Online presence has become a necessity for any brand seeking to build a reputation, brand exposure, reach, and most of all, generating quality leads, ultimately converting to sales. ‘Digital marketing’, however, is the driving force behind your brand’s success, in today’s world.
With so many digital marketing channels, including social media platforms available, it seems like an easily do-able task; and with paid marketing, it indeed is achievable with minimum effort. But, building your brand from the ground up organically is a whole different ball game – in terms of effective lead generation, sale conversions, and customer retention. It requires extensive knowledge, consistency, patience, and relentless creativity.
Now, the question arises that which particular platform to maximize on for your brand, organically? And the answer is simple; all of them. Since you want to reach as many people as possible, it is better to have your online presence on all online marketing platforms. Not only will this increase your reach and targeted audience but it will give you a fair chance to survive in a ruthless online space that is already crowded.
The days of traditional marketing are long gone, and with the continuous growth of internet users, which according to Pew Research jumped 5% in the last three years – Digital Marketing is the only pathway. You can even hire a digital marketing agency to do the work for so you can just relax and wait for the results.
So before we begin with how to succeed with organic online marketing, we suggest you understand ‘online/digital marketing’ first. You need to start by building a strong foundation and then move on to the technicalities.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing, in its essence, includes all forms of marketing that is carried out using an electronic device and the internet using channels that include social media, email, content, search engines, and more.
The main goal of digital marketing is to reach out and connect with potential customers and leads through multiple channels and bringing them to your site or common ground to gain purchases. Now, attracting these potential customers and nurturing them with the necessary information of your brand in the form of content, videos, and many other techniques is an extensive process that can be done free of cost.
We’ll be discussing the few effective organic digital marketing channels and how to use them to achieve maximum results without spending a single penny.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
One of the most significant aspects of ‘organic’ digital marketing would be SEO. Since any business or brand needs a website first – having one that is search engine optimized will help improve its digital presence in search engines – mainly Google. Thereby increasing your organic traffic
According to Similar Web, organic search equates to 95% of all web traffic.
SEO in itself is an extensive field with three main components; On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and Technical SEO. However, we will be focusing on one of the most significant aspects of SEO – which is ‘keyword research.’
SEO needs to be done when optimizing your site and content on it, so that not only you are in tune with what your audience’s desires and understand their interest- but also help your site rank better on search engines.
Since 93% of the online experiences initiate with search engines, where users type in a certain phrase or query to get relevant results- you must bank on those keywords to appear on those user-initiated searches. This way, you can attract potential customers through SEO.
Key aspects of keyword research:
According to IMPACT, 50% of the searches are four words or more.
- Find keywords that have the highest volume. But keep in mind that they are searched for the most but have less competition- which means that fewer people are trying to rank for those particular keywords.
- Long-tail keywords are your best bet, especially the ones that include a location – since short-tail keywords are useful but often have enough crowd using them. With long-tail, you have a high chance of having less competition and still staying relevant to the searches. Yes, the search volume is low and more specific, but it still has higher engagement and conversion rates.
- Now, if your site has lower domain authority, then you will struggle to outrank solid contenders no matter how optimized and high quality your content is. Do not fret, and have patience. It will take time, but with continuous SEO content and backlinks – your authority will improve and go up. Another thing you can do is use PPC campaigns to bid on keywords that you think you cannot rank organically.
Key aspects of optimizing your content:
- Use keywords into your web copy, heading, and subheading- but avoid keyword stuffing and use variations instead.
- Add alt text to all your images using keywords from the list you have compiled. This will relate your pictures to Google’s image section as well. So when a user searches for a picture against the keyword you associate, the image will appear in Google’s image section.
- There are tools like Yoast SEO’s Plugin that will help you get the best out of your content in terms of optimization.
Content Marketing:
Ever heard ‘Content is King’? Well, this is another most popular form of marketing where quality content is created to drive brand awareness, increase traffic, generate leads, and reached out to potential customers. Content marketing uses several forms to increase brand reach – which are blog posts, guest posting, podcasting, eBooks, webinars, and such.
The content that is being written adds value for the audience and most important must be keyword optimized to appeal to users’ search intent. If the content is great and relevant, the audience is bound to come back to your site –establishing you as an expert and compelling them to re-visit.
Quality and optimized content will yield more results than increased traffic and loyal visitors. People might share it on social media platforms, increasing traffic and awareness of your brand. What more is that some might even link your informative or creative article in their content – which would give you a quality backlink and help you in ranking better in search engines.
How to do content marketing?
51% of the content consumption is driven from organic search – so imagine the impact your content can make over these organic searches.
Here are the top priorities of B2C content creators.
How can you achieve effective content marketing? There are a few things to keep in mind.
Build a strategy for your content
You need to have a clear vision of what type of content you are building and for what audience? Moreover, what is the end result that you are hoping to attain through this content? Is it more leads? Traffic building? Conversion? Once the ‘vision’ is sorted, you can move on to the structure of the content.
Include evergreen content
If you aim to get a sudden and short-term boost in your traffic, then news pieces that include breaking news or opinion articles on current news are excellent. But, evergreen articles will give you long-term results. They are longer than news posts and include helpful information – something that can be read at any point in time and still drive something useful from it. Evergreen content not only adds value to the audiences, but it also keeps the traffic avenues open even after months and even years of publishing. Of course, its visibility is only improved with better SEO practices.
Keyword optimize your content
Keyword research is an important part of your content marketing strategy. Not only does it show you what the audience has been searching the most, but also how to incorporate the right keywords to boost your SEO and your ranking on search engines. Start by making a list of relevant high and low ranking keywords, including long-tail keywords as well. Do competitive analysis as well – which includes looking up what keywords your competitors are ranking for. Once all the research is done, incorporate those keywords strategically and voila!
Focus on quality and value
It is imperative to keep in mind that keyword optimization isn’t your only answer and solution – quality of the content is more important. Write for the audience and deliver them the valuable information they want to see in your content. Sometimes, great written content with just enough keyword optimization ranks better, as it is driving traffic through other channels – including social sharing.
Utilize the right tools
When doing keyword research or content, there are various great tools and extensions available for you to make use of. Consider BuzzSumo to check already published content against any keyword – which can help you give an idea, inspiration, or even help with information. Next, for keywords, you can utilize Keywords Everywhere – that’ll give you a list of keywords to choose from.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has disrupted the organic digital marketing landscape, changing the way online marketing is carried out – making it simple, free, and fastest. Yes, with ease it attracted many competitors making the social media platforms saturated with countless options –ultimately making social marketing a tad bit difficult and challenging.
However, it is still the best way to connect with your audience and keep them engaged with your brand driving constant traffic and conversion goals. With Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and even Snapchat at your disposal, the sky is the limit. You would need to keep up with the trends and be creative. Of course, there is a lot more work that requires for a successful social media campaign – but it is do-able with the right strategies, practices, and research.
How to do social media marketing?
Social media platforms have many components – the most popular being the ‘story’ section and that alone has proven to be quite useful for businesses. Also, 73% of marketers have claimed social marketing to have proven beneficial for their business or brand.
Here are some of the best practices to keep in check when performing social media marketing.
Consistency in posts
Make sure you are posting regularly with a stable frequency – not too soon and not too late, either. Another thing to be kept in check is posting strategies differ on every platform, so make sure you are strategizing accordingly – this includes the amount of time you post in a week.
Keep your content diverse
Do not stick to one form or format even. But in fact, incorporate videos, images, gifs, reposts, call-to-action, and everything that works for your brand. It is all about being creative.
Stay in-check with analytics
Analytics will guide your future strategies showing you which post is popular with your audience and what is not working – so you can adjust accordingly. Each platform has its analytics section, which you can make use of and monitor progress and areas that need improvement.
Interact and build relationships
Staying relevant and interactive is the key. Make sure you are building trust and solid relationships by interacting with your audience, which could be through a Q/A or answering their queries in the comment section. Make them feel a part of your brand, rather than a page that consistently pitches content for sale – which is a potential slow death to user engagement and traffic.
Email Marketing
It is safe to say that email marketing is the less celebrated form of organic digital marketing –a promotional email that gets lost somewhere in the pool of other similar emails. Yet, it is still sufficient to some degree, driving conversions and keeping your leads engaged.
How to do email marketing?
Try segmenting your audience type and then sending personalized emails to each group. Email receivers are most likely to open and engage with your email if it’s relevant to their needs and search intents. Email software that provides email segmentation features includes MailChimp and Constant Contact.
Best practices to maximum results
Add subscribe option to your newsletter
This is for the users who are forwarding your useful email to their fellows – add a visible CTA that enables the readers to subscribe to your newsletter. Yes, the ones who are receiving your email may have agreed to the newsletter, but for the potential leads, your email might be shared to –it’s useful for them to subscribe.
Add incentives in your subject lines
This is a great way to catch their attention and interest. But, make sure you are not overwhelming the customer through product promotions only. Here’s an example of an alluring subject line and an inviting body copy.
Personalize your email
Marketing automation is great to manage bulk emails, but if it lacks personalization and ‘human’ interaction – it is bound to lose its credibility. Since no one wants to interact with a robotic email that only talks business. Start with ‘dear member’ followed by a warm body that speaks to them on a personal level – Here’s an example:
So what did we gather so far?
Organic digital marketing is paving the way for many small and large scale business, considering it is free-of-cost marketing that slowly and steadily builds your online presence. With practical strategies and enough creative flair, you are bound to generate great results. Of course, mobile app development has been a game-changer, so bank on social apps and gather as much benefit as you can – organically.
