One of the headache issues for many business owners is that a certain amount of money is spent on advertising every month but fails to increase the customers, or spending money to build a corporate website but fails to increase the website traffic, and marketing activities have been stagnant. What is the root cause? The best way for an enterprise to promote product sales is to put products and services in front of potential customers. Marketing is the decision-making of an enterprise on sales, promotion, and exposure points, thinking through how to launch products into the market in the most efficient way.

Marketing strategies can be divided into the following categories:

• Offline Advertising : TV, magazines, publications, leaflets, stores, events, billboards, etc.
• Digital Marketing ( Online Advertising ): Youtube, Facebook and other social media platform advertising, website, email, search engine optimization (SEO), Google keywords, content marketing, influencer marketing, newsletter marketing
• In-person promotion: through face-to-face communication with sales staff.
• Public Relations: news media, opinion leaders, organizations, associations, etc.

Offline advertising is mostly a traditional sales medium, and many business owners are well aware of it. On the contrary, many people think that digital marketing is simply setting up Facebook/IG accounts and placing Google advertisements, but in fact digital marketing covers a very wide range. Let me introduce three types of effective digital marketing methods.

1.Social Media Marketing

Social media platform marketing refers to promotion through social media platforms. In addition to increasing brand awareness, it can also gather loyal supporters and form a loyal customer base, thereby increasing profits. Nowadays, people’s daily lives are inseparable from digital devices. People spend one to several hours on social media platforms almost every day. Therefore, advertising promotion and stories posted on social media platforms can greatly increase exposure opportunities and outreach to potential customers.

The most popular social media platforms include Facebook, IG, Twitter, etc.

One of the most common misunderstandings about social media marketing is, the business owner thinks that the corporate fan page has 10,000 followers, so every post can reach these 10,000 fans. In fact, if you have a detailed analysis of the posts on each social media platform, you will easily notice that each post on average only reaches 1-5% of followers naturally (depending on the reaction of the fans to the post). The more people Like and Share, it will push up the number of impressions shown to fans. Therefore, the focus of social media platform marketing is to:

• Write posts that resonate with readers, rather than one-way promotion, so that readers will like or share
• Avoid doing short-term promotions, because by the time people see the post, the promotion period may have passed

2.Content Marketing

Compared with direct advertising, content marketing requires less cost, but it requires more time and thought, so many business owners just ignore content marketing.

Content marketing refers to providing valuable content and information to potential consumers. As time goes by, content marketing can increase the corporate’s recognition and branding, subtly creating demand and attracting potential consumers to purchase products and services, and ultimately generate profit.

Nowadays we read dozens of advertisements every day, unless you have a large advertising budget or extraordinary creative ideas, it is very difficult to use advertisements to impress customers. On the contrary, the general public prefers to read practical information, tips, and interesting topics. Content marketing is precisely taking advantage of this preference and promoting the brand in a more “accepting” way. Content marketing can enhance brand value. Apart from selling products and services, it can also promote brand concepts.

3.Email Marketing

Email marketing refers to keeping in touch with existing customers or potential customers through email. Some people may think that email promotion is outdated and useless. In fact, with the help of certain tactics, the promotional emails’ click-to-open rate is often higher than expected. There are various auxiliary tools that can help you send a large number of personalized emails, integrate contact lists, and analyze email data. Therefore, email marketing is a low-cost and high-efficiency marketing method that many companies like.

Of course, the prerequisite for email marketing is that the company has enough email addresses. Most of the email marketing will be used to send out to existing customers (or potential customers who have already had a certain degree of contact), hoping that they will browse the website again, or contact the merchant, and finally make a purchase.

Email marketing probably won’t work for a stranger. Because nowadays people are very alert to emails such as scams and phishing. When they see an email from a strange business, they will generally become suspicious.

Of course, digital marketing is not limited to the above three categories. In the next article, we will continue to introduce other digital marketing methods with examples.