Transitioning your traditional marketing strategies into the digital era.

It’s evident that digital marketing is the way of the future, in fact, it’s already arrived. If you’re late to the game and still using just traditional marketing strategies, we’re here to help you out. 

Make The First Move

The biggest, and sometimes most difficult step is accepting that businesses need to be using more than just traditional marketing endeavors to capture the attention of consumers in today’s market. Once you’ve acknowledged the relevance and impact that digital marketing has, you’re ready to start implementing it into your marketing strategy. 

Don’t Replace, Enhance!

By no means does the implementation of digital mean abandoning traditional altogether. The best way to segue into the digital market is to implement some of these strategies in addition to your current traditional marketing. If your business isn’t already listed on Google and yelp, this is a good place to start. This gives consumers an initial place to find out about you. Having a website where you can outline your services and have keywords embedded will make you searchable online. Next, choose which social media outlets fit best for your business and set up the appropriate accounts. Think about what kind of content your consumers would want to see and start collecting relevant photos and content. 

Know Your Audience

Understanding who your customer is is very important in traditional, but in digital marketing as well. Deep dive into what the demographics and psychographics look like, from that you’ll be able to extract key findings and act accordingly. Knowing the values, beliefs, and attitudes of your consumer will be a large deciding factor in which digital avenues you’ll want to pursue. Understand which social media channels they’re using, speak their language, create personas, and understand their needs and what motivates them to buy. Now you’re ready to get online and connect to consumers in real-time.

The (Digital) World Is Your Oyster

There are a plethora of digital strategies that can help increase overall awareness, increase website traffic, and drive sales. The biggest and most prevalent strategies today are SEO, SEM, social media, blogging, and email marketing. 

• SEO, SEM: Search engine optimization (SEO) is a valuable tool that can increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through organic searches. Search engine marketing (SEM) helps drive traffic to your website through paid search advertising. Together, these two make a very dynamic duo. 

• Social Media: Today the most popular social media channels are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok. Social media channels can generate positive word of mouth, create buzz, and foster an environment for users to engage with and share your content. 

• Blogging: Blogging is a great tool to use. Create content and stories that are relevant to your industry to help increase traffic to your website. Answer questions consumers may have about your industry or business.

• Email: Email marketing is still a relevant and effective way to get your message across to consumers. Using clever and catchy headlines increases the chance of consumers opening your email, and eventually clicking through to your website.

Get Mobile

Digital advertising expenditures in Canada reached $4.8 billion in 2016.  Statistics show that half of that amount was spent on mobile platforms alone (Statista, 2017).  As the data continues to show trends toward mobile, we’ll see a steady increase in dollars spent on mobile channels. In Canada, consumers spend an average of 2 hours, 54 minutes on their smartphones and tablets daily (eMarketer, 2018). Mobile is definitely the way of the future. Therefore, having your website and advertisements formatted for mobile is an essential component of success. 

Give It A Boost

Doing all or a number of these things organically can only go so far. Boosting ads across various channels is ultimately going to help you see ROI and results. Allocating a monthly budget for paid advertising will help improve your overall marketing efforts and see growth. All in all, the digital marketing era is super exciting and provides consumers with new avenues to find and explore services, and getting online is just the first step.