Topics: Marketing Toolkit, Digital Media
MSS Media, Inc. is known for creating winning marketing strategies and building award-worthy campaigns that help our clients connect effectively and efficiently with their target audiences to deliver their desired results. Over the course of more than 15 years in business, we’ve optimized thousands of campaigns. Today, our success hinges on the appropriate inclusion of creative digital media management and optimization services. Let’s take a look at what makes for a winning digital marketing strategy in 2021.
Never has digital marketing been more important than in these unprecedented times. Online, email and text marketing reach consumers exactly where they’re spending a significant portion of their time – on their smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs. Through these channels, businesses can amplify their branding efforts, extend their marketing reach and build deeper relationships with their target audience.
+ Learn how COVID-19 is affecting marketing campaigns.
But where should companies focus their digital marketing activity? The decision can seem overwhelming, as the umbrella term “digital marketing” encompasses such an enormous range of tactics and new media assets. Everything from digital advertising to a business’s website and social media channels falls under this category. Email marketing, online brochures and content marketing have their place as well. Here are a few of the primary building blocks of a modern digital marketing strategy.
Paid Digital Advertising Campaigns
It’s important that firms choose internet marketing channels that best fit their needs and are proven to deliver real results. For most companies operating in today’s market, paid digital ad campaigns are an excellent way to optimize ROI. Digital advertising campaigns can (and usually should) incorporate several different tactics. These might include paid and organic search advertising, paid display advertising, social advertising, and/or mobile advertising.
“Instead of one-way interruption, web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the right moment that a buyer needs it.”
- DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT
Text only search advertising can be paid or organic. Pay-per-click (PPC) is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It’s a way of buying visits to a company’s site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.
Search engine advertising remains one of the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine's sponsored links. These links appear when someone searches for a keyword that is related to the advertiser’s business offering. For every click sending a visitor to the advertiser’s website, the advertiser will pay the search engine a small fee.
Organic search advertising involves the creation of website content that will appear naturally in search engine results when users search for related topics. When it comes to content strategy, some of the factors that contribute to obtaining an optimal SEO ranking are creating search engine friendly URLs, site structure, domain life span, content relevance, meta tags, keyword density, and inbound links from directories and online press releases.
PPC display advertising campaigns utilize static images, GIFs, or video and are a great way to boost business. These paid online ad campaigns can re-engage users that have visited a company’s website and help build brand awareness. Social media advertising campaigns are an excellent way to generate leads and build brand awareness in its simplest form. These paid online campaigns establish loyalty and engage users.
In-app mobile targeting is a powerful type of precision advertising that uses mobile location services to reach prospects in real time when they’re near a point of interest, such as a university, store, or office. Location specific geo-targeted advertisements (or local PPC) ensures that the impressions businesses are paying for reach the audience they’re pursuing.
Building a Winning PPC Campaign
When PPC is working correctly, the per-click fee is trivial, because the visit is worth more than what the advertiser pays for it. A lot goes into building a winning PPC campaign, everything from researching and selecting the right keywords, to arranging keywords into well-organized campaigns and ad groups, to setting up PPC landing pages that are optimized for conversions.
While many factors determine how successful a PPC advertising campaign will be, businesses can achieve a lot by focusing on:
- Keyword Relevance - Crafting relevant PPC keyword lists, tight keyword groups, and proper ad text.
- Landing Page Quality - Creating optimized landing pages with persuasive, relevant content and a clear call-to-action, tailored to specific search queries.
- Quality Score - Rating high on Google for the quality and relevance of keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns. Advertisers with better quality scores get more ad clicks at lower costs.
- Creative Copy - Enticing ad copy is vital.
Today’s best digital channels for digital advertising are:
- Google Ads (for search, display, and video - YouTube)
- Bing Ads (for search and display)
- Social Media Ad Campaigns (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter)
Audio Advertising
Audio advertising has emerged as another excellent tool for businesses to add to their digital marketing strategy. While the audio streaming space is still emerging, it’s increasing in popularity each year and shows no signs of slowing down. More and more users are shifting to multimedia and audio streaming platforms every day. At last count, 144 million Americans listen to podcasts generally, and 90 million Americans listen to podcasts monthly.
By buying space on audio streaming platforms, advertisers can strategically target users who fit their desired audience profile. User profiles require information such as the individual’s gender, age, address, and music preferences. This critical demographic data serves as a way for advertisers to target potential niche audiences.
With audio advertising, marketers are also able to measure post-advertising data that is integral in evaluating the campaign. On Spotify, for instance, advertisers can measure user interaction and see if an individual listened until the very end of an ad. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly important to follow the user journey. For example, did the user visit the advertiser’s website? Did the user make a purchase? This information allows advertisers to track performance in real-time and close the proverbial advertising loop. And this information provides a more accurate calculation of Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) than many other measures.
Podcast listeners differ from other audio consumers in a few key ways. Podcasts have high engagement and retention rates with low advertising skipping rates (due to the organic way hosts incorporate advertisements into their programming). There is also a level of user dedication to podcasts—the feelings of closeness between the user and the host.
While radio listeners tend to change the channel when advertisements come on, Adweek finds that podcast listeners tend to hang on every word of the show, ads and all. And listeners are more receptive to the brands the host endorses. IAB Edison Research found that 45% of podcast listeners visit a sponsor’s web page, 42% consider a new product or service, and 37% gather more information on the product or service after hearing its advertisement via a podcast.
By incorporating audio advertising and PPC ad campaigns of all types into your digital marketing strategy this year, you stand to increase your reach and audience engagement in a way that is both meaningful and significant.
Here at MSS Media Inc, we’ve been providing Education, Government, Real Estate & Lifestyle clients with succinct, optimized, and successful marketing solutions for more than 15 years. Consider MSS Media, Inc a full-service, one-stop shop for all your Media and Public Relations needs. Your goals are our motivation. And our mission is to propel your message, further and faster, to achieve the outcomes you’re looking for. If you found this blog post helpful, please share!
