In today’s marketplace, the vast majority of consumer research, and purchasing decisions take place online rather than in a brick and mortar store location. This means that any company or brand that wishes to be successful in the modern marketplace must meet, and engage with consumers in the digital environment.
For the vast majority of small businesses, digital marketing and social media engagement falls far outside of their area of expertise, and implementing and maintaining a successful digital marketing campaign would require a significant investment of time, effort, and capital, taking away from their efforts to grow and operate their business.
A digital marketing agency is able to provide a dedicated team of professionals with the industry expertise, and insider connections needed to run a successful digital marketing campaign that helps grow and expand your customer base, while allowing you, the small business owner, to concentrate your time, and capital on operating your business.
Let’s take a look at some of the top services provided by digital marketing agencies like Dexterous Media Group, to illustrate why a digital marketing agency should be a part of your small business budget plan.
A digital marketing agency will work with you to develop a successful digital marketing strategy incorporating some, or all of the various digital marketing tools and techniques that we will discuss further later in this article.
While each of these tools could be used independently to generate some degree of marketing success, a professional digital marketing team will possess the marketing expertise to understand which tools will produce the best results for your particular business, or brand, and they will use that knowledge to create a digital marketing strategy that optimizes your marketing results.
Of course, even the best laid plans may have unexpected results. Perhaps the target audience does not respond to the social media content in the expected way, or a particular aspect of an advertisement campaign does not perform well on a specific platform. A digital marketing agency will not only create a digital marketing strategy, they will monitor and analyze the results of the strategy in order to ensure that the proper performance goals are being obtained. In the event that some part of the strategy is falling short of expectations, the team is able to quickly adjust the digital marketing strategy to ensure marketing success.
One of the first steps in any successful digital marketing strategy is understanding the nature of the market in which your particular business operates, and who, or what will be acting as your greatest competition.
A digital marketing agency will start by researching the various market factors and trends which impact your business or brand. Market research efforts may include assessing market saturation levels, growth potential, and current trends, as well as continuously monitoring and analyzing the potential effect of any outside forces, or current events which could have an impact on the market for a particular product or service.
Through ongoing competitor research, a digital marketing agency will determine the strongest competitors offering a similar product or service in the market, and carefully monitor and analyze their digital marketing efforts to discover where they are succeeding , and where they may be falling short. The research team can then use that knowledge to craft a digital marketing strategy that helps your business or brand take advantage of any weak areas in the competition’s marketing strategy thus moving your business to the front of the pack.
Market and competitor research is not a one time practice, it requires a sustained effort to ensure that your digital marketing strategy stays abreast of the latest market trends, and competitor efforts, in order to stay ahead of the curve and avoid being sidelined by any unexpected shifts in the market, or by losing a competitive edge against a similar brand, product, or service. A professional digital marketing agency will provide a dedicated team of experts who will monitor and analyze the market, and the competition and remain ready to adjust your digital marketing strategy to meet changing demands.
One of the top performing tools in any digital marketing agency arsenal is the successful creation and deployment of a sales funnel strategy. Essentially, a sales funnel strategy uses a variety of individual digital marketing tools to engage the potential customer, build a relationship, develop trust, and eventually convert the potential customer to a paying customer.
Though this may sound like a simple process, the development of a successful sales funnel strategy requires multiple layers of carefully interwoven engagement, interaction, customer relationship nurturing, and carefully applied sales techniques in order to achieve the proper results.
For example, a sales funnel strategy will generally begin by introducing the potential customer to the brand through the use of free content that provides value to the audience, but does not overtly attempt to sell them a product or service. This stage of the process is important in order to build a relationship with the target audience, and helps to establish the brand or company as a knowledgeable, and trusted resource within the industry. Once trust has been established, the sales funnel strategy will introduce the target audience to the products or services offered by the brand and use a carefully crafted marketing strategy to present the audience with the opportunity to make a purchase, schedule an appointment, or subscribe to a service at key areas as the audience engages with the valuable content provided by the company or brand.
Though often overlooked, the enjoyableness of the user experience when visiting, searching for information, or engaging with content on your company website plays a significant role in the likelihood that a potential customer will remain on the website long enough to make a purchase, or subscribe to a service, whether they will return to make a repeat purchase, and whether they will recommend your products or services to others.
A digital marketing agency will rely on a team of website designers, and user interface (UI) experts to optimize your company website to ensure that visitors to your website are able to easily navigate through the content on your website to locate the information, products, or services that they need, and that every aspect of your website is functioning perfectly to ensure a high quality user experience to every visitor.
A digital marketing agency will optimize the overall user experience by ensuring that all of the images and graphics used throughout your website are displaying properly, that all website pages are loading quickly, that navigation menus are well organized and easy to locate, and that any interactive features are functioning as intended. The team will also take the time to ensure that website visitors receive the same high quality user experience regardless of whether they are visiting your company website from a personal computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
When you think of the major iconic brands in any industry, one of the first things that comes to mind for each brand will often be the company logo, mascot, and the distinctive colors and designs used throughout the company’s advertisements. These images, colors, and designs are so strongly associated with the companies that use them that most consumers are able to easily identify the particular brand or company by seeing nothing more than the familiar shape, logo, or mascot. This is the power of brand marketing.
Developing this level of strong brand recognition requires more than the creation of a catchy slogan, a flashy logo, or an adorable mascot. A successful brand marketing strategy will build brand recognition by ensuring that every social media account, every advertising campaign, and every piece of content contains your company branding in order to build your brand identity across multiple media platforms. This multi-layered approach helps build a strong brand identity and builds consumer trust by allowing users to instantly identify the content, media, and posts they encounter as coming from your company or brand.
Building a strong brand identity requires consistency, and time. A digital marketing agency has the knowledge and resources to ensure that every piece of your digital marketing strategy clearly reflects your company and brand.
A digital marketing agency is able to employ an interconnected network of marketing tools that help to automate portions of the marketing and sales process, freeing up your staff to focus on running your business, and allowing you to concentrate your live customer service efforts where they are needed most.
Digital marketing automation efforts can be set up to automatically generate a welcome or follow up email after a potential customer has visited and interacted with the company via a social media post, or through the company website. Automation can also help guide consumers through the products and services offered on the website, and answer any basic questions they may have through the use of automated chat responses.
By automating many steps of the customer support, marketing, and sales process a digital marketing agency is able to help your company operate more efficiently, provide quicker, and more responsive customer service, and cut costs by freeing up staff to use their talents in the performance of higher level tasks.
Informative, useful, entertaining, and well crafted content that provides a high value to the audience is critical to the success of any digital marketing strategy. Today’s consumer expects to be entertained by, learn from, and engage with the companies and brands that they do business with on a regular basis.
That means that in order to compete in today’s marketplace most companies need to employ a team of content creators who are able to produce unique, and high quality written material, videos, and social media posts on an ongoing basis. Needless to say, finding and maintaining this type of talent is not easy, and comes with a significant cost.
This is one area where a digital marketing agency really shines. A digital marketing agency will have a dedicated team of content creators from writers, to social media experts, to animators, and videographers on staff who specialize in creating or curating the high quality, high value content that your company needs to stand out in today’s marketplace.
Digital marketing efforts work best when they contain multiple layers of different digital marketing techniques and tools deployed simultaneously across several different platforms to reach all segments of the target audience. It is this coordinated effort that makes up a successful digital marketing campaign.
A digital marketing agency will build a successful digital marketing campaign by deploying a variety of marketing tools, along with targeted content, and consumer engagement efforts across a range of carefully selected platforms to reach all of the different segments of a company's target audience.
An effective digital marketing campaign may include targeted banner advertisements on select platforms, influencer endorsements on social media sites, video content on several video sharing websites, and informative content published on the company’s own website, or a third party information resource provider. By deploying all of these various digital marketing tools in one coordinated digital marketing campaign the digital marketing agency is able to reach out and engage with all members of the target audience on the platforms where they are most likely to be receptive to learning more about, and interacting with your company or brand.
As we discussed briefly in the previous section, part of building and deploying a successful digital marketing campaign is engaging with the various members of the target audience in a way that is meaningful to them.
At Dexterous Media Group, we use a digital marketing tool called a marketing persona to create targeted digital marketing campaigns that speak to the target audience in a language that they understand, and help to build the relationship between the company, or brand and the consumer.
Marketing personas are created by using market and consumer research to determine the primary and secondary audience that is most likely to find value in the products or services provided by your company or brand, and then creating content and advertising materials that are specifically tailored to speak to each unique segment of the targeted audience.
For example, imagine that your company provides a service that is specifically geared towards teens. Because teens are your primary target audience, your digital marketing agency should create content, and social media engagement that is tailored to the style and format of the various social media, and content sharing platforms where teens are most likely to congregate. The secondary target audience for your company’s products or services would be the parents, caregivers, teachers, and other adults who interact with teens on a regular basis and would be most likely to influence the purchasing choices of the teens.
A digital marketing agency would create a unique marketing persona which tailors your digital marketing materials to match the style, and format of the content sharing platforms, and social media sites where the members of the secondary target audience are likely to be found as well.
Through the crafting of unique marketing personas for each specific member group of the targeted audience the digital marketing agency is able to better help your company or brand engage, and build trust with each niche segment of the targeted audience.
A digital marketing agency will provide in-depth industry knowledge, and a cultivated network of industry insiders, and social media influencers who are able to present your company or brand to their audience of followers.
A digital marketing agency leverages this industry knowledge, and network connections through the use of strategic paid media advertisements and endorsements. Once the primary and secondary targeted audiences for your particular products and services have been identified, the digital marketing agency will be able to place paid media marketing and endorsement requests with a variety of social media influencers, media personalities, and third party resource outlets in order to present your company’s products or services to a broader audience, through the use of word of mouth advertising and recommendations.
It can take time to develop a strong customer relationship, and consumers often engage with digital marketing content, or visit a company website many times before making their first purchase, or subscribing to services. Lead nurturing helps to ensure that visitors who have shown an interest in your company’s products or services are encouraged to return to your company website to make a purchase.
A digital marketing agency will employ a number of automated tools which track consumer engagement with the company’s digital marketing campaign, brand content, and the company website, and then use that information to present targeted advertisements, and generate friendly follow up reminders that are personalized, and designed to encourage the consumer to return to the company website, or visit the company’s physical location to finalize their purchase, or subscribe to services.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical digital marketing tool that determines whether your website design, and digital marketing efforts are able to be seen by all members of your targeted audience.
The internet is a broad and complicated place, and the content that is seen by the average internet user is carefully curated by various algorithms which help to select the most high value content that is most likely to satisfy the needs, and desires of the specific internet user.
These algorithms play an even more significant role when it comes to the search engines which consumers use to search for solutions to problems, or to learn more about the particular products or services they need.
When a consumer uses a search engine to seek information about a particular subject the search engine will use a complicated algorithm to seek out the websites, company’s, brands, and other resources that provide the most high-quality, high-value information on that particular topic.
SEO is the process of ensuring that your company or brand website, and content is able to rank well with the top search engine algorithms and earn a coveted spot on the first page of search results displayed to a user when they search for information on a specific topic. A digital marketing agency will use SEO techniques to ensure that your content makes use of the keywords and phrases which are most likely to be used by consumers seeking information about topics related to your company or brand, and that your website and media meet the high quality standards that the search engine algorithms look for when determining which resources to feature on the first page of search results returned to the internet user.
These are just a few of the many services provided by Dexterous Media Group. Visit us on the web, or give us a call today to learn more about the ways that our team of digital marketing professionals can help you grow and expand your small business. We are here to help!
