5 Types of Digital Content & How To Use Them To Grow Your Business

Marketing used to be limited to newspapers, billboards, and catalogs, but today digital advertising has taken over as the primary medium for connecting businesses to their client base. However, this means more than having a clean, modern looking website. The web of digital marketing opportunities is constantly growing and evolving, but the companies who execute killer digital content can become juggernauts in their industry. This isn’t breaking news--businesses have turned the internet into a mad battleground for digital supremacy, and to compete you need to put intense effort and careful planning into your digital marketing strategies. Luckily, there are some tried-and-true tools. We’ll go over 5 digital marketing strategies today to put you on the path to boosting your online presence and super-charging sales.

Email Marketing

Email marketing campaigns are perhaps the most effective way to reach a high volume of potential customers. On average, people spend about a third of their time at the office answering email. If your email advert finds its way into their inbox, you’re guaranteed to have eyes on your brand. It seems underwhelming, but if executed well, email marketing will be one of your most powerful tools to convert sales. In addition to direct sales, emails also collect valuable information. For example, Google Analytics can tell you about the customer “Beyond the Click.” This means that you can learn not only about open rates on your emails, but also what pages they visit on your website and whether or not they convert. Over time, you can perfect your emails--edit, analyze, repeat.Sending opt-in emails is the fundamental strategy. Most websites have a box where you can provide your name and email, usually after making a purchase--this is an opt-in. The customer has already shown interest in your product, and opt-in’s greatly increase the chance that they will become a repeat customer. Open rates and click-through rates are higher on opt-ins, and regularly hearing from your company builds loyalty and trust overtime. However, make sure you respect the customer’s choice to opt-in: this isn’t an opportunity to spam them with shoddy, impersonal emails. If they opt-in, send them carefully crafted emails that are focused on building rapport as well creating direct sales.Entire books have been written on how to actually write the perfect email, so I won’t contrive to write a condensed version here. Here is one great article on writing emails.

Blogs

A well-stocked blog page is a guaranteed way to increase organic traffic and build legitimacy. Blogs are no longer relegated to the realm of travel bloggers and foodies. From construction companies to hair salons, you’ll now find that the majority of businesses regularly update a blog on their website. This is because creating high-quality blogs is now a vital part of any SEO marketing campaign. The front page of Google is filled with blogs, and you need to be able to compete.Back in the good ol’ days, writing blogs was all about keyword stuffing. If someone googled “flat tire repair” all of the results would be turgid blogs halfheartedly thrown together around 6-10 instances of the phrase “flat tire repair.” Today, Google is much more sophisticated. They focus more on readability, how well the blog answers the search query, the overall quality of the website, etc. Again, this is a thin overview--a more comprehensive guide to blog SEO can be found here--but the main point is simple. If you’re going to blog, make sure you do it right. There are a lot of moving pieces.Beyond SEO and getting customers to click-through and convert, blogs also create legitimacy. Comprehensively covering pertinent topics to your business establishes expertise. If you can answer their search query, then a customer will trust that you can solve their problem, whether that be repairing their car or providing the right skin-care product. A word of warning though: a blog is not a sales page. Don’t hawk your product/service and pepper in boasts about how well you can solve their particular problem. The customer is looking for answers, not to be sold to. It makes the blog feel superficial, cheap, and a bit skeezy. Blogs help build trust, and blatant attempts to sell undermine that.

Infographics

An infographic is any picture/graph/diagram etc. that conveys important information to the customer. I could stand on my soapbox and be the smartphone-thumping apocalyptic prophet yelling at passing millennials and lamenting the loss of the modern human attention span, but I’m not too concerned: shorter attention spans make infographics hugely effective, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, I save keystrokes and an arthritis bill down the road.Infographics are a necessity, and tie in well with email marketing. The eye is naturally drawn to images and visuals, not text, and also take much less work to understand. A wall of text, even if it only takes a minute to read through, seems like a chore. On the other hand, a customer instantly looks at an infographic--now you have the chance to capture their business. In the time it takes them to read the first two lines of an email, the gist can be quickly conveyed in a good infographic. Now that you’ve shown them what the email is about, they are more likely to read through the content.

Digital Press Release

A press release is simply telling the media about a newsworthy announcement, whether it be a product launch, new service, fundraiser, sale, philanthropic endeavor, etc. The press release has long been the bedrock of a flushed-out marketing campaign and is still a hugely valuable tool despite the changing media atmosphere. The benefits are manifold, as you can:

• Control the conversation about your brand
• Establish legitimacy and visibility in your industry
• Build relationships with various media outlets
• Communicate with large and varied markets

Prior to digitization, a company would call the newspaper. Today, there are innumerable online outlets to tap into, and a well-executed press release can be picked up by one source and be spread across many spheres of the internet, including blogs, podcasts, online news sources, and, most importantly, social media. All it takes is for your press release to be picked up by a few people/organizations with a strong online presence and your brand will accrue social relevance and traction for future engagement.Metadata: digital marketing strategies like button social media computer

Social Content

As I alluded to in the last section, social media is arguably the most important space to build your company's brand. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram provide an opportunity to connect with potential customers on a personal level and humanize your brand. Take companies like Denny’s for example. Whoever handles their Twitter account is a genius--the whole feed is filled with silly, absurd, and groan-inducing posts--and a brilliant marketer with over 450,000 followers. Social media is not necessarily about making direct sales. Denny’s doesn’t post ads, but they do have hundreds of thousands of people seeing their brand every single day.This doesn’t mean comedy is the end-all-be-all solution, but it is an interesting case study. Social media is a space to be creative, so be bold and take advantage of it.Digital marketing is an essential part of modern business. Start to play around with these tools--there an infinite number of ways to implement digital marketing into your business plan and is contingent on your specific market.If you want to work with a company who excels at digital marketing, understands the changing digital environment, and who can boost your internet presence, get in touch with us at Helix House today--we’d love to get to know your business.