50 Experts Share Their Best Digital Marketing Tips

Mobile phones are so much more popular

One of the best tips or pieces of advice that I wish I knew earlier on is to optimize for mobile browsing. During my early years, we spent most of our digital marketing efforts on improving the user experience for our website and increasing our SERP rankings.

Only later did we realize that we had to keep up with consumer behavior trends and optimize our strategies accordingly. Smartphones quickly became the norm and brands that already foreseen this already had a mobile website ready for launch.

If only we had done so too, we could have captured a larger market share which would’ve helped our brand grow quite rapidly. Mobile phones are so much more popular for online shopping and web browsing than desktops and should be the first channel brands target.

Use video marketing as an integral part of company’s campaign report

Digital marketing has tightened its grip on the market and is the future of any industry looking to excel in the given niche.

I wish that my video marketing skills were polished before I entered the digital marketing fray. Videography is becoming the staple of elite marketing and 8 out of 10 customers purchase products after coming across a brand's video content.

Marketers who regularly use video marketing as an integral part of their company’s campaign report that it gives them a positive Return on Investment (ROI). To put it into perspective, video marketing seems more personal and creative than traditional marketing. It would have certainly given us an edge on most of our competitors and helped the company reach new heights.

Develop Email Campaigns

Email marketing, on average, provides $44 for every $1 spent, a 4,400 percent return on investment. Still, have reservations about email marketing? No, we didn't believe so.

So, you know that sending the appropriate emails can help your business make more money and retain clients, but what are the best email practices?

Set up automated answers to thank customers once they subscribe or make a purchase to encourage repeat visits to your website. The average open rate of 'welcome' emails is 82 percent. Consumers like to feel appreciated.

Being proactive delivers higher earnings when it comes to sending abandoned cart recovery emails (when a customer leaves your site without completing a purchase). When compared to sending just one email, sending three abandoned cart recovery emails to each consumer results in a 69 percent order boost.

All of the better eCommerce platforms include both of these email services.

Be consistent

Be consistent in your digital marketing plan. It's easy to attempt too many different marketing strategies at once, which can cause you to become inconsistent in your approach and lead to an unsuccessful marketing strategy.

You significantly increase your chances of implementing a successful strategy by staying consistent. Most tactics will improve over time, which allows you to discover what works and what doesn't. Focus on implementing one approach, identify a way to measure the strategies success rate, monitor how well it performs, experiment with different variations and repeat until you have a system working that meets your objectives.

Focus on a few things and do them well!

I wish I knew how to use FB/Google Ads to generate leads. I was more of a content/SEO guy with focus on design and content to generate traffic. But, for a small service business in a competitive market, you need to learn other marketing channels to be in front of the prospects.

I did learn Facebook ads fundamentals and implemented that in 2020. It failed as the quality of leads was low.

Last year, I re-learned the concept of audience building and re-marketing to decent success.

Focus on a few things and do them well!

Known more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This may sound like a simple tip, but I wish I had known more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before diving into digital marketing. I think SEO is super important for small businesses; at least it has been for us. Many people assume that SEO isn't worth their time because they don't understand how to use it properly or because they don't want to be spammy. I get it. But SEO really isn't spammy! It's simply about publishing high quality content, understanding how search engines work, and paying attention to how the Internet is evolving. I wish I had known more about this from the start because it could have saved us a lot of time and money.

If you're just getting started in marketing, consider SEO when you think about building your digital presence. Investigate learning how to do keyword research, content writing for searchers, optimizing titles and meta data, etc. Search is an amazing tool that can be the most effective way to build your business, and you'll never find yourself feeling like it's spammy or not worth your time.

SEO best practices would have allowed me to fast track my business

I wish I knew the importance of SEO before getting into the world of digital marketing. I have been using traditional methods of advertising for the longest time to help increase the reach of my business.

These methods included aggressive marketing by distributing brochures and displaying my organization’s ads on billboards.

SEO best practices would have allowed me to fast track my business through development. The massive funds that I spent on traditional marketing would have been better utilized if I used them towards SEO.

Through this strategy I would have increased my organization’s reach beyond the borders, which would have helped increase my website’s organic reach.

The use of relevant keywords as a part of SEO could also have boosted my brand’s awareness and helped in the lead generation process.

Be realistic about the time you have for social media

Although most small company owners recognize the value of social media, it is all too easy to overlook it during busy situations. Being realistic about the time you have for social media is one of the keys to sustaining your social media presence. An out-of-date social media profile will not be useful to customers. If you just have time to manage one account, pick a platform that works for your company and stick to a posting schedule.

You can post memes with witty captions to boost your engagement rate with your audience. Posting memes show that you are up to date with current events and that you are aware of your market and customers. After all, memes are really quite popular. It’s important to post regular, focused, and engaging content for your customers so they begin to consider your business an active and helpful source of information.

Know how important analytical ability is before starting

I wish I had known how important analytical ability was in digital marketing before starting out because I was not a great data analyst, and I struggle to base my decisions on numbers/statistics. Good marketing decisions are all data-based and my most successful campaigns have been those that make good use of data from programs like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

So these are useful digital marketing tips for any professional. Since with the help of analytical thinking you will be able to analyze your work, and you will be able to draw conclusions based on the data received.

In the analytical way of thinking, a person decomposes information into components, structures the data and finds out their relationships with each other. These are invaluable skills in digital marketing.

Use adobe creative suite to create more graphically sophisticated content

I wish I had known how much money I could save and make by being able to use adobe creative suite to create more graphically sophisticated content.

Things with compelling visuals, like infographics, tend to get the most traction and knowing how to use design programs like Adobe Photoshop would have saved me a lot of time.

I would recommend that anyone considering digital marketing as a career path invest some time in improving their ability to use design software like Photoshop and InDesign to add serious value to their resumes.

Try New Marketing Tools, Automate Your Tasks

New programs and approaches are helping businesses achieve optimization and streamlined methods.

Consider using these digital marketing tools and platforms in 2021 (if you aren’t already):

• CRMs – Customer Relationship Management Systems: Keep your contact, sales, and customer engagement process well managed.
• Analytics and reporting software – help you know exactly what kind of results you’re getting so you’re spending your time and budget on the right things.
• SEO optimization software – For example, if you are using a WordPress website you can use Yoast SEO or Rankmath. There are many others. We use a tool called Frase at Rocket Expansion as well to help us create great SEO-optimized content.

Automating your tasks can help you save time and prioritize higher-priority projects. Automation in the right areas can greatly increase the benefits to your Digital Marketing Strategy.

Here is a shortlist of some of the area’s to consider automating:

• Automate Marketing Emails – Schedule your marketing emails in advance to your selected contacts. You can also set up email series’ that get fired off to different audiences to provide personalized follow-up.
• Automate Notifications – These are particularly helpful for follow up’s when someone sends you an email.
• Automate Social Media Posts – Schedule all social media posts on multiple platforms in advance.
• Automate Lead Flow – If a user wishes to download a resource, you can send them an email right away to allow them to download that resource. You can continue to send them scheduled automated emails with additional information o the topic to help them move down along the funnel.
• Automate Analytics Reporting – Use Google Analytics and your CRM to track consumer behavior. These metrics are vital to observe the growth of your marketing activities.

Read Industry blogs

A great way to keep up with the current market trends is by reading blogs written by top authors or sites. There are ample case studies, research, and blogs out there that will help you understand digital marketing in a much better and simpler way. There is always something new in digital marketing and to keep up you have to keep reading and experimenting. Also, there are so many groups on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter where industry leaders talk about the latest updates on digital marketing. Following those groups also helps in learning new things.

I was never into reading so I missed out on many opportunities later when I got to know that I made habit of reading and it has helped me in many ways. I wish I knew it before.

Working on customer retention to increase business profits

Motivating customers to make repeat purchases is more profitable than working on attracting new ones. If the user has already purchased the product, he got familiar with its benefits and probably that item has solved their problem and thus the trust with our company has been created.

Based on our data - the probability that the current customer will make another purchase is about 60-70%. For new users, this possibility is in the range of 5 to 20%. But it will cost us much more money to attract new customers ultimately.

You can use CRR (customer retention rate) metric to track how well you manage to work with existing customers.

Automating tasks would have helped my business grow faster if used earlier

This tip will save time and prioritize tasks if used rightly. You can automate several tasks such as social media posts, marketing emails, lead flow and notifications.

Marketing emails can be scheduled in advance for your selected contacts.

Similarly social media posts can also be scheduled in advance on multiple platforms.

The time you save by automating tasks can be used on other tasks that would have helped me in streamlining business processes. In turn increasing productivity.

Therefore, had I done automation in the right areas it would have yielded significant benefits for my digital marketing strategy.

Optimize your website for mobile use

When I started my career people were not that active on the phone and even after that business was not done that much through the phone as it is done today.

Optimizing your content for mobile could not be that easy because we should deliver the same information in a crisp and crystal-clear manner and we should also make sure that the website screen is clearly visible and gives a good user experience The website speed also matters in a mobile as people will not have that much patience while using a phone and they just skip and move on. Nowadays creating a website that can be used both on desktop and especially mobile is very essential.

Voice Search Optimization

Voice search optimization is one of the rising digital marketing strategies for companies to adopt. Your company optimizes new and existing content for voice search. Your goal is to earn your website the position zero spot or feature snippet in search results. Your company increases its online presence to customers by ranking for these, leading to product purchases, store visits, and more. Voice search is becoming a popular and new way to search, with more people buying smartphones and voice-activated speakers. For that reason, it's one of the most recent digital marketing strategies for companies to adopt.

Keeps trying and researching new ways to make things work

When I started in digital marketing I thought I had to be a super pro in a specific area to win clients. Although I still believe that skills will set you apart, I now think that there is nothing more important than actually showing your client how much you care about helping them grow. It is not about certifications, case studies, beautiful pitches or promising results.

It is about taking actual time every week to research about their industry, products, competitors, etc. and sharing it with them.

I have clients who previously worked with UK agencies before hiring me. I hear one time and again that they understand that results may not always be great, but they are super happy they have someone who keeps trying and researching new ways to make things work.

In summary, don't fuss too much over your competition and portray yourself as the best. Promise them hard work and tireless commitment to help them grow in every way you can.

Never release an average quality or half-ready page for indexation

Google’s first crawl and analysis of a webpage can be difficult to move on from once it has been indexed and assessed by the search engine. To name a few of the key aspects, you will want to ensure your site and/or webpage is optimised for mobile as well as desktop, is easy for visitors to manoeuvre, and is Google-friendly.If you want to go back and make any changes at some point, it will be an uphill battle. We, the team at OutreachPete, have done this before, and experienced a tough time doing so. It can take a long time for Google’s quality assessment of an incomplete page to change, even after a re-crawl has been requested and performed.

There are also secondary conversions such as generating leads

Despite its simplicity, this is something that business owners often overlook without fully considering it. Leads, sales and other obvious conversions exist, but there are also secondary conversions such as generating leads. You should also consider this for your offline efforts, it isn't just for your online presence.

The quality of some inquiries and the quality of some customers varies, thus one out of ten inquiries might turn into a customer. Considering this could be helpful in terms of how customers make inquiries. Phone inquiries may convert eight out of ten, but web inquiries may convert three out of ten.

You should think of the people who visit your website as leads if you are selling products online. As well as product page views, you can consider them as leads. Your conversion rate can be easily determined by knowing how many website visits and sales you get so far. It is vital to act upon this data if you are unclear about it.

Digital marketing necessitates a certain level of adaptability

This is something I wish I had known when I first began out as a digital marketer. Digital marketing is always evolving and changing. More than likely, last year's popular methods and strategies are now considered obsolete. Despite the importance of a digital marketing strategy, it should not be set in stone. Marketers should be allowed to depart from the strategy at times due to unforeseen circumstances or new market trends.

Rigidity is not tolerated in digital marketing. Your brand will suffer if you stick to one tool, one platform, or one point of view. The rise of TikTok and short video usage, for example, has pushed digital marketers into uncharted ground. Digital marketers must be adaptable since new platforms emerge virtually every day, bringing with them new marketing requirements.

Digital marketing necessitates a certain level of adaptability

This is something I wish I had known when I first began out as a digital marketer. Digital marketing is always evolving and changing. More than likely, last year's popular methods and strategies are now considered obsolete. Despite the importance of a digital marketing strategy, it should not be set in stone. Marketers should be allowed to depart from the strategy at times due to unforeseen circumstances or new market trends.

Rigidity is not tolerated in digital marketing. Your brand will suffer if you stick to one tool, one platform, or one point of view. The rise of TikTok and short video usage, for example, has pushed digital marketers into uncharted ground. Digital marketers must be adaptable since new platforms emerge virtually every day, bringing with them new marketing requirements.

Since I made my website mobile-friendly, my client base has increased

As internet penetration deepened, the use of mobile devices has sharply increased too. It is very important that your website be mobile-optimized.

It will make the user experience easy and convenient for customers. Time flies when you're having fun or a good time, and that's what you want for your users.

A mobile-optimized website will also help with Google’s “Core-Web-Vitals”, helping you measure speed, visual stability, and responsiveness. In 2022, paying attention to these measurements will help your search rankings on Google as a result.

Remember, you want to be accessible to your customers on mobile and desktop. Most users will find you on mobile devices in 2022 so let’s make sure they enjoy the experience.

Build your professional digital social network as fast as possible

This includes LinkedIn and other social media communities where digital marketing professionals share learnings and insights. And contribute to these networks in a meaningful way. Also, don’t rule out attending in-person networking events too. Then, be sure to add value to these networks and always try to give more than you take. This takes time and effort but the long-term dividends will be significant.”

Make a mobile-friendly version of our website

Phones can be conveniently brought everywhere. Most of your customers will have their phone ready at hand and will most likely visit your website using it. It is important that you consider what it will look like on a phone rather than just on a desktop.

It would be hard to navigate a website that is not adjusted for mobiles. It could be too big and the customer will be uncomfortable. Eventually, they might give up on your website and try somewhere else. You would have lost a customer that way.

It would have been of help for me to grow faster because more customers would stay on my website. Then, there is always the chance that they would recommend it to others. It would be like a chain reaction. Giving off a good first impression for your customers goes a long way. If you feature me, please let me know - I'd love to read/share it.

The power of content cannot be underestimated with digital marketing

The more quality content you create, the more helpful and relevant information you have to share on social media, by email, and through advertising. In addition, when you create content, it dramatically improves your search engine optimization (SEO) results because each new piece of content adds new quality pages to your website, which helps improve your rankings and how often your website is getting crawled by search engines. Content is an absolutely essential part of your digital marketing strategy, and you can leverage your content in so many ways to help amplify your audience and engage with your followers and prospects.

Focus on creating such content other than the aesthetics

Some marketers forget to give attention to their content and lose the opportunity to gather users.

In creating content, it is a must to concentrate on the topics or issues that are commonly talked about or content that most people need.

You can search for topics under the top trend or highly searched, and start from those topics. Your goal must be to provide valuable and high-quality content that will help your users.

Instead of just marketing your brand, try to create blogs that relate to it. Give tips on such specific topics

that are connected to what you are offering.

This will surely create a stronger relationship with your users and will eventually result in a higher conversion rate. Lastly, *ensure that what you are posting is true and eligible information because, from your blogs, you can build the trust of your users and the credibility of your website.

Quality over quantity wins every time!

Rather than running around for years cold emailing everyone and anyone, networking to get clients (many who were not ideal clients and didn't even know what link building was) the one tip I wish I had known - Focus on results first, and the clients will come to you, so start small, and let your results do the talking.

I have done some outbound cold outreach, and used platforms like PeoplePerHour and Upwork to get business. However, I relied on this mostly in the initial years of the business. Now at The Links Guy we rely mostly on inbound inquiries, word of mouth, and referrals.

We don't need hundreds of clients to be successful, I would rather have twenty and have outstanding results. It's just the same with backlinks Quality and relevance win over quantity any day.

Be patient and put in the effort, you will eventually reap the benefits

I wish somebody would’ve been clear that digital marketing is a long game and that I should exercise more patience. Because digital marketing uses platforms known for instant gratification, it’s so easy to lose patience and move on to the next strategy without really giving your earlier efforts a chance to reap its rewards. Early into my career in this field, I would get so impatient that I kept on jumping from one campaign to another thinking that I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. In truth, it was only because I wasn’t giving any of my campaigns and strategies enough time to deliver.

That said, here’s my tip—be patient and know that if you put in the effort, you will eventually reap the benefits.

Test every channel

You might have your playbook and have an idea of what works but the market, your buyers and your messaging are constantly changing. You have to keep testing each channel with a bias towards disrupting that channel, not just running the playbook or following industry best practices.

Focus on both quality and consistency to achieve success

In this digital, ephemeral age, users are often only exposed to your digital marketing efforts, particularly on social media, for a brief second. Being able to grab and hold their attention requires the use of high-quality imagery and videos, oftentimes with an attractive splash image.

However, and perhaps as importantly, you need to feed the algorithm. Whether you are utilizing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok, those platforms often reward consistency and frequent posting. Taking it a step further, be sure to utilize all available features on each specific platform. For instance, with Instagram, be sure to upload frequent posts but don't ignore Instagram Reels, Instagram TV, and Instagram Stories. Taking advantage of all those features will help you to organically reach new and interested consumers without having to dole out advertising dollars.

Know how to drive traffic since it’s an important aspect of digital marketing

Through Traffic creation when someone visits your site, they expect to find information. They don't visit your site just because you have a pretty logo and in order to attract visitors to your site, you need to provide valuable content, the better quality your content is, the higher likelihood that visitors will stay on your site.

One way to improve the quality of your content is by regularly publishing articles. Another good idea is to post info-graphics on Pinterest. Info-graphics are visually appealing and easy to understand, so they often go viral. By using this method I would have grown my business faster than ever since it increases engagement and builds an audience base.

Combine SEO and Content Marketing

SEO is certainly nothing new. For a long time, SEO was a function of keywords and coding. Then Google got smarter. So while SEO is nothing, we discovered that combining SEO and Content Marketing is one of the most effective of the marketing trends we’re going to see in 2022.

Being seen online is the key to success for every business, especially in today’s world where almost all businesses have gone digital. It is one of the ways to stand out from the crowd.

To ensure your content is mobile friendly, your website and social media networks are accessible on desktops and mobile devices. Customers are mostly using smartphones and tablets to access the web.

Digital marketing is an amalgamation of different strategies aimed at a plethora of channels, like SEO, PPC, social media, and so on.

Design underpins much of what makes digital marketing success. Whether you’re designing a website, a landing page or creating an image for your website, ad, or infographic, you need to have good design skills. Not all of us are whiz kids when it comes to design, but there are some tools to help.

Email is still an effective driver of digital marketing ROI. In fact, email delivers about $36 in ROI for every dollar spent! But you gotta do it right..

Now listen, lots of people are spending on digital ads. Very few are able to show any ROI at all. (If you are, please let me know. I’d love to tell your story!)

People love infographics because they are attractive. Note that our brains can process pictures must quicker than text. A picture is worth a thousand words, and people will share them more often than texts.

Integrating across these tactics can be really challenging, especially in a larger firm where different teams may manage different platforms or where different ad agencies handle different aspects of marketing,

Just get started

I know that sounds a bit simple and basic but its really interesting to see how many people want to get into digital marketing but spend more time learning or are too scared to actually get started.

We learn by doing, so people just need to actually get started and learn :)

Build trust with prospective customers

Since startups are usually new in the industry, their digital marketing primary goal should be to build trust with prospective customers. Here at WeInvoice, we’ve achieved this through effectively doing social media and email marketing. Social media marketing will help you quickly build brand awareness, and it’s relatively cheap, making it suitable for startups. On the other hand, email marketing enables you to reach prospective customers’ inboxes directly. Therefore, email marketing is easily the best digital marketing strategy for startups when done correctly. Talking of precisely, startups should send customized emails to subscribers putting timelines in mind. This would establish a special connection with their existing as well as potential customers. Without a doubt, small businesses would see a significant uptick in engagement and sales.

Offer reliable services to the customers

Before I started my digital marketing techniques to promote my business service worldwide, I decided to create reliable web content as an online marketing source. The key point in my mind is that no exaggeration about the products or services of my business to reflect at the virtual space. The main goal of my digital marketing is to offer reliable services to the customers without triggering their expectations limitlessly. The less you talk, and the more you show in action is what I believe will give you consistent success in the business growth. The same holds good even in digital marketing. We have to be clear in what you are supposed to reveal to your customers on the product or service aspects. This vision helped me to grow faster in my business by increasing the digital presence without any issues.

It is about having a higher conversion rate and increasing customer loyalty

Marketing the brand is more than just expanding your reach, it is more about having a higher conversion rate and increasing customer loyalty to your website. *We indeed need to have a wider reach, but we also need to realize that we should first focus on our local reach, targeting all the audience to convert, then extend more of our reach*. Local digital marketing helps local businesses reach more customers, grow our revenue, and create new jobs. We could engage more with new and potential customers within a specified radius with the intention of turning them into loyal users.

With the limited scope, the expenses are smaller, whereas the ROI is higher. *Going local can actually boost visibility, along with a strong backlinking profile that can increase search results. To achieve this, we could use such as geolocation services to target a local audience in which we can send personalized messages to a small group promoting activity.* In addition, we should have enlisted our website to Google My Business, and be connected with our users on Google maps by keeping your information current.

Use the low hanging fruit in Facebook groups

No matter your niche or vertical there is a FB group that you can participate in to contribute to the discussion, answer questions, and develop a presence to refer people to your business, often times when they are looking for exactly what you offer.

FB just also launched a dedicated mobile app to support their groups' communities so now it's easier than ever to manage the groups that you participate in, monitor the conversations, and participate while on the go throughout your day.

We have found this tactic to be very effective for our marketplace. We monitor local groups and neighborhoods' groups , and when anyone is asking for a recommendation on a lawn care service, we kindly let them know about the GreenPal community. We track the success and 60% of the time we make a recommendation, they signup for our service

This tactic can work for almost any business in any niche.

Incorporate video into your social media strategy

Social media marketing is continuing to grow in popularity. This is primarily accomplished through video-based social media marketing. As a result, consumers are becoming increasingly engaged with image-based and video-based content. I've noticed dramatic changes in nearly every social media platform and landscape over the last year. Times have changed, and more people are using apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels than ever before, making videos the most popular type of content on social media. Additionally, you can take it further by incorporating interactive elements into your marketing videos. Interactive videos are a new type of content that allows viewers to interact with the videos themselves, resulting in a unique user experience. Consumers prefer interactive video content because it allows them to choose which information to view and when.

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

Mobile device use has increased significantly as a result of the COVID pandemic. Your website must be mobile-friendly. It will simplify and facilitate the customer experience when having fun or having a good time. Time flies, which is exactly what you want for your users. A mobile-optimized website will also assist you in measuring Google's Core-Web-Vitals, such as speed, visual stability, and responsiveness. Bear in mind that you want to be available to your customers on mobile and desktop platforms.

Facebook and Instagram can be powerful tools to broadcast the company’s mission

We are a relatively new small online boutique that has been using social media to grow. In the past two years we have found Facebook and Instagram can be powerful tools to broadcast the company’s mission, build awareness of our brand, and acquire a new audience. However, at the same time, when a small new company is working to identify its target customer, engaging in Facebook and Instagram advertising can also be a costly testing platform and sometimes risky. If it turns out that your target audience is not on social media, you discover that you have poured money into campaigns on a platform that is not viewed by your customer base.

Facebook and IG do have low cost campaigns available, but we found that those campaigns have very little impact. Affordable Chic discovered that to have an effective advertising campaign using Facebook and Instagram requires several thousand dollars per month. That amount of fiscal output was beyond our company’s budget so we decided to start with a very small budget to determine whether such platforms would actually reach our target customers. After performing small budget tests over several months, we increased our advertising budget and saw greater traffic on our website resulting from the daily posts on Facebook and Instagram.

Our initial campaigns also taught us that wording and image quality are key factors in any social media platform — a user will only pay attention for a few seconds. Given the rapid scrolling of viewers, a company must communicate its mission in a short yet captivating sentence followed by an eye-catching image, or a short attention-grabbing video, to capture and sustain a potential customer’s interest.

Affordable Chic continues to run campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram, and as a supporting marketing tool, we also send our followers a weekly newsletter to stay in touch, share new additions to our boutique, and highlight any discounts or sales we are running. We found these newsletters, in conjunction with our Facebook and Instagram campaigns, to be a strong tool, especially to keep our satisfied customers returning to Affordable Chic’s website: www.affordablechic.com

Be bold and be tireless

The key is to get your ideas in front of people. You will learn that people are very receptive to hearing and discussing new ideas that can reshape an industry. You never know where those conversations might lead. Maybe that person is a potential investor or knows someone who is. Maybe that person generates a new idea that improves upon yours.

Go create the luck you’re looking for and be creative in terms of raising awareness for the product or service you’re offering. Keep your engine running when it comes to networking.

Become a master in a few channels vs. being a master of none

The trick to being effective in digital marketing is to become a master in a few channels vs. being a master of none. We see our clients put in great effort to have a presence in a variety a channels, but the issue becomes they aren't able to test, analyze and adjust campaigns effectively.

Our recommendation is always to take the necessary time to understand where your audience is and then find the tools and strategies to get you to them.. Digital marketing takes time and the only way to get the most out of campaigns is to meticulously create and adjust your approach to create and ROI that makes sense for you.

Digital marketing isn't just marketing your brand digitally or online

There are specific things that we need to consider to achieve better results. One thing I remember that I should have known before starting digital marketing is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Starting a business, building our website, or going through a website redesign, SEO can feel a bit intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We should not miss this part, because it will help us to grow effectively.

This is one of the most adequate ways to track and achieve a better organic online presence.

It is the science behind getting found online through people searching for relevant words or phrases in Google or other search engines. Attract them to our website so that we may convert them into paying clients. In doing so, we must create valuable, useful, and relevant content that answers the searchers' questions getting other websites to link back to our content. You may increase your chances of bringing in more targeted organic traffic by developing more engaging and effective SEO-focused content.

Have a foundational strategy

If you do not have a foundational strategy for your digital marketing, especially social media, running ads is essentially lighting your hard earned money on fire.

Taking the time to develop a foundational marketing strategy is vital to reaching the RIGHT people, who are *ready and able *to purchase what you have to offer. I have seen so many new business owners start out with social media and Google ads just so they can get more eyes on their business, without really understanding who would be the most likely to buy.

They also don't have any way to nurture or capture the customer once they do get their attention, so the customer doesn't engage.

Having a foundational strategy sets you up for more success, and faster growth, when you are seen, because you're reaching the right people and making it easy for them to make the decision to buy.

Focusing on a single platform and minimising recurring costs are key

In hindsight, I wasted quite a lot of money and time promoting my business on different platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest when I first started.

However, this only dispersed my effort and budget, which eventually led to the slow growth of the business. It is crucial to choose the right platform to start my business so that I do not use up my budget prematurely. For me, the search engine was the best single source of visitors. Therefore, I should have focused on it without getting distracted by seeming opportunities on other platforms.

Also, I should have minimised the recurring costs of domain hosting, servers, email hosting, SEO tools, graphic tools and the like. With more and more Saas businesses targeting entrepreneurs, it's too easy for newbies like me to become obsessed with the marketing tools that all claim to be a must-have for successful online businesses.

Social media acts as the perfect platform

It is easy to overlook it during busy days, but you wish you had started it earlier when realized its impact. Social media acts as the perfect platform for promoting sales and earning an engaged audience rather than usual. Especially when appropriate influencers are used, your target audience will get bigger and bigger over time. It is always worth the money, and it is the first thing that I'd recommend to others who have started their business.

An efficient social media presence, coupled with search engine optimization

An established presence on social media is one, almost cost-free avenue to widespread marketing. With consistent input and engagement in accordance to customer queries, social media pages such as those on Instagram and Facebook, for instance, can help spread the word like wildfire. With the ease of access and usability, web surfers and potential customers have tended to shift from traditional websites to more convenient bite-sized information available on social media websites, where the user-friendliness and quick-response interface of the platforms are game-changers. Moreover, in no time, customers can directly message social media managers asking their queries, which are often answered within 24 hours at most. This is an especially well-suited idea for start-ups that may be low on capital investment. In addition, this is not to say that websites have lost their place entirely. Instead, they can be combined with the use of social media to compound the effects of marketing.

Search Engine Optimization refers to conducting keyword research prior to publishing content on your website. Keywords comprise those words and phrases which the algorithm of web browsers are more likely to show as top results once surfers search for relevant websites and materials through their search engines. This cancels out excess noise, so in order to avoid falling prey to this algorithm, a bit of research can go a long way and instead maximize activity and traffic on your website. This also requires you to choose a convenient, minimalist yet trendy style of design for the content on your website. It should not seem intimidatingly cluttered, nor simple to the point that it is boring and causes reluctance for customers to engage with uploaded content. Social Media platforms allow you the freedom to post the links that direct traffic from Instagram and Facebook to your website. This allows your social media platforms and websites to work in conjunction.

HARO (Help A Reporter Out) is an invaluable tool

I started my digital marketing career nearly 5 years ago and I was able to get up and running fast in the first year because I was obsessive and interested in digital marketing, especially SEO and Google organic. I wish I had known at the start that HARO (Help A Reporter Out) is an invaluable tool for growing your link portfolio naturally and effectively. As long as you look at queries every day and wait for ones that are relevant to you, HARO helps build links that are actually worth your time. Years ago I thought it was free labor - You just write articles for journalists for free? Not worth my time. After putting in the work and seeing progress, I wish I had given it a chance at the start of my marketing career because I could've made a solid impact even when I was still new to the industry.

Snippets you can use

I wish I would've known how important it is to complement organic SEO with targeted small-scale PPC campaigns.

PPC (especially Google Ads) is a great way to test keywords for user intent, conversion rate, engagement and CTR.

This way you can identify quick win keywords that are worth pursuing with organic SEO for long-term traffic potential.

Making the internal search bar visible on mobile devices

Most websites have the internal search bar hidden in the navigation dropdown. We noticed that when people used our website's internal search bar on their mobile device, the conversion rate was 5x that of those who didn't. We immediately moved it to being visible at the top of the mobile website 100% of the time, and saw our average conversion rate on mobile devices almost double. Wish I would have known this earlier!