2014 will be a year in which marketing will be even more important for online businesses than what we saw till now. That is mainly because of the fact that other promotional methods become more complicated while online marketing continues to revitalize itself with new methods and strategies.
The work of an online marketer is all about reaching the target audience and convincing people to make sales. That is done with highly interesting methods. While some old strategies will still work, those that embrace the new ones will be the ones that will come up on top.
So what should we do to improve our online marketing strategy in 2014?
Focus On Content Quality!
We keep trying to promote ads for services and products. The truth is that people are tired of this. They want to learn something new or to find solutions to the problems that they have. It is not enough to tell them that your service is the solution. You need to highlight why that is the case. That can easily be done by offering great content.
The big problem with content marketing is that people just think about websites or blogs. When we run a marketing campaign, every single sentence that is used should be seen as content and should be of a high quality.
As an example, let us say that you write a short message on Facebook. Do you want to directly highlight your service? If you do that, your message will not be seen with accepting eyes. If you showcase a problem that people have and that you can solve, you will get a much better CTR and even conversion rate.
Arrange Your Email Lists And Update Them!
No matter what some specialists might tell you, email marketing still works. However, you have to be really careful. Since the growth of unsolicited emails is worrying, you have to be sure that you do not send a single email that does not reach the intended audience.
Smart internet marketers take a look at the emails that they have in the database and arrange them so that the best outcome is reached. Eliminate all duplicates and bounced email addresses. Also, update the contents by thinking about segmenting the list. Do so based on past purchases and interests. For instance, if someone is already your client, it should be in a different list than someone that never bought something for you as the message you will use will be different.
Focus On Sponsored Content
Content marketing is really important and it needs to be a focus point for your business in 2014. While you can easily use WordPress Marketing plugins and various different tricks to enhance this, you should still remember those channels that are proven to work really well. The smart marketer never uses just one channel.
We have many different sponsored content variations that are available. You can even sponsor content in online magazines. The trick here is to make sure that you sponsor the correct articles or columns. Google does see the articles that are offered by editorial sources are really accurate so aligning your content with it will be appreciated.
Do Not Forget About Google Authorship
AuthorRank will surely be stronger as a part of search engine ranking algorithms. You have to use authorship because of the fact that the person that creates the content will be connected to all published articles and the Google Plus profile. While we were happy to dismiss the importance of Google Plus and what it offered in the past, we cannot ignore it anymore. The simple fact that a photograph and the Google+ profile link appears in search engine result is something that can help us out.
Even if we are not to consider AuthorRank as an important SE ranking factor, we need to think about the people that see our content. Attaching a face to any piece of content is important. After all, that is why models are paid or why superstars are paid a lot of money for various marketing campaigns.
Listen To Your Audience
The truth is that people are sick and tired of seeing ads being stuck in their throats. Our audience tells us everything that we need to know about the needs that they have. That is especially true when referring to the internet. We have to basically gather as much information as possible about the audience. We need to know what they want so that we can offer that.
Besides listening to the audience, we need to also adapt our marketing strategy to solve the problems that people may have. Make sure that you set up some sort of customer feedback system so that you know what client like and what they do not like. After all, repeat customers help out any business out there.
Free Marketing Strategies Will Be A Main Focal Point
The best investments are always those that are free. Nobody can argue with this. What better way to get free advertising than using social networks? We cannot deny the importance of the networks in the life of our customers. When people do not like something, they complain. You can find such tweets and Facebook messages.
Since our audience has social network accounts, we need to be there, exploring every tool that is available. If we manage to create high quality, viral content, it is a guarantee that people will share our content for us. This is the best way to promote something when on a budget and it is the one channel that small businesses need to use at all times. We have to share our content across all the channels and we have to customize the messages written for every single one.
Conclusions
On the whole, the work of the online marketer is going to be really tough in 2014. It will most likely be tougher than ever before due to the fact that the competition is really strong. However, this is where we need to be.
