5 Ways Businesses Can Integrate Digital Marketing Activities
Digital marketing instruments are being used more extensively by businesses, especially now that more customers are moving most of their purchase activities online. For businesses that are impacted by the crisis, digital marketing is also a scalable way to reach new target customers and expand their reach.
The increasing use of digital marketing instruments, however, also means that you have to be further ahead of the market in order to remain ahead of competitors. That means utilizing digital marketing instruments in a more holistic, well-planned way, and the way to do that is through the integration of multiple instruments to refine the user’s journey.
Integrating digital marketing instruments and activities can be challenging, especially when you start taking into account the sales funnel, business processes, and other elements of your operations. If you are serious about going beyond Teddington Town and reaching new markets, here are some of the ways you can integrate digital marketing activities to reach new customers.
Integrate the Tools
The most important foundation to the seamless integration of digital marketing activities is the tool. The set of tools you use to run digital campaigns and reach new audience groups will greatly affect how easy it is to build a unified user journey from start to finish.
When you treat social media sites as separate channels, for instance, you will face difficulties as you try to communicate to more users across multiple sites. Add social media management tools like Hootsuite to the mix, and you can solve this issue and communicate in a unified way.
The same is true with other digital marketing activities. Using PieSync to synchronize contacts across multiple tools is a great way to engage users across multiple platforms. You can have your Pipedrive contacts synchronized with Mailchimp contacts without jumping through hoops. PieSync can also work with Google Contacts and Contacts+ and many more, so it’s a tool worth checking out.
Think Unified
The next thing to do is integrate the key messages. When you have a consistent brand (and brand elements) pushing consistent key messages, it is much easier for the audience to associate those messages with your business.
Consistent messaging becomes the key to engaging users on a more personal level. Combined with the ability to communicate across multiple channels, you can create a truly pleasant experience that leads to users converting into customers.
When you use social media ads to gain exposure, for instance, you can then engage users affected by the ad via email or other channels. Personal touches in the engagements will trigger that deeper, closer relationship.
Amplify
The continuous engagement of users produces another positive effect: amplification. Users are less likely to be affected by a single advertisement or a social media post now that there are so many of them, but continuous exposure – in a pleasant way – will get your brand positioned stronger in their minds.
Amplification can happen in different ways, especially when seen from an integration standpoint. For example, amplifying longer contents using short, snackable social media posts is known to be effective in driving traffic and boosting exposure. Ads, on the other hand, are great for boosting early traction and pushing for conversion.
Amplification is the approach to take when you are trying to integrate digital marketing activities. Think about how one activity can be amplified by another, and build on that effect gradually. Timing, how one message relates to another, and the way you package your content all play important parts in amplifying the message further.
Content (Value) First
An important note to keep in mind when doing digital marketing, especially when integrating multiple instruments to construct a larger campaign, is the importance of delivering value to the audience. Forget about pushing promotional posts and offers all the time. That’s not what users engage with online.
What you need to be focusing on is the value you can deliver to those users. Instead of promotional offers, try pushing content that is about how to maximize the benefits of your products, or how users can solve their existing problems by using your products and services.
Tutorials, industry content, and updates from behind the scene of your business are also powerful and valuable. When you are developing a new product, and you get users to actively take part in that development process, you immediately have users that are not only engaged but also hooked; they are more likely to buy the product when it is released if they have a say on it.
Evaluate and Revise
The last thing to remember about integrating digital marketing activities is how important it is to do continuous review and evaluation. No digital marketing campaign should be set in stone, and you have to be fluid enough to adapt to market changes. When one instrument doesn’t produce the desired results, be prepared to consider other digital marketing activities.
It will take a while before you start finding a solid baseline to stand on, but the process and effort required to achieve that is well worth the long-term benefits you can gain in return. As you evaluate your activities and collect more data, you will also gain a better understanding of your users and how they usually interact in the digital world.
The outcome of this process is digital marketing activities running as continuous cycles, boosting one after the other and taking your brand – and of course your products and services – out to more potential customers. The more cycles you run, the more effective it will be, and the greater the impact will become.
Getting Started
If you are just getting started with digital marketing, you are actually in a good position to integrate instruments and activities from the start. Integration tools are becoming more capable. You can automate certain things from the start. You also have the ability to focus more on the content rather than the execution.
Don’t forget to integrate data collection and analysis into the process too. This is the last piece of the puzzle. Yes, it takes time to build a better understanding of the market and the instruments you have at your fingertips, but digital marketing is the way forward, and there is no better time to get started than today.
