How a Holistic Digital Marketing Strategy Can Increase Your Bottom Line

Having a website is no longer enough to compete online. The landscape is increasingly competitive and consumers have more choices than ever before. Effective digital marketing services are necessary to give your business a competitive advantage and distinguish your products or services. But relying on a single marketing strategy is incredibly risky. It puts your business on a shaky foundation that can collapse at any moment. SEO works well to generate targeted traffic by making a website more optimised. But a single algorithm update can threaten your rankings and allow your competitors to push you out. Building a strong foundation starts by taking a holistic approach. Holistic digital marketing brings different mediums and integrates them together for a more comprehensive strategy. This involves four key components that some of the most successful companies embrace:

• Attraction: This involves attracting targeted traffic through different channels such as search engine optimisation, social media marketing, blogging, pay-per-click ads, advertising, etc.
• Retention: Not all traffic will convert. The next step is to continue to generate interest by offering a newsletter or engaging content that can be downloaded.
• Conversion: Even with targeted traffic, a poorly designed page or checkout process is unappealing. Optimising copy and user experience is paramount to converting traffic.
• Measurement: Which campaigns need improvement? Which areas are leaking sales? Analysing data is an important step to deliver even better results for future campaigns.

Focusing on only one area at the expense of others may lead to more traffic but at the cost of poor conversions. The following is an overview of how different aspects of digital marketing can come together to create powerful results for any business.

1. Engaging Design Design matters. Visitors that come across a website that is full of ads or has a confusing navigation structure leaves a poor impression which in turns leads to less sales. A perfect example to illustrate the importance of solid design is with websites that are not mobile friendly. A study conducted by Google on mobile site usage found that:

• 67% of mobile users are more likely to make a purchase from a mobile-friendly site
• 52% of mobile users are likely less likely to engage with a company that has a poor mobile experience

Good design doesn’t stop there though. A website that is well designed is also search engine friendly and makes it easy for visitors to:

• Find what they are looking for
• View the website on different devices
• Share on social media
• Easily make a purchase

These aspects lead to a better user experience which plays an important part for traffic generation.

2. Traffic Generation Having a website is not enough. Even if you offer the best products or services in your industry, you need targeted traffic to have any chance of bringing in new customers. There are numerous strategies available for traffic generation which include:

• Search engine optimisation: SEO involves optimising a website for higher rankings in the search engines. This results in better visibility for keywords your target market is searching for.
• Social media marketing: Building a profile on networks such as Facebook and Twitter can help increase brand awareness and drive more traffic to your landing pages.
• Pay-per-click advertising: PPC allows you to place targeted ads with platforms such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads whereby you only pay for each click.
• Video marketing: Video has become an increasingly popular medium for attracting targeted traffic through search engines and video networks such as YouTube.
• Content marketing: Content marketing creating and distributing engaging content to acquire customers. Common examples include creating blog posts and publishing guides.

These marketing strategies are highly effective for attracting targeted traffic to your website. But how much of that traffic is actually converting into paying customers?

3. Conversion Traffic is an important indicator. But marketing campaigns that overlook conversion rate optimisation (CRO) will be less effective. Visitors may leave your website for a number of reasons which might include:

• Confusing design and usability
• Complicated check out process
• Poorly written copy
• Non-mobile friendly website
• Insufficient product information

CRO is an important part of a digital marketing strategy as it looks at conversion data (the number of visitors taking a desired action) and takes steps to improve it. This can include:

• Optimising copy to be more relevant
• Testing different offers
• Making pages less cluttered
• Designing an easier navigation structure
• Changing the checkout process
• Conducting customer surveys
• Measuring and analyzing data

Even a 1% increase in conversions can add thousands to your bottom line by improving areas that are leaking sales.

Conclusion Taking a holistic approach brings different aspects of digital marketing together such as design, traffic generation, and conversion optimisation to achieve better results. Companies that move towards this direction stand to gain a significant competitive advantage online. Ready to get started with a marketing strategy for your business? Contact us today to request a free consultation for more details on implementing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for your business.