“Digital Marketing Strategy for Business Growth: Drive More Leads and Sales in 2020”

Author: Corey Frankosky Owner of Surfside PPC Table of Contents:

1 – My Top 10 Digital Marketing Tips

2 – Getting Started with Your Online Business Marketing Strategy

3 – Create Content and Optimization

4 – and Audience Building

5 – Paid Advertising to Drive Leads and/or Sales

1 – 10 Keys to Growing Your Business with Digital Marketing:

Businesses with a great online presence will build an email audience, build a social media audience, and build a website audience with targeted content. Content should be created to drive potential customers to your website through organic search and through the online channels where you have built your audiences. Relevant and consistent website traffic turns into revenue for your business. The tips below will help you get started and give you some focus areas.

1. Keyword Research allows you to find the search terms that your customers are typing in to find your products and services. By optimizing your website and your content for popular keywords, you can drive new customers directly from search engines. 2. Creating Content every single day will help you gain more traffic and grow your audience. Content includes blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, documents, checklists, and guides. 3. SEO should be your focus from day one, even before running paid advertising. Organic search traffic drives leads, sales, and ultimately revenue. With SEO, you want to create high-quality content and essentially create resources that will be helpful for your website visitors. 4. and your email list will help you build an audience that is interested in the content you have created. 5. Lead Magnets like this eBook, free videos, free courses, free checklists, and free templates will incentivize potential customers to join your email list. 6. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) represent your goals, and you should have 1 main KPI like sales or leads. Your ultimate goal is to maximize your KPI each month. You may have secondary KPIs, but there should be a primary KPI you optimize for. 7. Website Analytics should be set-up so you can monitor your website traffic, monitor your KPIs, and understand where your most valuable traffic is coming from. 8. can help a business build a loyal audience. In order to successfully grow your social channels, you will need to create social content along with your website content. 9. Video and Visual Media is vital to go along with your blog posts. Written content is mandatory, and you can take it a step further by incorporating video, images, and infographics. 10. Paid Advertising is a great strategy when you begin to grow your email audience, grow your social media audience, and grow your organic search traffic. Paid advertising will help your business gain new customers that you would otherwise not reach.

2 – Getting Started with Your Online Business Marketing Strategy:

In the getting started portion, we cover some bare minimum requirements for online marketing success. At a minimum, you need some of the things below so you can promote your business. Again, our free guide will be helpful whether you are running a small blog, large e-commerce store, or a local small business.

Responsive Website and Mobile App (If applicable):

You absolutely need to have a website for your business and an accompanying mobile app if applicable. You don’t need a mobile application but if you don’t have a website then it will be more difficult to build long-term success. You can quickly and easily create a responsive website using a hosting company like Bluehost and a platform like WordPress.

Online Blog and Online Store (If applicable):

In order to improve your website and/or mobile app, you want a blog with useful content and an online store if applicable. Obviously, if you run an e-commerce website, you will want a website with a blog and a store. In addition, you will want an accompanying mobile app to go along with your website. If you run a Marketing Agency, you will want a website with a blog related to your Marketing specialty.

You can create an online store using a platform like Shopify.

Google Analytics:

We love using Google Analytics on our websites and mobile apps so we can learn exactly what is happening on our website. Google Analytics will give you real-time visitor data, audience information, acquisition data, and conversion tracking. You can learn about your website visitors, who they are, where they are from, and what their interests are. By using Google Analytics data to your advantage, you can grow your audience faster and improve the User Experience on your website.

Google Search Console:

Google Search Console aka Google Webmaster Tools is a free SEO tool that will allow you to monitor your website in the Google Search results. As you create a strategy to grow your organic traffic, the Google Search Console can be a great resource.

Social Media Marketing:

Social Media Marketing allows you to build an audience where you can share your content and connect with potential customers. The most popular social media websites are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, and LinkedIn. You don’t need a huge presence on every single one of these websites, you just need to put a focus on 2-5 channels. For example, we focus most on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn for Surfside PPC, but we know there are more opportunities on Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit. For one of our e-commerce clients, we have a huge focus on Instagram and Pinterest in order to drive sales.

Email Newsletter:

It is so easy to make an email newsletter through a website like MailChimp. You can manage your email list and send out periodic updates. If you have a blog, an online store, and a social media presence, you can send out updates to everyone who joins your newsletter. In order to get people to sign-up to your email list, you can give away something for free like an eBook, video series, case study, or enter people for a monthly giveaway.

Search Engine Optimization:

You will need to make sure your website, mobile app, YouTube channel, or other venture is optimized for search engines. You want your content to show up in search results when people are searching for it. The main thing about SEO is you need to understand the basics of targeting keywords and optimizing your content. Once you do that, you can get the full value out of your content.

3 - Creating Content & Search Engine Optimization:

I want you to think of the people and websites you follow online. Why do you follow the people you do on social media? Why do you visit the websites you visit? Why do you listen to the podcasts you listen to? The answer to these questions usually boils down to content. The most successful blogs, YouTube channels, and podcasts are successful because they consistently post great content that appeals to their audience. Keep that in mind as you build content for your business.

Search Engines & Search Engine Optimization:

When you do keyword research and create content around your top keywords, you want to focus on driving more traffic from search engines like Google. If you can drive thousands of people to your website by creating content and optimizing your website, you can turn those website visitors into prospects and customers.

Blog Articles:

If you focused on writing a useful and relevant blog article every 2-3 days, you will grow an audience. It does not matter if you write about virtual reality, fantasy football, TV shows, or investing, you just need to have consistency. The top bloggers and the top blogs have been posting content for years. You do not need to try to catch up to them, you just need to find your niche with your blog content. The ultimate key is to come up with a writing and publishing schedule so people can follow you easily.

Videos:

If you follow me, you know that I post videos regularly to YouTube. My videos are all based around PPC Advertising, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and . In addition, my videos are usually tutorials and educational. While the video format may change, the key I have found is to put out videos that people want the most. If I can research keywords and listen to my audience, I can keep creating video tutorial content for years to come based around PPC Advertising channels and more.

Podcasts:

Podcasts need to be consistent and focused on your industry. A great podcast can increase traffic to your website, improve your content, and grow your audience.

Books and eBooks:

There are plenty of scenarios where writing books or giving away free eBooks makes sense for a business. If you are selling investing management services, you might want to write helpful published books, write Kindle books, and write free eBooks to give away. Books have long been used to not only help build a brand, but also to increase business revenue.

Case Studies:

If I put out a Case Study saying “ROI Results From 500 E-Commerce Websites Using PPC Advertising” then I’d imagine e-commerce website owners would have a lot of interest. If I put out a Case Study saying “ROI Results Compared for Facebook Ads and Pinterest Ads” then I’d imagine plenty of website and business owners would have a lot of interest. Case studies can be time consuming, but ultimately you must do research to give useful information to people. You can also sell your products or services by showing Case Studies that will make people want to buy from you.

Online Products:

If you run an e-commerce store, or create info products through platforms like Clickbank, or if you create and sell your own crafts online, you can easily use them as content for promotion. Write blog articles to create product reviews, write long product descriptions, create videos to show how to use the product, work with other business owners to have them promote your product.

Photos and Infographics:

Photos and infographics can both be used to promote your business. Infographics can be used by fitness companies to show the best workouts, by marketing companies to show benefits of certain platforms, or by nutritional companies to show the best foods to eat. Photos are tremendous content that can be shared on social media and used to sell your products or services. A simple photo might make someone want to try your recipe and eventually buy your recipe book.

4 - Content Marketing and Audience Building:

Social Media Posting:

You need to put a strong focus on growing your social media audiences with your content. The better the content you produce, the easier it will be to increase your social media presence. You can use a tool like HootSuite to schedule social media posts. The most important thing is to come up with a schedule and publish useful content so people share it. One of the best ways to promote your content is to have a large audience on social media you can share it to.

Email Newsletter:

In addition to your social media audiences, your email newsletter is great for people who want your content. People who sign-up for your email list want initial access to your content and you can share it to them right away. You can give something away like an eBook or Video Series to get people to sign-up to your email list. Otherwise, if you have great content that you post consistently, people will follow you naturally.

Partnerships:

One of the ways to increase your audience is to work with similar businesses, bloggers, and influencers. You can create partnerships where you share each other’s content, where you link to each other’s related content, or where you each promote each other to your audience. If you have two investing bloggers with large social media and email audiences, they can easily work together to grow their audience and reach new people.

Guest Blogging/Podcasting:

Guest blogging has been useful for about a decade now. The idea is simple: You produce great content for a related website and link back to your website. If you can engage people with your content, they will go out of their way to follow your website and your social media pages. In addition to guest blogging, you can do interviews on podcasts or appearances to improve your brand name. I have learned about some of my favorite marketers and entrepreneurs through podcasts.

Interviews:

You can do written, audio, or video interviews. Interviews help spread the word about your brand, your products, and your services. In addition, they can help you earn backlinks to your website. 5 - Paid Advertising:

Google Ads:

Google Ads has been one of the best advertising platforms, if not the very best platform, for the better part of about 15 years. People have always gone to Google to find the information they are looking for. You can target keywords that are valuable to your business and drive new customers. In addition, you can run Google Display ads through Google Ads targeting the Google Display Network, which reaches about 90% of the entire internet.

Microsoft Advertising:

Microsoft Advertising is very similar to Google Ads except your ads run on Bing and Yahoo instead of Google. You can run identical campaigns in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads targeting the same exact keywords, running the same exact ads, and driving traffic to the same landing pages. Microsoft Ads is a great PPC Advertising channel that not enough people take advantage of.

Facebook Ads:

Facebook ads had a great window from 2013-2015 before the competition came, but it is still a tremendous ad platform. You will struggle to find better targeting options and campaign advertising options to reach your goals. We have seen great success with Facebook ads to this day so you want to keep Facebook advertising run year-round.

Pinterest Ads:

Pinterest ads are not used enough by people and they work great if you are trying to appeal to people interested in crafts, recipes, DIY, home and garden, health, and more. You can also run business related ads because more and more people are using Pinterest in a wide variety of niche markets.

Instagram Ads:

Instagram is another social channel where you can continue run social ads. You have different advertising options in addition to all of the incredible Facebook ad targeting. Instagram ads are a great way to reach your audience, increase video views, promote content, and drive sales.

YouTube Ads:

YouTube ads can work for any marketing objective. Do you have a new product or service you want to promote? Do you want to drive leads to your business? Do you want to promote your software product? Regardless of your product or service, a targeted YouTube advertising campaign can certainly drive results for your business.

LinkedIn Ads:

Last but not least, LinkedIn Ads give you access to business professionals and people looking to make professional connections. You can run your ad to marketing professionals and promote your business, your products, and your services.