6 Ways to Improve Your Digital Marketing Skills

As the world adapts to the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, it’s likely the ways in which we communicate and operate as businesses will remain digital for a while. So, for the sake of your enterprise’s longevity, it’s important to master your digital marketing skills. Here we explore six ways to bring yourself up to speed.

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Many of us are struggling to adjust to the virtual ways of doing things and currently lack the skills to use social media marketing to our advantage. But there are countless new and innovative strategies that go far beyond the traditional Facebook and Twitter focus, which you can incorporate to conquer digital marketing and reach your ideal customer. Even while being under lockdown and operating remotely, you can use these techniques to grow your business.

Let’s take a look at some of the different tools you can use to take your business to new heights in these unprecedented times.

1. Use free online courses

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If you’re a complete newbie to digital marketing, why not take some time to complete some online courses? There are so many to choose from, with many being free or discounted at the moment. There’s a fantastic programme run by Google Digital Garage that teaches you the essentials of digital marketing to help grow your business. The course, which is accredited by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe and Open University, has 26 interesting modules bursting with real-world examples and practical exercises.

2. Take advantage of handy apps

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Apps are transforming how we live our lives on a daily basis. Whether it’s teaching us mindfulness techniques in this difficult situation or helping us stay organised, it really does feel like there is an app for everything. So why not use mobile technology to help market your business and reach your ideal customer? These are two of the digital media marketing apps helping business owners across the globe at the moment:

1. Buffer. This is a popular social scheduling app that organises updates to numerous accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Crucially, it will provide you with statistics about how each post performed. You can use this information to adapt your future posts.
2. REP. If you’re already thinking about working with influencers (if not, it’s worth looking into), this app can prove invaluable. Advertising itself as a ‘marketplace where brands and influencers can connect and collaborate’, you can use its tools to find the right influencers for your brand and send payments directly through the app.

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>> Read more:

• How to Choose the Right Digital and Social Media Channels to Promote Your Franchise Business
• Developing an effective franchise marketing plan
• 10 Tips for Building Truly Effective Social Media Marketing Campaigns
• Franchising 101: 8 Essential Marketing Strategies for Promoting Your Business

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3. Become a content writing pro

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People are always searching the web for helpful content, but they are becoming tired of reading the same basic how-to they’ve seen thousands of times before. So, to stand out from the competition and engage your new and existing customers, it’s important to make sure you:

1. Analyse your competition. Have a look at the content your competitors are sharing, in particular posts getting strong customer interaction and going viral. This way, you can grasp what your ideal customer enjoys reading and adapt it to suit your own business objectives.
2. Keep your audience in mind at all times. To enrich the quality of your content, try imagining writing for one person from your target audience. What will they be interested in knowing? How would they like to be addressed?
3. Upload content often and at similar times. It’s best practice to write, at the very least, once a week, and in a range of different formats, for example, an interesting short story, informative press release or captivating infographic.

A lot of content is still very weak. Beat your competitors by going deeper into each topic. Before you publish, challenge yourself to answer one more related question, add another example, include a statistic or image or contributor quote. Going bigger correlates with doing better, according to the latest blogging statistics. – Andy Cresodina, Co-Founder and CMO at Orbit Media Studios

4. Utilise SEO and SEM effectively

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It’s crucial to have at least a basic understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO) to make your stamp in the digital marketing world. Optimising all of your content is key to any successful social media marketing campaign. It helps makes your website more visible, which generates more traffic and creates more opportunites to build your customer base.

Incorporating keywords is one of the most common SEO techniques. But beyond that you can also use content, off-page SEO (backlink building from external sites that prove your value) and local SEO (e.g. location-specific website pages) to increase the quality and quantity of website traffic and engage your audience.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process of using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages. These are often a very cost-effective way to increase the visibility of your brand.

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>> Read more:

• What is the Marketing Fee and Why is it Necessary?
• Franchising 101: 6 Tips for Building Customer Loyalty Through Marketing

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5. Use videos

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With research suggesting that 85 percent of customers are more likely to buy a product after seeing it in a video, it’s not surprising that 68 percent of the top retailers are using video as part of their digital marketing strategy (Martech). Make sure that you have a solid purpose for your video before you start creating it. It could be an interview, product review or live video for example.

Deliver a great omnichannel experience. Consumers are going to interact with your brand in any number of digital spaces, and you’re doing yourself and your brand a disservice if they aren’t aligned. The visual assets and messaging for your marketing campaigns should tell a cohesive story across all channels – Alexa Nizam, Content Strategist at Lemonlight.

Embrace digital marketing in a new way today

Hopefully you now have a better idea of some of the ways you can improve your digital marketing skills and develop a digital marketing strategy that truly benefits your business. You might also be interested in our eight outside-the-box marketing ideas to grow your business and some examples of Point Franchise businesses using digital marketing.