website or a web page  by improving the search rankings of your website. It includes many techniques that improve the quality score of your website and pages including metadata and comprehensive keyword research, internal and external website linking, creating great relevant content for the user, and accessibility.

Basic SEO strategies every business should be employing include:

• Keyword research
• Developing relevant content that matches search intent.
• Using short URLs, Meta Titles and descriptions, and internal page linking
• Using appropriate page headers (H1, H2, H3)
• Optimising images, videos and other multimedia
• Using Schema setup (if appropriate) and optimising for Knowledge graph
• Optimise for website speed and mobile experience
• Include sitemaps (Google Search Console), SSL Certificate and robots.txt
• External link building and content distribution techniques.

Your efforts will be well rewarded with consistent content optimisation. You will see your organic ranking building with great content offerings. 

Read the 5 things you need to know about SEO for your business  or The Ultimate Guide to Local SEO.

Content marketing

Content marketing is a marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable content to attract and retain a target audience building trust and eventually converting them to customers.

Content strategies include:

• Social media content marketing
• Articles, blog posts, lead generation docs
• Infographics
• Landing pages
• Podcasting
• Videos
• User-generated content 
• Paid ad content
• Automation tools 
• Platforms for creating, distributing, automating and measuring engagement and ROI.

 Writing Killer Content for your website

2. Omni-channel Marketing & PPC

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click is the easiest, fastest, and generally most profitable way to drive traffic to your business. Search engine advertising is the most popular form of  PPC advertising, and with a combination of keyword selection, a great ad copy and a winning bidding strategy, it can bring you great results of relevant customers and inquiries. Google is the world's most popular PPC platform but there are many others to consider that can be much better value for dollar in the Cost-per-click arena. 

• Google Ads
• Bing Ads
• AdRoll
• Bidvertiser
• Revcontent
• Facebook/Instagram
• Buysellads
• Advertise.com
• Adblade
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Amazon.

Several factors will contribute to your success on these platforms: your keyword relevance, landing page quality, quality score and ad copy. How all these factors work together will determine if your ad shows, how often and where in the Ad listing pages they appear.

More about PPC Advertising

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is the process of creating tailored relevant content for your different social media channels to drive engagement, generate leads, build brand awareness and boost conversions for your business. 

The main platforms for social media marketing include (by active users):

• Facebook 
• Youtube
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Snapchat.

You social media strategy should start with:

• Defining goals and measurements on each platforms for success
• Creating unique platform content standards (copy, multimedia best practices, hashtags, brand guidelines, linking taxonomies) (internal link)
• Planning your publishing, including message frequency and timing, publishing tools (HubSpot, Hootsuite and Buffer), and using automation features.
• Listening and engagement - commenting and replying, tagging posts, cross platform attributions, and in App messaging tools
• Analytics and reporting  - measuring performance ongoing, using in-app and 3rd party tools, and A/B testing
• Advertising - retargeting, custom audiences, ad types, multimedia, lifecycle development (awareness-consideration-conversion), cross devices, cross platforms targeting.

Social media is a marketing tool that every business should be optimising. You don't need to be on every platform but keeping your message front and centre where your customers are active is an activity that no business should be neglecting. 

Email marketing

“Email isn’t dead. It’s one of the few marketing channels we can use to build an authentic connection with the humans that keep our businesses alive.” (Hubspot) 

Email marketing is the process of sending emails to build customer loyalty, trust and brand awareness, and build new relationships with potential or existing customers through carefully curated content to a specific audience. It generally uses advertorial quality content to convert the audience to your primary business goal. Building your email marketing list generally starts with PPC and organic channels for acquisition for sign-ups and lead generation funnels (internal link article). 

Email marketing strategies include: 

• Audience segmentation and personalisation of emails
• Developing an inbound marketing plan
• Use A/B testing for creative, message, content and headlines
• Develop a full customer Lifecycle plan to attract, engage and delight
• Use automation for all your email marketing processes and funnels.

Email is proven to be one of the most effective strategies of marketing by building trust and offering great quality content and offerings. Statistics have proven that a well crafted email funnel will not only create new buyers with higher sales, but will provide an avenue for excellent upsells and repeat customers. 

3. Growth Hacking & Scaling

Influencer marketing 

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing using celebrities and niche experts for product endorsement. Kim Kardashian gets up to $500,000 to share a branded post with her 191 million followers. Kim’s sisters Khloe (64.3 million followers) and Kourtney (54.5 million followers) can earn up to $250,000 per ad on Instagram. (grazia) 

Influencer marketing include several different levels:

• mega(1M+) 
• macro(100K-1M) 
• micro(10K-100K) 
• nano(>10K).

Aligning your brand with a prominent influencer can lead to incredible exposure, impression and website visitors from well known platforms like Instagram and Tiktok. To get the most out of an influencer partnership, you’ll need to be very clear on your campaign goals, and reporting will be essential to measure your ROI. 

Viral 

A viral marketing campaign occurs when a post or product spreads at an ever-increasing rate organically by shares in the form of memes, shares and likes, from person to person. The primary content for viral posts are video and images but also include article, software, and web pages. Types of transmission include pass-along, incentive based, trendy, and undercover. 

Factors that drive viral content include social value, triggers, emotion, practical value and great stories.

Many factors contribute to the unpredictability of this method but typically include:

• Mobile friendly
• Involve influencer marketing
• Content appeals to its audience 
• Is share worthy
• Is launched from a large platform.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was the perfect storm of great celebrity media attention, emotional pull, and trendy activities with Bill Gates, Kobe Bryant and Mark Zuckerberg. It was fun, easy and added urgency with a 24hr limit. ALS managed to raise more than 5 times the amount previously raised from one viral campaign.

4. Measurement, Analytics & Data Driven Decision Making

Big data sources help you use facts and data to guide your strategic business decisions. This, aligned with your business objective, gives you clear direction, strategy and results. Here are the tools we use for our data based decision making: 

1. Google Analytics
2. Bing Clarity
3. Adobe Analytics

Start using digital marketing SMART goals which are: 

• Specific: Clear and specific objectives describing what it means and why
• Measurable: Using KPIs will help you interpret your quantifiable stats and convert that to goals, revenue and ROI
• Achievable: They need to be realistic in both time and quantity
• Relevant: Linking your goals to sales is quantifiable and relative. But it is more difficult to quantify social media engagement, make sure your numbers are relevant to your business
• Time-bound: Having a clear deadline helps you to benchmark over certain periods or campaigns for future efforts.

5. Marktech Stacks & SAAS

Marketing automation

Marketing automation uses software to help businesses manage marketing processes across multiple channels and platforms by automating repetitive tasks like emails, social postings, and advertising. 

Leading automation platforms like HubSpot have advanced CRM and workflow capabilities. It uses marketing intelligence to help you manage and grow your business easily and quickly by:

• Using a CRM to manage customer and relations 
• Managing marketing campaigns
• Automating lead generation
• Managing multiple marketing platforms
• Providing intelligent reporting and analytics.

As a Certified Agency Partner, our favourite here at Click Creative is HubSpot. It's a full stack SAAS platform that any business will benefit from including marketing, sales, service and CMS hubs. With years of experience working with this platform, we can recommend how your business can benefit from the many extraordinary features it can offer your business. 

Inbound marketing - customer lifecycle marketing

“Customer lifecycle marketing (CLM) is an approach to customer communication that recognises that different stages on the journey to becoming a loyal, active customer require different marketing messages and strategies." - Ometria, Ecommerce analytics software

CLM and Inbound marketing are inextricably bound together by using valuable content to attract, engage and delight its customer base. It’s focus is based on the creation and distribution of relevant content - drawing new and existing customers into your business lifecycle marketing strategies.

It looks something like this:

Strategies include:

• Creating relevant content for an audience using segmentation for the entire lifecycle
• Using different tools for the Attract (lead generation), Engage (convert & close) and Delights (upselling) lifecycle phases
• Engaging in search engine marketing (PPC)
• Using SEO for organic search intent and improving the 'crawlability' and credibility of web pages.

At each phase of the journey, you are providing custom content that drives them to the next phase building trust and genuine value into the relationship at every stage. Customers that feel valued will become your greatest advocates.

Read more about how we use Hubspot for our clients here at Click Creative

Digital Marketing Strategies

Every business will benefit greatly from taking on a few low hanging digital marketing tasks. Refreshing old content, re-engaging by email with past clients and a quick offer can be enough to fill your sales book again.  Here are the digital strategies that your business should be engaging in, either in-house or through an agency.

1. Content marketing - refreshing or adding new:

• Website refresh of theme, graphics (buttons, CTA's), copywriting, images & videos
• Revising and iterating Ad content, Ad copy (try a responsive ad versus static text)
• Emails and CRM - engage your old clients
• Social media marketing - try some new images, ideas, promotions or advertising
• Blogs, posts and ongoing SEO and content required - find some fresh, timely content to share 
• Planning and scheduling (maybe its only 1 great post a week)
• Software and platform recommendations (try automation platforms like Mailchimp, Hootsuite or Hubspot).

2. Strategic planning - Where you want your business to be in a year?

• Social media management requires time and effort but it's worth the effort - you can be sure every client you have is checking you out on social media
• CRM implementation - build a strong database of clients that you can market, remarket, upsell, get referrals and build your sales easily
• Marketing automation, funnels and lead nurturing - gradually build trust with new clients and make it easy with automated work flows
• Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) - figure out where your abandoned carts are going, simplify, add more CTA's, plan the user journey and UX
• Digital strategy consulting - find someone who can help you strategise and plan so you get the best ROI on your time, energy and money.

3. The digital transformation 

• Developing SMART Goals and KPIs for your online business once you know where you want to be
• Strategic business development. Planning channels, tools, messaging, and measurement
• Growth marketing through the many and various new digital channels that are available to your business. 

4. Leveraging email marketing and automation

• Developing and implementing lead generation and nurturing campaigns
• Using a strong multi-platform and functional CRM 
• Generating audience segmentation, personas and custom content
• Using an automation platform (SAAS like Mailchimp and Hubspot)
• Workflows and channel development for lifecycle and CRO marketing
• Developing your own custom content that speaks to your clients.

5. PPC marketing 

• Google Ads (Search, Partners, Display, Youtube & Shopping), Bing Ads
• Social media Facebook & Instagram Ads and the many others like Snapchat, Tiktok, etc.
• LinkedIn, Twitter & affiliate advertising for businesses
• Using Custom dashboard and reporting so you know your ROI.

6. Google analytics & reporting

• Get detailed website stats, and multiplatform analytics and attributions.
• Using Google Tags to record goals, conversions and events on your website.
• Search Console reporting will help you improve your keyword list, analyse website content and performance, and index/crawl your website pages
• Use custom consoles and reporting for snapshots and relevant reporting for you particular goals. Set a weekly or monthly report directly into your inbox every Monday morning.

Digital Marketing for Business Sectors

Digital Marketing tools and strategies vary greatly between business sectors. These include: 

B2B  

Your business is reliant upon a successful marketing strategy. The cost and effort of assembling an in house marketing team can be greatly reduced by using a digital marketing agency. Having experts in every area on your team ensures your campaigns are running smoothly and profitably. Helping you understand key metrics and reporting ensures you're spending your marketing budget with the best ROI possible. The value of using a digital agency for your business will allow you to focus on what you do best. 

• Campaign ideation & brand strategy
• Developing custom mobile and web apps
• Running and monitoring PPC campaigns and Search Engine Marketing
• Increasing your organic traffic with SEO 
• Omni-channel Social media management
• Marketing automation
• Multimedia content creation and curation
• Robust reporting & analytics for paid, owned and earned media.

B2C 

Building your brand and eCommerce marketing solutions is a big challenge for SMEs. You need to realise the best ROI for your budget. Assembling a range of services together that cover some of your marketing weaknesses can be the best strategy out there. Pick, choose and test your ideas with a team that will get you the best results in traffic, brand building, eCommerce solutions.

• Strategy marketing campaigns
• eCommerce websites
• PPC and Facebook Ads
• Search engine optimisation 
• CRM and automation solutions
• Google analytics reporting.

eCommerce 

Creating the best multi platform customer experience is the key to success.  Your users want a simple process that delights along the way. Using Intelligent data and AI will lead to bigger overall spends, more return customers, and advocates for your business.

We recommend these practices:

• eCommerce web platform and scalability 
• PPC, social media and affiliate marketing
• Building organic traffic with Search engine optimisation
• Conversion rate optimisations for maximum profitability.

 For more about eCommerce strategies read The Ultimate Guide to Building Your eCommerce Website. 

Technology 

Digital marketing for technology seems like it would take care of its own, but that's not always the case. Technology companies need to distinguish themselves amongst their community. It's not always about the best and fastest. Customers are looking for the values that go along with their product. Big tech needs a new story.

Strategies include: 

• Custom website and platform consulting
• Branding and content
• PPC & SEM
• Growth hacking techniques
• Search engine optimisation
• Lifecycle marketing
• Brand & omni-channel content management
• Web managed services and security.

Startups

Starting lean and growth strategies are the most important techniques to focus on. Building fast and learning quickly with instant scalability are key. 

Using these strategies will boost your launch, build and grow quickly:

• Custom website and platform consulting
• PPC & SEM
• Growth hacking & viral strategies
• Search engine optimisation
• Brand & omni-channel content management.

Digital marketing is hands down the easiest way to increase your website traffic and drive sales. It’s far less expensive than traditional methods, has as much higher ROI, and it’s data driven. Digital marketing tools allow us to scale and adapt easily to leverage current trends in browsing, shopping and marketing. It is also highly measurable.

How your business grows matters. Choosing the best solutions and strategies for the long term growth of your business to build traffic and engagement throughout the customer lifecycle is a decision that will mean everything to your future growth and success. Take the time to decide what is right for your business, whether that's marketing in house or using a digital marketing agency. Planning is the key to your bottom line.  

If you’d like to know more about our digital marketing services and packages we would love to hear from you.

Book a free strategy session