The typical consumer spends five or more hours online every day and for some age groups, this number is even higher.
We turn to the internet for nearly everything, whether it’s researching a company and ordering books to finding accommodation and interacting with family and friends so it only makes sense for your business to have some sort of online presence to avoid losing out on potential customers.
Not every online platform is going to be the best option for your business though so taking the time to understand where your business fits in, in the online space is going to save you tons of time and money.
Choosing Your Online Marketing Mix
Marketing does tend to involve a bit of trial and error but taking the time to make informed decisions about your online marketing avenues is going to save you some unnecessary hassles.
There are three points that you need to take into consideration when developing your digital marketing mix:
- Target Audience. Think about how your customers spend their time, how they search for information and also how they shop. Their age groups will also play a big role in how they spend their time online
- Budget. Many entrepreneurs don’t have a huge marketing budget to play with but luckily there are a number of affordable or even free digital options available to them. Decide how much you want to spend on digital marketing activities, look at the options that you jotted down based on your market and then decide which of those fit into your budget.
- Tactics. The online platforms that you choose will also depend on when you want to reach your customers. Would you want them to see an advert on their way from work and then be able to find your website or do you want to target them on weekends when they are most active on social media. Having your goals set out will help you to develop your online marketing tactics.
Online Marketing Options for Your Business
There are many different options available to you when it comes to your digital marketing strategy. You should know that there are very few brands that use all available options as it thins out their marketing message, especially if they are attempting to target a very specific audience. Below are the five main categories for you to consider:
Display
Create a website for your business or brand. There is no need to hire a web designer for this process if you are comfortable with designing it yourself with the assistance of an online programme. You might have to consider hiring a third party if what you want is a bit more complex, for example
running an online store. Whatever route you decide to go, make sure that you have a plan for your site first.
Dos and Don’ts
- Do match your website to the rest of your branding such as brochures, street pole ads and business cards
- Don’t choose a website address that is hard to remember or doesn’t fit your business
- Do use a layout, images and colours that are appealing to your specific market/customers
- Don’t make your site too complex. Getting a user to your site is great but they might just leave if they get frustrated trying to navigate the site
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Search
Your business is now online but ideally you also want to be found by search engines such as Google. There are a number of things you can do to show up on Google’s search result pages, the first one being website optimisation. By having an SEO (search engine optimisation) plan in place you can use the content on your site as keywords to give Google an idea of what your site is all about and when they should display your website in their search results. This digital marketing option is free and quite simple to implement if you understand the basics.
The second option is to use Google Adwords. This platform allows you to bid on keywords that you would like to rank for in search engine results. Depending on the competition of the keyword, your text advert will show up in the search results in the ad boxes at the top of the page. You will require a budget to use this marketing option and you should be aware that this method can result in trial and error approach when you first start out.
Dos and Don’ts
- Don’t use black hat SEO tactics to try and get your website to page 1 of Google. You will be penalised.
- Do write the content on your website for your audience and not for the robots that will crawl your site
- If possible, do update your site on a regular basis with interesting content, competitions or special offers
- Don’t go in blind when using Google AdWords. Use their keyword research tool to find out if the keywords you have in mind would be worth your money by looking at the number of monthly searches and the level of competition around the keyword
- Do hire a reputable SEO specialist if you decide that you want an expert to optimise your website content
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Social
You’ll be pressed to find someone who isn’t registered on one or other social media site. The options for socialising and sharing are endless and this is an opportunity that businesses shouldn’t miss out on.
Deciding on a social media platform will again depend on your specific market. Find out how they spend their time on the social sphere, when they’re online and what their interests are so that you can find a way to speak to them the same as one of their friends would. Social media users don’t want to follow a brand that simply punts their own products and gives them nothing of value back so keep this in mind when you develop the social media section of your marketing strategy.
Below is a list of popular social media platforms in South Africa and how you can make the best of them.
This fast-paced microblogging site is busy so your tweets need to be catchy and to the point in order to get the user to click through to the rest of your content or your website. The users on this platform tend to be younger (18-29 years old) but there are other age groups participating in conversations too. (Source: http://www.seomworld.com/2013/08/social-media-users-demographics.html#.UwcBp2KSwuM)
Dos and Don’ts
- Do follow the right kind of users
- Do reply to tweets directed at you within 24 hours
- Don’t ignore or delete bad publicity
- Do reply to and start a conversation with your users where relevant
- Don’t use Twitter to spam users. Provide them with interesting content too
- Do use Twitter to track what your competitors are doing
- Don’t leave your avatar blank. Make sure your profile is complete
- Do use Twitter as a networking tool
- Don’t overuse hashtags, users might get annoyed and unfollow you
This is a personal space for most users so you need to post one to two posts per day and make them good in order to capture their attention and prevent them from blocking your brand from their news feed. Most Facebook users are women between 18 and 29 years of age. (Source: http://www.seomworld.com/2013/08/social-media-users-demographics.html#.UwcBp2KSwuM)
Dos and Don’ts
- Do invite friends, family and employees to like the Facebook page while you build up your online community
- Don’t spam users with promotions and product/service information. They are looking for a reason to affiliate themselves with your brand
- Do give users a reason to share your posts with their family and friends
- Don’t post brand related content on users’ walls, they will unlike your page
- Do make your posts visual, Facebook was made for this
- Do use this platform to keep track of what your competitors are doing
This professional platform is great for networking as well as creating a professional brand following so keep this in mind when you develop content for this platform. LinkedIn is most popular amongst users aged 25-34. (Source: https://www.quantcast.com/linkedin.com)
Dos and Don’ts
- Do make sure that your group is complete in terms of a profile and logo
- Don’t delete any bad publicity that might be posted on your group page
- Do make a point of updating your page on a regular basis with content that your users would find interesting
- Be careful about not allowing users to join your group without being approved first as this might drive them away
- Do make the time to clean up any spam or pending comments/posts. Users want a pleasant experience
- Do interact with your audience where relevant
- Do share content from other pages with your users
This platform is all about images so make sure that your website has the best quality content and visual elements in order to make it worth sharing. Pinterest usually works well for ecommerce sites. This platform mostly has female users of 50 years or younger. (Source: http://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-in-2013-user-demographics-for-twitter-facebook-pinterest-and-instagram)
Dos and Don’ts
- Do position your brand as an authority on a topic
- Don’t spam users with product promotions
- Do partner with top Pinterest users to promote your pins
- Do make a point of choosing the very best images for your pins in order to attract users
Google Plus is a platform that is still growing and slowly gaining momentum in South Africa but unless you are an established brand it might be better to leave this platform out of your social media mix until a later date. At the moment there are only around half a million SA users on Google+.
Dos and Don’ts
- Do complete your Google+ page and use eye-catching images
- Do comment on user posts and interact where necessary
- Don’t spam users by replying to posts with product information
- Do create your own circles and add industry experts to them
- Do create communities where you can provide users with very specific content around your brand and industry
Mobile
Research shows that the average South African user uses their mobile device to access 30% of the online content they consume, which means you are losing out on a large potential client base if you aren’t providing a mobile friendly experience. (Source: http://themediaonline.co.za/2013/09/the-mass-market-engages-with-mobile/)
Your first step should be to make sure that your website is responsive, in other words it needs to be able to adapt to different screen sizes and still be user friendly. This is something that you can ask your web designer to implement.
Some brands even choose to have a separate mobi site that users are redirected to if they access a website from a mobile device. This way they can develop a separate design and content strategy around these users. If this is the route you are choosing to go then you should pay close attention to your mobi site visitors’ habits so that you can create content that fits in with that.
When it comes to mobile content, headlines are everything. You have very little space to grab the attention of users so graphics don’t need to be your biggest concern. You need to create the most attention grabbing headline possible and make sure that your content delivers on it. Linking to video content and integrating your mobile platform with social media will increase your chances of online exposure.
Dos and Don’ts
- Don’t automatically assume that you don’t need a mobile strategy. Your market research will play an important role here
- Do vary the length of your content to see what works for your mobile users
- Don’t think that format isn’t important on a mobile site
- Do look into developing an app for your business if there is an opportunity to benefit from it
- Do take the size of mobile phone and tablet screens into consideration when developing a mobile site
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Email marketing is the perfect platform for promoting your products and services as well as providing readers with excellent content but the problem is that online users are so used to spam popping into their inboxes that you really have to be outstanding for them to sit up and take notice.
The first step in developing an email marketing strategy is to decide what you want to achieve. Do you want to generate more sales, increase website visitors or get users to answer a survey? Once you’ve established this you can decide on the content of your mailer.
By researching your market you can decide what the best time would be to send the newsletter and also how often you should email them. Unsubscribes should be avoided at all costs. Another important point is to get your readers to want to open your email and this is done with a superb headline so give this loads of thought and ensure that the content in your newsletter delivers on it.
Dos and Don’ts
- Do keep your layout clean and easy to read
- Do make sure that the look and feel of your newsletter match your brand and website
- Don’t make it difficult for users to unsubscribe from your mailers
- Do use a call to action in your newsletters. Examples would be: “Click Here to Read More”; “Click Here to Receive Your Discount Code” or “Enter Our Competition Here.”
- Don’t rent or buy email lists. Let users opt in on their own
- Don’t forget to add a subscribe box on your website
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