A great way to understand how your digital strategy should work is to think of your website as a big fishing boat. All of the digital marketing options available are nets that you put out to catch the fish (users/customers). This certainly isn't your typical fishing trip though, because these fish have agency. They need to choose to swim into your net, and then hop onto your ship, and they can leave at any time. So you've got to entice them on board and keep them happy. If you throw out a ton of nets, but the site doesn't convert (this is called your bounce rate), then the nets are useless. If they come aboard, but then jump ship later, this means your lead nurturing and engagement is lacking. Here Are The “Nets” a Digital Marketer Throws Out:
- Frequent & engaging posts on social media
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pillar and Cluster keyword strategy
- Technical content structuring (making sure Google bots get the info they want)
- Blogging and site content that fits both strategies above
- Page linking strategy (builds credibility with search engines)
- Media, news, influencers & partnerships
- Social media ads
- Traditional advertising
How to Get Them On The Ship:- Your website’s messaging matches their goals, intentions, or the problem they have, that they’re hoping you can solve
- A simple user experience. People spend 99.99% of their time on other people’s websites, so your site needs to match their expectations. This means your site should have fast page load speeds, simple navigation, buttons located where they expect them to be, and the information they want where they expect it.
- Easy to use across different devices (desktop, tablet & mobile)
- They perceive value in jumping on board
- They trust that you're not going to annoy them or misuse their data
Keeping Them Happy and In Your Ship:- Engaging emails that provide value
- New offerings, content, posts, and products
- Great support and customer service
Are They Really Happy? There will always be some level of attrition, so creating metrics and regularly reviewing how it went is important. Are The Nets You Throw Out Working?- Social media posts or ads- Metrics to watch include their engagement (likes and shares) and their click-through rate to your site. You can view these reports on each platform that you’re using.
- SEO- Tools like Google Analytics and performing frequent SEO website audits aid you in understanding what your bounce rate is, and if any issues are reducing it.
Are They Getting On Board?- Both your bounce rate and conversion rates are important to understand how this is going. These can be found on social platforms you’re using and in Google Analytics. A Facebook pixel can help understand this as well.
Are They Engaged?- How much social engagement with your brand are your users up to?
- When you send out emails, do you get a lot of unsubscribes or click-through rates?
- The frequency they view the website and the duration of time they spend there
- Do they purchase your product or service?
The first step of getting your digital marketing strategy on track is to get your ship (website) in order. You need to make sure that when a big influx of people come your way, that you're ready to bring them on board. Integrating a good customer relationship manager (CRM) with your site can help a lot with this, so that you can keep track of who’s signed up, what their subscription preferences are, and which of your products or services they might be interested in. Automating your lead nurturing strategy allows people who have the highest interest to bubble up to the top. You also want to make sure that if your “net” does bring them to your ship, that they’re able to connect what they find on your website with the problem they have, and are hoping you will solve. This means organizing your content in a compelling way that allows them to browse for the answer, and then dig deep into your solution. This should generally be followed with a Call to Action (subscribe, buy now, schedule an appointment, etc.). Your site should be designed with an emphasis on site speed, UX/UI design, and user conversion is also highly recommended. Social Strategy- Much of this can be done on your own for free, including setting up accounts on the platforms where you know your users are. Regardless of the platform, your content strategy should be consistent and in line with your branding, so that when they click to learn more or sign up, they know they’re in the right place. Your technical SEO is all about ensuring your content is optimized for Google's bots to crawl your site and then list your site when people are looking for a solution. We love using Yoast, which is a WordPress plugin that will analyze your content across the site, and help with the more technical aspects like meta-descriptions and H1, H2 headers. A solid content strategy is a bit of a longer-term strategy, focusing on understanding what people are searching for, analyzing the competition for those search terms, and then selecting keywords that fit your business and are realistic for you to invest in ranking for. We recommend using the Pillar and Cluster keyword and keyword phrase strategy. Once you’ve got these, your blogging strategy (which drives engagement across social platforms and increases the keywords Google uses) can help to drive new traffic to your site. Create your content once and use it everywhere. Content generation is a lot of work. Don’t be afraid to use it everywhere, and reuse it whenever it’s relevant. Videos can be chopped up, speeches transcribed, images highlighted and shared across platforms, and so on. Get creative! Page linking builds your credibility with Google. It’s great to link to other people’s sites, but even better when other sites link to yours. Google increases the reputation of your site when this happens frequently and will send more traffic your way. News articles about your business, products, services or news should always link back to your website. Sharing your blog articles with other sites or with bloggers, who agree to link back to your site is another way to improve your page linking strategy. Build the structure, create the plan, automate everything you can, and then just work the plan. Set aside time daily, weekly or monthly (depending on your goals) to create your content, connect with your audience, nurture your users and leads and provide value. If logistics are in the way, find the right tools and automations to get past them. Be authentic, share your knowledge and connect human to human. 
