There’s no doubt that marketing is changing at a fever pitch, and there’s an endless line of professionals trying to sell you their latest strategy. Each strategy has its purpose and helps organizations reach particular goals. However, there are two techniques that I believe if you can focus on, your digital marketing should be ok at least. Below are two marketing techniques I’m thankful for, both tried and true and proven to produce results.
Content Marketing
I know, I know, content has been the premier digital marketing tactic since the Google Penguin update. However, despite all the AI junk out there, it’s still essential to any digital marketing plan. Your content informs your audience, serves as the foundation of your SEO, provides material for your social channels, and establishes you as a thought leader in your field.
Here are some essential pieces of content you should have in your digital presence:
- Blogs: These keep your website active, add valuable keywords, and provide meaningful information that keeps visitors coming back, and provides valuable SEO signals.
- Case Studies: These not only add to your digital content and improve SEO by validating your expertise, but also serve as valuable bottom-of-the-funnel resources for decision makers.
- White Papers: These educate your audience on a deeper level and can be shared with industry thought leaders to help build backlinks.
- Video: There are countless ways to implement video with today’s technology and channels. Here are a couple of ways you can implement video into your content:
- Long-form video – Cultivate a scripted high value video, this can be highly produced, or even a recorded live presentation. These can be posted on YouTube, your website, and chipped up into smaller clips for social share. Additionally, you can repurpose this information as blogs, and downloads.
- Short-form video – Short unscripted videos are great for quickly producing content for social share. These videos not only serv to inform your audience, but also humanizes your brand.
Do not gate these pieces of content. Today’s savvy visitors are concerned with privacy and are less likely to provide personal information for content they can likely find elsewhere, possibly with your competition.
Remember, don’t rely on it too heavily for your content creation. AI is a tool, not a writer. The internet is already overflowing with low-quality junk. Make sure your content is unique and valuable.
Digital Marketing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint. I Ran One So You Don’t Have To.
Marathon Training and Marketing Lessons: What Running Can Teach You About Marketing.
Reputation Management
This may sound simple, but it’s far more involved than you may think. It’s a full strategy, one some agencies even build their entire business around. Reputation management not only informs potential customers but also supports your SEO, alerts you to problems, identifies opportunities, and more.
Stay vigilant with your reviews, and respond to reviewers, both positive and negative.
You’d be surprised how many review sites exist. At minimum, cover the major ones like Yelp, Google, and social channels, as well as any platforms specific to your industry. Several companies offer solutions that automatically locate, report, and respond to reviews. They’re real time-savers and help ensure nothing slips through the cracks. Many also help verify that all of your business information is correct and up to date on these sites. This is especially helpful if you manage multiple locations.
Here are a few ways reputation management can help your company:
- Consumer research: Potential customers do their research and trust reviews. These reviews play a major role in their decision-making.
- SEO: In search engines’ ongoing mission to provide high-quality results, they rely on reviews as proof that a company delivers on its promises. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Edge all indicate that reviews factor into SEO.
- Content: Repurpose reviews on your website, share them across social channels, and turn strong reviews into testimonials through outreach.
- Identify challenges and opportunities: Pay attention to the content of your reviews. Look for repeated themes to identify problems that need attention and opportunities to improve the customer experience.
Don’t forget to have a system in place to solicit reviews. Make leaving a review easy, and remind customers while they’re satisfied and your business is still top of mind. Having a lot of good reviews can help compensate for any negative reviews that may show up.
I know, there are many other worthy marketing techniques that didn’t make this list, but if a company or organization can stick to at least these two, and executes them at a decent level, they’ll be in pretty good shape.
