Begin Your Digital Marketing Campaign with these Strategies

Online selling in the Philippines thrived during the pandemic, and many entrepreneurs continue their businesses post-pandemic. Local, homemade, and bespoke items have been introduced in the market and digital marketing has undoubtedly played a huge part to amplify these products

Here are some battle-tested strategies to consider:

Start with your own connections

Jumpstart your marketing initiative with family and friends plus your own Facebook connections. Word of mouth and organic (not paid) honest review can help create initial buzz for your business. Not everyone will buy at once but other than thinking of the immediate “purchase”, we can also consider “brand awareness” at this stage; people will have you on mind the moment they wish to hit the buying button.

Create social media pages

Other than your personal profile, try creating a social media page to stretch your product reach. Although the common challenge in managing a fanpage is consistency. Some people post the first week but tend to forget the task later on. On occasion, you may also run a targeted send message, post engagement, and page like advertisements. FB and IG ads are affordable promotion to explore. Depends on the targeting and industry, you can get 10 to 30+ inquiries for Php1,000. Create valuable content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and related memes.

Join local online groups and communities

There are tons of “online buyers and sellers” communities with the goal of helping each other get the best deal and achieve a win-win scenario. Members who are inquiring have already passed your awareness campaign and have walk into the possibility of purchase so make sure to politely answer all relevant inquiries. 

Explore FB Marketplace

There are many sellers making use of this platform to reach the local market for free. Check for possible conversions since traffic here already signals their interest to buy.

Tap Online Influencers

If you have friends or colleagues who are influencers, send them your sample product and request them to feature it on their page or give a review. They will not always ask for payment as many would gladly do the endorsement for free especially if they genuinely enjoy the item. Collaborate with influencers in your industry to promote your product. Influencers can provide authentic reviews and reach a larger audience that trusts their recommendations.

Get a Website

If there is a budget for a website then do so. It may not come as a priority for small entrepreneurs but this is beneficial if you see your business to continue in the long run. Website becomes your online portfolio and ideal tool to strengthen online presence with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) included in your campaign strategy. Additional must-have for your website: mobile-friendly, easy to navigate, fast-loading, forms to fill are working, and equipped with clear calls to action (CTAs).

Push Email Marketing

Make use of your current database. Build and maintain an email list of interested customers. Send them regular newsletters with updates, offers, and valuable content. Personalize your emails to increase engagement and conversion rates. I would recommend a once-a-month email blast to keep you top of mind, but not more than two emails sent in one week, as this could be seen as annoying and eventually cause your emails to be marked as spam.

Monitor and Analyze Your Insights

Use analytics tools to track the performance of your marketing campaigns. Monitor key metrics such as traffic, conversion rates, engagement, and ROI. Regularly analyzing these metrics helps you understand what’s working and where improvements are needed.

Digital marketing is an ever-evolving field. Stay updated with the latest trends and technologies to keep your strategies relevant and effective. Build trust with your target market along with an excellent product so you can stand out from the competition.

Onboarding Stages with a New Client in Digital Marketing

When starting to onboard with a client, it is a must that each member of the team understands the purpose of the digital marketing project.

Everyone needs to have a clear grasp of the goals, along with their respective roles, to achieve success. No one should be left in the dark. Here are five stages on how to smoothly establish momentum when working with a new team.

Review the online assets – Find out what needs to be improved on their website, social media, and other existing digital footprint. Identify what initiative is working and how it can be better. Draft your initial recommendation.

Conduct a kick-off meeting – It is necessary to see the point-of-view of the client and his staff. Align the expectations. As you walk them with your analysis regarding their online presence, try to also listen and dive into their thoughts and business experiences. Understand how they define their achievements and how they manage the challenges. Sift through the pain points. Know who’s doing what. Ask questions.

Present the strategy plan – Be more creative, show more visuals, and lay down the numbers on your deck. Explain the metrics and why it is important. How onpage optimization can help increase website inquiry? Why boosting a post is necessary to get more private messages?  Welcome the inputs and tweak the campaign as you see fit.

Create a realistic timeline – Don’t over promise or commit to rank them on search engines in less than a month. Knowing the schedule will guide each one to their deliverables and will also help them be more committed to it. Assign an owner/co-owner of every task. Build on trust.

Depending on the size of the business, you might need to allot additional meeting time per department so you can discuss their assignment in detail. Managing a recruitment agency, for example, I met with the team heads first then the associates per practice areas. It is much easier to get the interest and contribution of the staff when the head has given an approval since some activity may require extra office time. 

Writing a blog and pushing their expertise as a resource person equally gives the company and the staff online credibility but of course, quality writing takes a while and allotting extra hours from this task may require approval from the boss. Publishing articles is also ideal for SEO and content marketing campaigns.

Implement the strategy and get everyone moving – results do not happen overnight, there will be hiccups on the process but as long your action is anchored to the plan and timeline then you will remain on track! Having a supportive team means a lot too and a huge factor to a successful campaign—more of this from my last month’s blog.

It is always exciting to begin a new project and keeping the fire has to be strongly maintained.

What Hinders the Success of a Digital Marketing Team?

Digital marketing plan is like a blueprint of your online campaign. It is created so the team can maintain direction, know each other’s role, and keep the goal. It includes a timeline so we know if we are on track and if the identified activities are implemented properly. When things get a little off, you can always go back to the plan and direct it back to the right path.

Reality: No matter how smooth we aim for it to go, there will surely be drawbacks; at most time it is fixable especially if you are working with a Team eager to troubleshoot and repair without a fuzz.  (Thankful that I mostly work with a supportive batch!) But we cannot avoid a scenario that can signal real trouble! Major commotion in a project does not only come from software glitch or malfunctioning platform… it is rather the behavior of the people we are working with that can cause a real burnout. Here are some signs that a plan would likely not succeed unless each one sorts the issue as soon as possible.

• Indecisiveness – Cannot keep an eye on one objective and changing directions weekly, even daily. No focus.

The company might have too many overall goals but the Team must identify what to prioritize under the digital marketing scope and given the budget. If you are a new company, awareness must be the main step. Pin the most important and realistic approach. It is not right to build a campaign as you please or instantly imitate what the competitors are doing. All the efforts should be anchored by what you aim to achieve along with proper metrics.

Quick fix: Stick to the plan and don’t be swayed easily.

• Not communicating – Making abrupt changes without advising the team.

Let’s not forget that we are a “team”, regardless of size. Everyone has to move in sync with the known plan and adjustments must be made in alignment with those involved. It is not ideal to alter the content of your homepage without signaling your Web and SEO Team. They made codes and onpage optimization that can affect, worse omit, the company’s SEO approach.

Quick fix: Reach out and be open to the Team. Discuss new ideas without hesitations.

• Not listening – sometimes you wonder why the owner hired a digital marketing team if he will apply his own process and deviate from the plan he took part to create. Trust the expertise of each team member. Listen to their recommendations. Ask questions. Share your thoughts.

Quick fix: Listen to expert.

• Not telling the truth – lay down the cards and let the team know the real standing of the company so everyone can function accordingly.

If you are launching an app and you are aware of the glitch, then tell it to the team. Don’t go around the bush and make sure to present the real hurdles  so they would know how to tackle the situation. If you aim to immediately release the next version in three months then the team must know the schedule.

Quick fix: No sugar coating.

• Rushing – not following the timeline. Digital marketing is not magic, you have to work and wait and analyze and tweak the strategy and obviously, it can’t be done in a snap. You have given the list of keywords last week and you wish to rank today, wake up.

Quick fix: Respect the timeline.

Another red signal— those procrastinating the tasks and functioning in pessimistic mood. The quick fix is to do it according to timeline and maintain positive attitude. If you don’t get “send message” to your Facebook campaign, no need to be harsh. Review the targeting and creative strategy, adjust according to the data gathered.

We cannot be in control of algorithm changes, privacy restrictions affecting results of reporting, or even faulty dashboard update but we can always manage on how we deal with the challenges on and off line. Make real goals. Keep the cool. Stay committed. Move on. Learn. Work happy.

The Impact of Digital Marketing on Your Business

What validates the real success of a digital marketing campaign? Your online marketing consultant gave you an update that your top keywords are now on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) position #1 and #2 and that your Facebook advertisement got 30 messages for a small budget of Php1000. This is good news and your Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is achieved!

Yes, that phase of work is well done but that’s not the end of the task; you need to align these milestones to your business goals.

Being number #1 on SERP means a lot for your SEO team! Months of optimizing your website and sifting through the net for quality backlinks have paid off!  Google and other search engines crawled your page and found it relevant to be ranked as #1 among hundred of sites vying for the same keywords. This will result to more organic visits and you can see the data as it happens in real-time for free through Google Analytics. More people will go to you—check your contents, read your company information, and take action (call, request a demo, subscribe to your newsletter, and/or send a message). You should have some promising leads!

What if you have more visits but got higher bounce rate (it is the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave without going to other pages)? Your Digital Marketing team can say we are #1 on SERP but what you must ask next is, how does it improve our business?

If you are #1 on SERP with keywords not being used by your target audience and if you are getting a lot of visits but no one is doing your desired action then you are not maximizing the effort.

Same goes to your Facebook campaign. Receiving an increase number of “quality” messages must be your advertising goal. What is 30 inquiries if you did not convert or if they are only spammy? You should drive more leads then translate it to higher sales and not more messages with no conversion.

Online marketing and sales department must work hand-in-hand to reach the business goals. It is like a choreographed dance and every step must be synced with each other.

How do you plan to execute your online marketing campaign? What signals its effectivity in relation to your company’s target? Let’s talk.