As the online marketplace grows, so too does the potential for businesses to embrace digital marketing. More than ever, companies have the chance to stamp their digital footprint on the internet, with social media influence and real time marketing providing new opportunities to get ahead of their competitors and in front of their customers in their own home.
Social Search
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are overhauling their search functionality, with Facebook rolling out their own algorithm which allows all public posts to be searched and Twitter updating their capabilities to allow long-tail keyword searches. The inclusion of social search in your digital marketing strategy is an exciting chance to help your brand and content be discovered organically in these widely used channels.
Businesses can also use social search to be an effective research and targeting tool within the marketing mix – marketers can search for their keywords and products on social channels and find public posts using the specific terms. This will allow you to find users who might already be interacting with your brand, are asking questions around it, or who might be located within certain target areas. From these insights you can produce content to speak directly to the users, or implement some specific targeted campaigns – perhaps even trying out remarketing as this capability expands across additional platforms.
You can also sell on social – Facebook and Pinterest have introduced ‘Buy Now’ features with more platforms expected to follow suit across the year. The addition of these buttons to your social media pages is not yet a proven tactic if you sell products or services, but in theory it may increase the ease of converting for your audience whilst improving the user experience – time will tell!
Consider your Local SEO
With the launch of Google My Business, local searching and SEO is becoming even more important and should be rising up the importance rankings for marketers and web developers. Google is starting to use different algorithms and search elements to provide immediate information regarding local businesses, so your website needs to be listed and optimised.
If you haven’t claimed your Google My Business listing then this is something that you should look to do as soon as you get the opportunity!
Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
If your website isn’t optimised for mobile yet, where have you been? Last year saw more mobile generated search traffic than desktop and laptop searching combined, and this percentage will only continue to rise as smartphones and tablets increase in popularity. If you want to keep your slice of the organic search pie, you need to make sure that your website is optimised for mobile; Google have made it clear that they now favour mobile-friendly websites in their results so if you aren’t geared towards mobile traffic you will be missing out. We can’t say this strongly enough – mobile optimisation is a must.
Can we help you embrace digital marketing or with your web design? Get in touch today.
