10 Must-Haves For Your 2014 Digital Marketing Plan – Part 2

10 Must-Haves For Your 2014 Digital Marketing Plan – Part 2

We are less than 2 days away from the ushering in of the 2014 New Year. While we’ve all taken time out during the holiday season to spend quality time with our family and friends, business owners must also use this end of the year time to ensure that their business is ready for the new year. If you started working on your 2014 digital marketing plan before October 2013, then you are ahead of the game! If you haven’t even started putting your plan together, then fear not — you can still put together a digital marketing plan for your business over the next seven days if you are committed to carving out some dedicated time to do so.

Our team at Aiden Marketing wants to make sure that you end this year with a well-thought out digital marketing plan for 2014 that will increase your sales growth revenue. Below is our second installment of our 10 Must-Haves for Your Digital Marketing Plan blog series which covers #6 through #10.

10 Must-Haves For Your 2014 Digital Marketing Plan: #6 – #10

6. VIDEOS: If you haven’t included videos in your marketing strategy in the past, then 2014 is definitely the year to get on board. With YouTube being the #2 search engine used by people, and the fact that producing video content can be done relatively inexpensive in today’s world, there’s really no excuse for not having videos included in your digital marketing strategy. Heck, you can capture great video from the palm of your hand via your smartphone or tablet as these devices have great video resolution and capability. Not sure what type of videos that your company should produce in order to increase your brand awareness and drive traffic to your website? Here are a few suggestions: Explainer videos (instructional how-to’s or general information); Product Demo video (don’t just talk about how great your product is – show it off in a video); Video Blog (switch it up — video blogs are a great way to engage readers as you share your thought leadership on a topic); and Customer Testimonial videos (take your written testimonials up a notch and add in some video testimonials so prospective buyers can see and hear your customers tell how much they love your company’s product or service). Not sure what type of content marketing components to include in your digital marketing plan? Download a FREE copy of our Content Marketing Strategy Playbook to learn how to develop your content marketing campaigns.

7. WEBINARS: Webinars are a marketing channel that can be very cost effective for marketing your business, while also providing a convenient, educational experience for both attendees and presenters in a highly interactive environment. Webinars will also enable your company to have a group of prospective buyers “in the room” virtually at the same time, assist in better qualifying leads, and help to drive more traffic to your website — all as a result of you providing relevant information to people in the form of a webinar. Additionally, webinars (live and recorded) are great tools to add to your digital marketing plan that will help to increase customer loyalty and lead-to-customer conversion rates.

8. EMAIL MARKETING: While social media is the darling of the digital world that we live in, email marketing is still a powerful force and a definite must-have for your 2014 digital marketing plan. You will want to make sure that you develop some type of segmentation strategy for your list of email subscribers as this will help you to deliver relevant content to people based on their interest (or other demographic value). To garner email open-rate and click-thru rate success, you need to make sure that your marketing email is:  viewable via mobile devices, has a clean and visually appealing design; prominent call-to-action buttons; includes industry related news, resources and tips (and is not just a sales pitch); and includes social share buttons. You will want to also make sure that there is an easy way for people to sign up to subscribe to your email distribution list on your website, and other online platform where your company has an active profile.

9. IN-PERSON / OFF-LINE EVENTS: While we live in a digital world, our Aiden Marketing team strongly believes that off-line events are an important part of a business’ marketing strategy. In-person events provide your business an opportunity to move your on-line social media community off-line in an environment where they can interact with you and your company’s staff directly. Additionally, offline events provide your business an opportunity to introduce itself to people who attend the event who are not members of your on-line communities (or who may not be regular social media users). Whether you are hosting a fun, interactive event, a seminar, a lunch & learn, or a networking event, etc., the key to successfully integrating in-person events into your digital marketing plan is by implementing strategies to ensure that the marketing impact and reach of your event lives beyond the actual day of the event. For example, creating a Twitter hashtag for the event, hosting a live Twitter feed for the event, capturing video of the event (speakers, attendees, etc.), blogging about the event (leading up to the event and take-a-ways from the event’s keynotes and break-out sessions), having a live Q&A session at the event, and developing infographics on info shared at the event are great ways to get more bang for your marketing budget for an in-person / off-line event. In addition to hosting events, you should plan to attend at least one or two business networking events (or conference) per month and put them on your marketing calendar

10. CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP: Connecting with your local community is not only the right thing to do, but it makes local resident and other businesses aware that your business exists. Businesses are the heartbeat of America and if you are fortunate enough to be a business owner, then we believe that you should give back to your community. At Aiden Marketing, we give back in various forms by offering free marketing advice services and donations to deserving non-profits in the Baltimore-Washington, DC metropolitan area. Our team members also volunteer their time in the community as well. What cause is your business passionate about? Where could your business make a donation or have your staff volunteer at in your local community? While the intent of performing community give-back activities is to help others, you may find from time-to-time that your give-back to others will result in connections to spheres of influence in the community and possible new customers for your business.

If you missed the first installment of our 10 Must-Haves for Your 2014 Digital Marketing Plan which covers #1 – #5, then click HERE to read it so that you’ll have a complete picture of all the things to include in your 2014 digital marketing plan. If you want to stay in the loop with our “Marketing Rewired” blog, then subscribe to our blog by clicking here (or you can simply come back and check our website).

Post Your Feedback: Did you find our 10 Must-Haves For Your 2014 Digital Marketing Plan blog series helpful? If so, please post a comment below and let us which numbered points out of the 10 “must-haves” we shared that you benefited from the most. We value your feedback. – Thanks in advance.

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