10 Ideas To Run A Successful Digital Marketing Even In A Regulated Industry

In an increasing digital, mobile, interconnected and fast moving world, running marketing activities as usual is no longer an option, even in the most traditional businesses. The rise of digital platforms and the changing demographics with the new generations X and Z are disrupting all the sectors of economy. What worked in the past no longer works today. Being able to adapt to the changing habits of consumers with Digital marketing enables organisations to track in real time what’s working or not and adjust faster.

Here are 10 ideas easy to implement to take advantage of this new environment:

1.     Know your objectives  

What do you want to achieve in the next 12 months? More awareness of your brand? More leads? More revenues? Increased retention?

Let say you want to increase your turnover by 50% in the next 12 months, which is £100,000 and the average spend of your client is £2000, that means you have 100,000/2000 = 50 clients for the year.

What if you have clients who can spend £5000 with you? That means 100,000/5000 = 20 clients.

Now your goal is to find only 20 clients instead of 50. But what needs to happen for you to be able to attract the 3k clients’ vs the 2k ones? What do they need see to work with you? Know that you exist, that means being visible.

2.     Who is your ideal client?

They ones who buy from you without asking 1000 questions and you enjoy working with. The ones you can produce results to faster. Be clear about your desired clients, understand their needs, what they are trying to achieve. The deeper you know what they are looking to achieve, the better

3.     Which problem are you solving for them…

Renault-Nissan is no longer a car manufacturer but in mobility business, led by the visionary Carlos Ghosn. Being a trusted adviser to your clients means you are focused on their needs and what the client is trying to achieve, not what you have to sell.

4.     How visible and attractive are you to them?

This is your positioning. Are you the thought leader your clients expect to see? Are you visible where the client is, ie on the right social media platforms? How rich is the content you produce? Are you delivering in the right format for your audience?  How attractive is your network in quantity and quality?

As a professional on LinkedIn, for example, you should have at least 1000 first connections. Not just people you want as clients today. Think up, think down, think across. You shouldn’t only connect with senior executives; the more junior staff will also rise and eventually become key decision makers. Build your network across a variety of industries to have multiple perspectives, this is crucial in a world where it no longer make sense to have siloed industries.  You never know where your industry is heading next and where your future clients will come from.

5.     How do you engage with them? Do you take time to engage with your audience and answer the questions or comments or are you using these new media to broadcast your content with no interaction?

6.     Do you still have Facebook phobia? Do you consider Facebook an unsuitable place to expose your brand? You might want to think again, check whether your competition is there. If you find them, chances are that you are missing out on an opportunity to increase your reach. Facebook ads today is one of the most effective tool to reach a very targeted demographic.

7.     Are you in a compliant industry like financial industry that restricts what you can promote?

That doesn’t mean you cannot provide valuable educational content and experience to your audience. Find out what are the regulatory limits, what you can or cannot do. Do you have to get your materials pre approved before sending them in the cyber space? Get them approved and schedule them. Hootsuite provides a useful guide to implement a social media strategy in financial industry.

8.     Pay to play

Gone are the times when you only relied on organic growth and SEO to get enough traffic to your content. To expect reach a significant number of eyeballs, you must pay: using a mix of pay per click, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Twitter ads, etc.

9.     Are you collecting emails?

No email is not dead yet! Are you building a list of prospects? Do you have high converting landing pages set up to collect contacts details of visitors in exchange of a valuable information? Are you running email campaigns?

10. Pace yourself. It’s a marathon not a sprint

Which resources do you have to implement your digital marketing strategy? Start slow and be consistent.

How do you know that your efforts will pay off?

You don’t. What you know for sure is that half of the world population is online, so not being there guarantees that you won’t tap into this market. Having a digital marketing strategy doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t have an offline approach.

Digital marketing is like a knife, it’s about how you use it. How well have you thought about the needs of your clients and how what your post are relevant to them? How are you engaging with them? Do you post once and never come back to respond to comments? Do you repost and re-target people who saw an ad from you but didn’t buy? How consistent are you in your activities?

Ubiquity

You can only be top of the mind of your prospects when they see you consistently and post relevant content to their needs. This builds trust and when they are ready to buy, hopefully you are the one they first think about.

Being omni present in the life of your prospect with your content, give them the impression of certain familiarity. They feel they know you and can trust you, you become a friend. The trust is built by the consistency.

That is why to carry out effectively your digital marketing activities and increase your chance of being seen, trusted and chosen, you need to have a customer-centric approach, understand inside out their needs, know who they are and where they are.

Are you looking for help to design a thoughtful and effective digital marketing strategy for the next months and think ahead for 2017? Book a complimentary strategy call with me today.

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