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Marketing (including digital marketing) is the act of persuading people to buy a product or service. Often, businesses need to convince customers to buy their product or service instead of a similar one from another company.

It goes without saying that marketing is getting harder and harder. Not only is competition fierce, but technology and the digital world are ever-changing. Nailing down a marketing strategy is like trying to hit a moving target.

Great Digital Marketing Doesn’t Cost Money, It Makes Money

If I asked you to give me $500 today and I could guarantee I’d give you back $1,000 in 30 days, would you give me the money? It’s not a trick and I can’t steal your money. It’s a straight trade of 30 days without your $500 for a 100% return on your investment.

The only reason not to accept is if you can’t scrape together a spare $500. But I’d let you do it for $300, or whatever you could get. Given all these parameters, it’s a no-brainer. You can’t lose.

Digital marketing is the same deal. If you engage with the right kind of agency, marketing won’t cost you money in the long run – it’ll make you money. Like in the example above, you have to part with your cash in the initial stages, but you’re likely to see a big return on that investment.

If it’s so obvious, why isn’t marketing an easy sell? Again, we’re back to positioning and perception. Some marketing agencies promise way too much ‘return on investment.’ When they don’t deliver within their promised time frame, the relationship sours.

But some agencies don’t promise anything in fear of falling short. This makes selling marketing solutions harder because there’s no visible benefit for the buyer.

It might seem like an irreconcilable difference, but there’s actually an easy solution to this problem…

Digital Marketing Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive

A while ago, we wrote a post about how it was possible to make a big difference with a small investment in social ads. This might not be the most popular suggestion amongst markers, but when encountering businesses that are skeptical about marketing, why not let them start small?

Say there’s a business that only has a few bucks for marketing; okay, great, that’s better than nothing! Help them implement something reasonable and effective, like a PPC campaign. When it works, the marketing has sold itself.

The concept is similar to that of a trial period for a software or an app; in this case, I’m not suggesting marketers do work for free, but something small is better than nothing, right?

It’s not conventional, but if a little bit of “give and take” on both sides helps foster a fruitful long term relationship between a business and an agency, it’s worth a shot.

Digital Marketing Trends to Invest In

As digital marketing continues to shape the B2B marketing landscape, marketers need to loosen their purse strings to make more room for new trends. Here is a look at a few must-haves in your digital marketing budget. Each of these trends will help you bolster reporting, close the gap between marketing and sales, prove ROI, and bring person-to-person marketing to the forefront.

Website Design

Your website is a place for visitors to get familiar with you, your mission, and your products and services. Your website ideally needs to be modern, easy to navigate, mobile friendly, and up to date to ensure quality! Put yourself in the consumer’s mind, would you rather browse through an efficient website, or an outdated website? We can can create your website with the most modern and updated software to leave your audience speechless.

Content Marketing

While content marketing should still dominate your digital marketing budget, virtually every marketer is already creating content for their audience, and as such, it is getting harder to stand out in the crowd. Consumers are exposed to hundreds of ads each day, which means they are faced with content fatigue. Content will need to slow down and get real, with more authenticity, more personalization, and more intent. Brands are seeking tools to build custom experiences as personalization moves from buzzword to fundamental. Closely tied to personalization is journey mapping. Brands need to focus on understanding how customers flow through their journey, including content consumption, social sharing, purchase behavior, and figure out patterns to suggest the next best step for each unique consumer. 

Logo

Logos, they are the face of your company! They paint a picture in your consumer’s mind when they hear your name. Is your logo conveying what you would like it to? Do the color schemes and design speak to your audience? We can help you create / redesign a logo that will represent you and your branding.

Social Media Marketing

The social media platforms your audience uses matters! A flooring company may use Pinterest to place ads for home improvement inspiration. A bakery may use Instagram to display their beautiful edible creations. All in all, considering your social media platforms your company should utilize is one portion of social media marketing. How often you should post and the type  of content that should be posted is also important!

At Yakima Branding, we don’t make social media posts just for the sake of having something on your feed. We carefully craft important statements and curate quality stories that are relevant to your business and selling points. This is a rapidly changing field and you need experts who are up to date on the latest platform changes — we can help!

Cross-Device Marketing Strategies

The average consumer is connected through more than five digital devices, which means that marketers are looking at five times the work to ensure the content they have created is optimized for whatever platform their audience wants to digest it on. As new platforms, like wearable devices, go mainstream, other platforms you may not even have thought about are emerging. Make sure there is enough room in your budget to invest in them before you are left behind.

Email and Marketing Automation

According to The Radicati Group, there are over 2.6 billion email users across the globe. What is more is, some 55% of company decision-makers prefer to communicate almost exclusively via email. Not to mention the ROI is higher than any other digital asset at a staggering 4,300%, according to the Direct Marketing Association. According to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, every dollar spent on email marketing offers an average return of $44. As consistently shown to increase open rates and click-through rates, personalization is key to email marketing. Volume is also an essential requirement. The best route to success with email is to build an extensive email list (email-gated content is perfect for this), segment by interest, set it to send automatically with merge tags, and then take over with a personal touch at the optimal time. A good marketing automation platform will enable you to send an email to a sales associate when someone replies to an automated email.

SEO

Search engine optimization is growing at lightning speed. Google’s algorithm updates continue to keep marketing departments on their toes while new optimization trends are taking shape. Keywords are maturing to optimize for user intent. People today know precisely what they are looking for, and as more users type full queries into search engines, data and heuristics are collected, which can offer up more targeted results effectively. You need to figure out what questions your ideal buyer personas are asking and target what they are searching for that brings them to your page.

Reasons to Invest in Digital Marketing

In a world where every analogical aspect is finding its double online, your advertising cannot be the exception. The best way to dip your hands into the new digital era is to create a digital marketing strategy. While it may sound extreme, traditional marketing has been completely overrun by online marketing. If you want to gain cut-through in any market, your business needs a strong marketing strategy, which is why you should invest in the area where your customers are spending the most time, the digital space. Here are six reasons your business should invest in a solid digital marketing strategy.

The Internet Will Continue To Expand

The digital revolution is all around us. Thanks to companies such as Google, the internet is now the first point of research for most consumers. The average person spends over 6 hours a day on the internet, increasing year after year. The internet is an incredible platform to spread information. It overshadows any other media, and its reach will keep on growing exponentially. While traditional marketing hopes to generate reach and visibility, the internet does it better. It is more persuasive, much more effective, and gives the client complete control over their experience. Prospects can assess products, review their specifications, and others’ opinions on those products. The internet is clearly like nothing else if someone wants to search for information on your product or service.

A Much More Precise Audience

Traditional marketing media has a considerably limited impact on consumers, mainly because marketers using traditional means cannot segment audiences nearly as effectively as digital marketers. There are numerous digital tools you can use to determine your ideal target audience so you can focus on them to get great results. These tools analyze diverse factors, such as geographic location, demographics, interests, and so much more, so you can finally address the audience you are interested in. The algorithms created by digital platforms such as Google and Facebook give consumers the best and most personalized experience online. They provide a platform that brands can utilize to target digital marketing campaigns to their perfect audience. In allowing consumers to dictate their interests, businesses can avoid disrupting the wrong audience with advertising that is not relevant to them, potentially damaging brand reputation, and providing no return on your marketing investment!

Its Reach Is Practically Unlimited

With the internet being available in most parts of the world, the sky’s the limit in terms of your ability to reach new audiences. There are over 1 billion active users on Facebook alone—that is much opportunity to grow your business! With a strategic approach to digital marketing, your potential to tap into the masses and increase brand awareness is both simple and cost-effective. “Viralization” can be one of the most effective ways to get your brand out there. Of course, to get to that point, much hard work is needed. You need to update your content regularly, post useful and relevant information, and make the experience worthwhile for the user. If you can manage to capture a customer’s attention and they promote your work, you can broaden your reach and impact many more prospects with minimum effort.

It Will Allow you to Boost your Creativity

The boost in creativity is one of the major advantages of digital marketing. With all the options available, you can turn your most ambitious projects into a reality and develop concepts and ideas like never before, without needing to follow boring and monotonous rules to obtain desirable results. You can now use the most innovative formats to better impact your audience, making it more memorable and strengthening your brand identity. By making the most of each digital platform, you are sure to get stronger results. Add to this the incredible variety of formats supported in the digital world, and there truly needs to be no limit to your creativity!

Measuring Your Digital Marketing Results Is Much Easier

Following up on your advertising and digital marketing actions becomes practically effortless with the different digital tools that enable you to monitor all your digital strategies with precision in real-time. These tools use digital marketing metrics to help you judge how effective your strategy is and tell you whether you are on your way to achieving your projected ROI. With every campaign that you run online, whether it be via social media, Google Ads or retargeting, you are leaving a digital footprint and setting it up for analysis. Tools like Google Analytics allow you to accurately measure where your consumers are coming from, what they are engaging with, and at what point they disengage. Data analysis will enable you to adjust and redirect your digital activity based on the insights you gain in real-time from your campaigns.

Its Speed Is Unbeatable

The speed offered by digital media is unrivaled, and its coverage is instantaneous. Because there are no barriers, negotiations happen much faster. Direct and immediate communication with clients and partners allows for instantly accessible results. Everything also occurs in the same place. As your brand, the consumer, and the media you advertise on are all online, it enables you to analyze the entire process and all of them simultaneously.

In Conclusion

Marketing is an investment in your brand and its idea. Similar to how a gym membership is an investment in your health, and a savings account is an investment in your financial future, marketing is an investment in your business.

At Yakima Branding, we believe our clients are unique and your digital marketing should reflect that. It’s our job to take big ideas – ones just like yours – and help them realize their full potential by harnessing the power of digital technology.

Whenever you’re ready to make an investment in your company’s future, we’re here to ensure you achieve that return with a sound digital marketing strategy.