The best digital strategy for any business will depend on the goals of the organisation (e.g. sales v awareness), the product or service, target audience and the budget available to work with. For example an online store is going to have a very different strategy than a local business or a not for profit organisation. Bearing this in mind, we are providing an overview of the key digital marketing tools available for use as of mid 2016, if you’d like to discuss any of these activities in further detail or look into developing a digital strategy for your business please get in touch via our contact page.
Company website – ideally a multi-page, responsive website with a content management system allowing frequent content updates.
For the majority of Canberra businesses, the company website is still the most important piece of digital real estate. It’s likely the first place new customers go for information and to credibility test your business. As well as being the place to display all your relevant product/service and company info, the website is still the ‘hub’ for all digital activities. People are definitely spending more time on email and social media, however when they are ready to buy, they will likely leave email or Facebook and go to your website which is where the conversion happens. For most businesses, the website is also the major driver of new leads, either organically or via paid search, banner or re-targeting. So with email, social media, google products and traditional advertising still relying on the website as the conversion place, the company website tops our digital marketing 101 list.
We can’t see the importance of the company website reducing in 2016, one exception could be for the cafe/restaurant industry which is heavily reliant on social media.
A tool that integrates with your website to give you information about the people viewing your site including how many visitors, how they arrived at your site and what they did once they got there.
Some form of analytics is super important. Google Analytics is not the only tool on the market that can give you data on users viewing your site but it is a solid tool that’s free and very easy to use. The reason why it is important is because it gives us a baseline of how the site is going before we launch any further marketing activities and provides a point of reference so we can measure how successful our activities are. For an agency, it allows us to provide ROI data and for a client it lets you know what’s happening with your money.
As long as websites are important, Google Analytics will be.
Apps/web platforms where users share content, currently Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and business networking site
LinkedIn are among the most popular.
Plenty of great stats around how much time people spend on these sites and how frequently they check their profiles, one source claimed Facebook users on average login 18 times per day! Your customers are likely on social media right now, so it’s a no brainier that these platforms are important for businesses. Depending on your industry, your customers may prefer to engage on social media channels, which means they expect businesses to not only post and share, but to engage and answer questions in posts as well as direct messages. Because customers are able to leave reviews on social channels it is absolutely critical that a business commits fully once they enter a social media platform. From an agency side, as well as ‘organic’ content we also have the ability to advertise or promote content. Most social media platforms have excellent targeting capabilities, allowing us to geo target (location), gender, age, occupation and even interests. Targeting is fantastic for hitting new customers, we can also ‘remarket’ – with a tracking code on your website, we can advertise directly to people who viewed your website within the last 30 days, great for following up and closing the buying cycle.
It looks as though by human nature we love social media so for better or for worse people will gravitate to wherever other people are – it’s not going away.
Google search advertising (pay per click) and Google display network (banner advertising).
Australian businesses reportedly spent over $2 billion on Google Advertising in 2015 through a combination of search and display advertising. With Google still dominating the search engine game and consumers as reliant as ever for immediate answers, the pay per click product can still be a great opportunity for businesses to increase website traffic. We have noticed over the last few years the cost to advertise has increased enormously in many industries due to increased competition – simple supply and demand equation as the
supply (number of spots) is fixed and demand has risen from more businesses coming online and emptying their wallets with their Yellow Pages savings.
Consumers are waking up to Google search ads, whereas some people click and advert because they know a business ‘wants’ their business and will likely have a better website that has all the information needed to purchase (because they are paying for advertising), other consumers don’t want to click the ads and look for the top ‘organically rated’ websites – the sites below the ads. Prediction wise, I think search ad growth will slow down due to consumer behaviour and more affordable options, however, display advertising will
increase with more sophisticated remarketing technologies becoming available.