The 8 Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactics – 2020

Introduction
The use of the term digital marketing is so common that it has become synonymous with the Internet. Broadly speaking marketing efforts accomplished through electronic devices encompassing a variety of methods and channels are called digital marketing. It is a broad term and numerous activities are covered under its auspices. An individual working as a freelancer or for an organization who gears his efforts towards marketing the products and services through the electronic media is called a digital marketer.

Statista released a report in February 2020 informing that digital marketing expenses of companies (both B2B & B2C for products and services) have jumped up to 13% from 11.8% in 2019. The digital marketing budget covers expenses on different digital channels such as email marketing, mobile marketing, SEO, content development, marketing analytics, and others.

Effective Digital Marketing Tactics

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO refers to search engine optimization. All the activities related to getting higher ranks on search engine result pages SERPs are counted under SEO. SEO includes the following

On-Page SEO
This refers to different actions undertaken to optimize your website content landing pages in such a way that they rank high for a particular search query. For on-page SEO digital marketer has to research keywords and create content around such keywords having high search volumes. 

Off-Page SEO
This refers to all activities aimed at getting relevant backlinks from reputed sources within the industry. Linking for the sake of linking does not pass any link equity, instead, it is considered as link spam.

Technical SEO
This refers to the designing of your website. Webpages that load faster are given priority by search engines. Clean and simple website design with user-friendly navigation and site map is a great asset.

SEO strategy continues to dominate the digital marketing spectrum. In May 2020 Google accounted for 67% of all the smartphone search traffic and 94% of all the total organic traffic. The graph below shows how enterprises of different sizes exploit SEO techniques to strengthen their digital presence.

2) Email Marketing
According to survey emails are one of the most effective methods of digital marketing. Create simple and clear email messages that aim at providing value to the recipients. Personalized subject lines have a very high email open rate. Write the message using an economy of words with a clear call to action. Neither be too shy nor too aggressive. It is for you to clearly convey to your audience what is the objective of a particular email. Do not be elusive. This is called maintaining the cadence of the email copy.

Videos are being increasingly embedded in emails. Email click-through rates improve up to 300% when they have embedded video content, but remember to optimize your multimedia elements for the mobile screen. 

When done efficiently emails prove to reap rich dividends in terms of investment of time, energy, and expenditure. Send targeted emails to your target audience so when they open your emails they consider it a piece of valuable information rather than some cold unexpected message. 

When email campaigns are segmented campaigns the chances of emails being opened rises to 82%. Here lies the real effect of segmenting your customers, studying them, offering what they want, hence when you offer what they need through your emails they are more than happy to transact with you.

3) Content Marketing
People come to search engines to find solutions to their problems or satisfy their needs and desires. Your audience will appreciate a piece of content that describes their pain points and offer valuable advice. This is the reason why how-to blogs, videos, podcasts have great popularity. 

People also come to the Internet to buy. The number of online shoppers is on a stupendous rise. Knowing the vast reach of the Internet every business wants to explore the opportunity to showcase its products and services, this leads to digital advertising. The audience does not like nagging ‘BUY ME ADS’, Instead you can create value for your customers through the following. 

Blogs 
When you create blogs you should write from your customers’ perspective, when you do this your blog resonates with them. They feel that you understand them. Describe how your particular product or service will solve one of their problems, satisfy their desire, this encourages them to buy.

Video Content
The charm of the videos is increasing everyday. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are having millions of users. A digital marketer must create educational, informative, and entertaining videos. These videos are watched and shared across different social media channels. It enhances your brand awareness.

Infographics
Visual presentation of data, facts, and statistics in a simple, clear, and clean manner goes a long way in attracting your audience. This can be done through infographics.

It is important to know that every digital marketing activity is driven by content. Whether you wish to publish a blog post, create an engaging video, upload a podcast, write an e-book, content is the force behind. Keeping this fact in mind 42% of companies have specialized content creation teams that follow a strict content calendar to publish targeted content at regular intervals. Enterprises have also been dedicating larger budgets for content planning, creation, marketing, and tailoring content for different digital channels to ensure 360° digital success.

4) Social Media Marketing 
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat have become household terms. People love to chat, share, like, post, comment, and engage with one another using these social media channels.

The graph shows the amount of time spent on social media. It clearly illustrates how strongly the online audience is hooked to social media.

Digital marketers have very well understood the immense opportunities these channels have in store for them. They are the arenas where people engage freely, express their opinions, voice their demands, and also expect brands to listen to them.

Social shopping is a newly rising trend. Researches have confirmed that more than 53% of online visitors like to buy products or services when brands approach them through social channels.

Micro-influencers who have a following among thousands are trusted by their group. These micro-influencers themselves use these products and services, hence their reviews are valued by the group members. Only 12% of social media users say that they believe and buy products endorsed by celebrities, while 47% say that they rely on reviews from friends and family.

Connecting with your audience through social channels provides you great insights into the customers’ needs, wants, desires, problems, and situations that shape customer online behavior. These insights prove very valuable in planning your digital marketing strategy.  

5) Marketing Automation 
Marketing automation is an indispensable part of your digital marketing strategy. Integrating various marketing tools, the software help you to reach and connect with a larger audience. 

Marketing automated tools send the right message to the right customers at the right time. They help in scheduling content, generating emails, AB testing, and a lot more. 

Additionally, marketing automation provides you with valuable statistics like email open rates, click-through rates, information about downloads, and mush more. Armed with these data about the fast-changing trends can keep you abreast of the latest developments and thus adapt and appropriately tailor your digital marketing strategy.

Some of the most widely used digital marketing tools are Hubspot, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Trello, Canva Business, Buzzsumo, and others. Some of the tools are foundational while others are more specific and specialized.

The choice of a digital marketing tool is guided by the long and short term goals. The fundamental objectives, company structure, line of business, the kind of competition, all these require to be assessed before choosing a particular tool/tools. It is your focus and the exactness with which you define your marketing goals that shall help you to choose an apt marketing automation tool.

6) PPC Advertising 
Pay per click is paid advertising. You pay the advertiser every time your ad is clicked. Google ads is the best example. The top slots on SERPs are reserved for PPC ads. The rates are decided by a bidding process.

What is important to note is that since PPC ads claim the top position on  SERPs which is the most coveted spot in the digital world. It is the real estate in the Internet village. You need to prepare such targeted PPC ads that when a customer clicks them and lands on your website’s landing page, he finds what he is looking for.

Businesses are increasingly using PPC ads along with organic search to become visible. Other than Google, ad campaigns on Facebook, Twitter also provide great avenues for brands to showcase their products and services and attract different segments of the internet audience.

A digital marketer is required to prepare keyword-rich ad copies because search engines have strict algorithms that take a variety of factors into consideration before showing your ad in the coveted spot.

You cannot win the PPC ad arena by maximizing your bids alone, because along with the bid amount search engines consider the quality of your ads, its relevance to the search query, the ad content, and other factors in assigning ranks to your ads. Google uses a metric called Quality Score which is the qualitative yardstick that measures the quality of your PPC ads.

Not only your ad content but also the content of the landing page which customers reach after clicking your ad is considered by Google while evaluating PPC ads. Low-quality ads even with higher bids will not perform well because in the eyes of the search engines they are not relevant to the search query.

PPC ads provide digital marketers a speedy entry into the digital world. Additionally, they can be easily tracked and managed. You can use automated tools to prepare targeted ads based on device, location, demographics of your audience so that different variants of the ad are shown to a particular section to encourage them to click through. Besides this running PPC ads generate a wealth of analytics and they combine well with other digital marketing tactics to increase your brand exposure, generate leads, improve conversions and establish you as a thought leader in your industry.

7) Mobile Marketing
Is there any need to reiterate how smartphones have become an integral part of a modern lifestyle? 89% of the smartphone users are using Apps while only 11% use the standard website. On average people generally have 20 Apps installed on their mobile.

This unprecedented rise of mobile culture has made it essential for digital marketers to canalize their energies in developing Apps, website content, software applications that cater to the huge population of smartphone users.

Local businesses must specially optimize themselves for mobile users. A staggering 40% of mobile users are searching for local business entities.

Research has confirmed that websites which load in less than 5 seconds enjoy 70% longer viewing sessions as compared to sites loading slowly. Voice searches have also increased tremendously. Keeping all these factors in mind, you need to create a highly mobile-friendly website. You can check Google Mobile-Friendly Test to find out how mobile savvy is your website. Remember that your webpages do not take long to load. Your images, videos and other interactive elements must also load seamlessly so that mobile users get a rich experience once on your website.

8) Major KPIs to track
Digital marketing has many facets and dimensions. In small organizations, one or two individuals are responsible for planning and execution while in larger organizations there are specialists who look after every individual aspect of a successful digital marketing campaign. Whatever the case may be there are certain important KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that need to be tracked and considered in every digital marketing strategy.

Organic Traffic	YouTube Channel Subscribers	Email Open Rate
Time On Page	Follows, Impressions & Shares	Click-Through Rates
Blog Traffic	Lead Generations	Conversion Rates

Keeping a watchful eye over these KPIs is a sure way to bolster your digital marketing performance.

Usefulness of Digital marketing 
One can hardly emphasize the huge and vast scope of the digital world. Digital marketing can open unknown doors for your business because it encapsulates the entire world. As against traditional marketing not only is digital marketing extremely cost-effective but also widely accessible and precisely measurable. 

If you do not have a digital marketing strategy you are losing a great deal of business to your competitors. If you fail to catch up with the fast changing digital trends you competitors will. Universities with falling campus enrollments got a new breath by offering online courses. All these speak volumes about the indispensability of adopting a skillful digital marketing strategy.

Final thoughts
As a digital marketer, it is your responsibility to harness the various digital channels to develop your brand and business. Also, keep an eye on the major KPI’s (Key Performance Indicator) to check which kind of investments are pulling and what kind and how much business for you. 

Integrating a well laid out and thoughtfully planned digital marketing strategy with a timely execution  is a must to remain upfront in this competitive world.

Think what you need to do and do what you have thought. This simple action will build a solid digital foundation for your business.