Top 4 Effective Ways To Harness the Power of Digital Marketing in 2023

The first and the most fundamental way to make your business’ presence felt online, is to have a website. We are well into the 2020s, and if your business still doesn’t have a website (hopefully you do), it is as good as your business doesn’t exist at all!

Next comes marketing of your business – digitally. While there are millions of business across the world, not all business harness the power of digital marketing. That’s why we thought of sharing the most powerful marketing strategies that you can use to scale your business. While there are many strategies to market your business digitally, we will be focusing only on the most powerful ones.

So here are four powerful ways to harness the power of digital marketing:

Video Content Marketing

One of the best and the most effective ways to make an impact digitally, is to create short-form vertical video. Yes we’re talking about Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. It’s an open secret that Instagram’s Reels was a rip-off of Tik Tok, which took the world by storm during the first half of 2020.

In fact, Adam Missouri, the CEO of Instagram said in 2020 that the platform is “… no longer a photo sharing app” and that they are thinking about how to make users “embrace video more broadly” and give them a “… full screen, immersive, entertaining, and mobile first video” experience.

Soon after Reels was introduced, YouTube too entered the fray by introducing YouTube Shorts. What’s important to remember is that whenever these major platforms roll out new features, they’re going to incentivize users who adopt them immediately and stick to it consistently. This means they get more views, which brings more visibility, and more engagement compared to those who do not.

If there is one thing you need to know as a business, it is that short-form video is here to stay, at least in the foreseeable future. It is also probably your best bet for higher levels of engagement with your customers, and to be remembered by your target audience.

If you’re thinking that short content will attract only Gen Z Audience (born between 1997 and 2012), think again. Studies show that more than 50% of the users on social media are above the age of 30! This means that whenever you post videos as Reels or Shorts, you’re actually reaching a relatively more mature audience who satisfy the MAN criteria, which is Money, Authority and Need.

What to Post?

Now that you’ve figured out why short-form video is important, let’s talk about what you should post about your business and how often can you expect best results, even if it means that you do not want to put yourself in front of the camera.

If you really want to grow your business on these platforms, you need to make a commitment to yourself to publish at least one short-video – per day. In fact, there are studies to prove how powerful daily reels can be, and here’s a case in point.

An Instagram expert challenged five of his random students to do just that: One video per day for 60 continuous days. As expected, there were those who could stick to it and those who couldn’t. The ones who actually stuck with it for 60 days – without missing out even for one day, saw their Followers explode by many thousands by the end of the 60-day period.

In one case, the count increased by nearly 35,000; which is more than 500 new Followers – per day! On the other hand, the slackers who only posted only once per week across the 60-day period, grew by about 40 followers.

Getting the attention of algorithms is no rocket science. All it takes is just one simple thing: Consistency. And consistency is all about – discipline!

How to Produce?

Now, the obvious question is, “How to produce not less than one video per day?”

Well, here’s the good news. It is not as hard as you probably think. First-Things-First: Do not be particular about the production quality of your reels/shorts video. Your videos just don’t have to look slick and professional – at all. Period.

Your customers and prospects are definitely not looking for content about your products and/or services which looks like a masterpiece. They’re just looking for short and simple videos that add value to them some degree – not matter how small. They just want to take some value when they invest 10, 30 or 60 seconds of their time. That’s all.

There are in fact a few types of videos that you can actually churn out with very minimal planning and effort – in just one sitting.

You can create videos about your products and/or services that provides your customer/prospect:

1) A quick tip
2) An important feature
3) A useful benefit
4) A process you follow to ensure quality
5) An interesting statistic
6) What you love about your product, etc.

You may also choose to create short videos about:

1) A client testimonial
2) A new development in your business
3) Your normal day when you’re in your office
4) A normal day for the members of your team
5) An important event or celebration at your office, etc.
6) What you love about your product, etc.

And you can present any of the above ideas by:

1) Talking straight to camera
2) Providing text on screen, or
3) Even by using the green screen feature.

In terms of execution, this works best if you just set aside some time, as a block, for a few hours once every week. Once you record, say a batch of videos in advance that is meant for 2 or 3 weeks, you are ready to go. When you take this approach, you won’t feel the pressure of releasing a video daily, as you have already captured enough in advance.

If you think it sounds like a lot of work, think again. We’re talking about super-short videos whose duration is anywhere between just 10 and 90 seconds. And here’s the best part: You can use each of those videos across multiple platforms – other than Instagram and YouTube. It can be Facebook, X, Threads, or any other platform your business has presence.

In the end, you will find that the volume of exposure you get across the platforms for a task that you got done just once, will be well worth it.

Search Engine Marketing

There was a recent update from Google called the ‘Helpful Content’ update that came about early this year (Q1 of 2023). Simply put, the update is all about trying to get back to the old ways of writing content. In other words, it is all about writing content for people. Not algorithms!

For well over a decade-and-a-half (and it still continues), people have been focusing on writing content that fundamentally tries to optimize (read ‘please’) Google’s algorithm. However, times have changed – for better! What Google wants businesses like yours to do, is to think about what is at the core of your existing customers or prospective customers mind when they search for something, so that they end up landing on your sales page.

No prize for guessing, that at the core of almost all your visitors, is to find answers for the questions about your product or service. And that’s what you need to make sure that you clearly cover on the specific page they have landed upon, including other relevant pages.

So how do you make sure your visitors don’t leave your page and search for answers in your competitors’ websites? Simple. On your sales page, make sure you provide answers for all the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), which includes pricing, specifications, features, benefits, etc. In the process of answering all the FAQs, what you end up doing is that you answer all the questions that all the people are searching for.

On a home page, ideally you should be ranking for search terms pertaining to the type of service you’re offering. What you need to do is think of the search queries (which need not necessarily be the popular search queries) that are specific to the product or service you offer. You need to do this especially for those queries that are searched by people near your business location (‘near me’ searches), and then create the most helpful content that answers all of them.

For example, if you’re searching for a digital marketing company, one of the searches that people near you will search for could be “digital marketing company near me“ or “best digital marketing company“. To satisfy their query, all you have to do is make sure that your website provides content about digital marketing , your expertise across the field and what kind of benefits are offered at different price points.

You can then choose to provide additional details for the price-point at which you offer your services, and how they can get more value for what they pay – relative to others in your area.

Email Marketing

While email is definitely not new, it is definitely the most profitable category by far. That’s why it has stood the test of time over the last two plus decades, and still remains very attractive method of marketing.

There are various studies that show that email marketing has anywhere between 25X and 45X ROI on average. So for every INR 1/- you invest into your email marketing campaigns, you’re likely to make between INR 25/- and INR 45/- dollars in return.

For email marketing to work, you have to first get your customers’ and prospects’ email addresses, and build a relationship with them – over time. This means only those businesses who understand the value of nurturing relationships with prospective customers – over time, will actually make proactive investment, invest not just money but time too into this method of marketing.

The most powerful aspect about email marketing, is that is the best way to sell high-ticket product or service that ranges between INR 50,000/- to INR 2,50,000/- (approximately USD 500 to USD 3000). And that’s why the returns are between 25X and 45X!

Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)

This strategy, especially the Google Ads PPC strategy, is an absolute game changer when it comes to paid advertising. This strategy is all about being omnipresent (being everywhere) online, all at once. And we’re not talking about being in front of everybody and anybody, most of whom wouldn’t matter to us. We’re talking about being in front of the most relevant prospects and/or customers of your business!

Thanks to the latest ways and means businesses can set up customized campaigns, the PPC marketing strategy is an incredibly potent method, especially in the long run (9 to 18 months). While any business can leverage and enjoy the benefits from the PPC strategy, it is the local businesses that can make the most out of this strategy and get the best ROI.

Conclusion

When it comes to digital marketing, no matter what kind of business you are in and what kind of product or service you are dealing with, all business will be compelled to go for digital marketing. That’s why it would be wise for businesses like yours too to go for digital marketing – by choice.

That doesn’t mean that you have to necessarily adopt all methods of digital marketing right from the word ‘Go’. You can always start with one, and then slowly and steadily adopt more methods. Having said, it becomes critical that you need to hire the services of digital marketing professionals, who are also digital marketing strategists. After all, while good execution is important, having a great strategy is critical!