With a global population of over seven billion people, more than three billion people are internet savvy. Over 5.5 billion Google searches are carried out daily. 150 million Nigerians have registered telephone lines, out of which 73 million Nigerians are believed to own smartphones This smartphone revolution has changed the course of e-commerce, with 73% of e-commerce transactions in Nigeria were carried out over smartphones. Why is all this important? It is because if your business has a formidable online presence, it may lead to a high return on investment (ROI). Take for instance, the likes of Jumia, Konga and Youdala got about 400,000 online orders every 24 hours in Nigeria.
All the aforementioned have been made possible due to the advent of digital marketing. So what is digital marketing? Digital marketing is a marketing strategy that uses a phenomenon known as inbound methodology to attract potential customers known as leads, and convert them into customers due to the value proposition of your company. These fulfilled customers then go out voluntarily and promote your business. This is well and good, but how do people even know your business is online? The answer – search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO are techniques that make your company’s website visible on search engines (SEs) such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and VConnect. So what does this really entail? In the realm of SEO content is king. This means that the more content you produce, the more likely your website would rank highly on the pages of search engines, with regards your particular field of business. This kind of growth is known as organic growth because you systematically publish optimized content without paying search engines such as Google to rank highly on their page. That type of accelerated (paid) growth is known as inorganic growth and is as a result of search engine marketing (SEM), this relates to the search results on Google where you see an AD beside the article url. Hence they are paid search results. So what does an optimized blog post on a website look like?
First, it must have an apt title, often one that asks a question to which the answers are in the blog post. The word count for this title should be no more than 50-60 characters. The reason because it makes it easily visible on search engines without tailing off into an ellipses. It should also have an apt photograph related to the title and embedded within it would be the name of the title in the “description” as well as “alt text” sections in the back-end user interface of the website. This way people who search for relevant content would equally see it in the image column on search engines. The title in the image below has 44 characters in total and a photo that relates to the post.
The blog post should make use of (long tail) keywords/tags, which are relevant phrases related to a particular article. For example, if one deals in male fashion, when selecting words/phrases that would help make the article visible online, the keywords/tags used to optimize the article should be more specific. Therefore, a simple “male footwear/shoes” keyword would be transformed into “6 basic footwear every gentleman must own/have and why?” as this is a more specific (long tail) keyword/ tag. Therefore, if a potential customer is looking to buy contemporary Nigerian male clothing, your site would be one of those to popup on SEs. However, do remember that you must have a sufficient number of articles that have that key word. Remember in SEO “content is king”.
Your website should have the option to share your blogpost on social media (SM). Why is it important to have a business to have a SM presence? The reason is because social media could help drive the requisite traffic to your website. However, you should also be aware of certain aspects:
- Your target audience – are you interested in youths, students, professionals, parents, etc? Once you have established this, it would guide the SM platform you wish to adopt. For example, a business looking to attract a youthful demographic would be more focused on creating content on Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr.
- It is important to make sure that whatever gif, photo, infographic or video you post on any SM platform must contain a link to the original blogpost it is related with on your website. Therefore by simply clicking it, viewers are automatically directed to your site.
Another convenient way to attract consumers is via email marketing (EM). Statistics have shown that 91% of consumers check their emails daily and 77% of consumers prefer EM communications. Furthermore, EM has a marketing ROI of 43%. Notwithstanding, to be effective at email marketing you must apply the following principles:
- Again, determine your target audience.
- Segment your contact database by creating an excel spreadsheet with the relevant email recipients. This makes it easier to update as well as upload unto an email marketing platform such as mail chimp or mad mini.
- Send the right emails at the right time. This means you must use a catchy subject line and post it at hours individuals are most likely to open their emails, often in the morning.
- Personalise your emails. If you know the person’s name put it in the salutations as opposed to simply Dear Sir/ Madam.
In essence, digital marketing is a tool to help businesses remain relevant by staying visible online, provided that your content is optimized and properly disseminated. If the aforementioned are well executed then it leads to a high returns and profits. Below is an image that sums up the whole article.
