Three Golden Tips From a Digital Marketing Expert

Digital marketing has become the most important way for businesses to reach consumers, with a growing proportion of people using smartphones and digital media as their primary source of information to help them make decisions about what to buy and who to buy from.

The online audience is almost exponentially large, and with increased communications and diverse promotional tools available through social media channels, any company wishing to compete in high-growth marketplaces will need to invest in solid digital marketing strategy development to secure its position.

However, simply having an online presence and running advertisements is not enough – as these three tips from James Williams, marketing lead , explain in detail. James has worked with the South African fintech for almost ten years and is one of the few marketers who has experience on both sides of the equator, having worked in London for four years as an SEO manager at Money Gap Ltd.

1. Prioritize Personalization and Localization

Williams notes that his transition from working in the multicultural London environment to representing the credit lender in South Africa was a challenging one, mainly because the tried and tested approaches and strategies that worked so effectively in the UK didn’t achieve the same results when replicated in a new demographic.

He says that testing is key, rather than assuming that a methodology that worked elsewhere – however successfully – would be suitable for the audience in a different jurisdiction.

For example, while London is a city with an eclectic mix of people from almost every country in the world, the common denominator is that nearly everybody speaks English. In South Africa, the blend of dialects and first-tongue languages means that rolling out a promotion in one language simply does not engage with swathes of the population – where there are 11 official languages.

The advice is to step back, revisit the fundamentals, and carefully research the needs, cultural expectations and pain points of any target customer before moving forward.

2. Extract Maximum Value From Every Piece of Content

Our next tip is to ensure that the money invested in each area of content creation is used widely, not solely to reduce the costs of graphic design or videography, but because repurposing content in various formats and sizes for different channels acts as a cross-promotional exercise.

Evergreen content is the gold standard – optimized, high-quality content that remains relevant and informative, with ever-accumulating importance in SERP rankings.

Cross promotions attract greater volumes of traffic by directing visitors to other channels. For example, if you have created an explainer video on YouTube, referencing this with a link on other socials or through your website means you generate better viewer numbers and organically continue to establish your credibility.

3. Introduce Multi-Media and Non-Sales Promotions

The third and final piece of advice is to ensure that all digital marketing content is designed to improve the customer experience, featuring images, graphics, GIFs and engaging visuals that draw the reader in and can portray your brand identity far more quickly than long-form text.

Pieces of content that generate thought leadership and tackle common problems or help visitors understand a complex issue can be just as valuable as a promotion – and mean they have a reason to keep coming back. As Williams says, “Google doesn’t play favorites,” so it’s up to you to provide the incentive for your target customer to engage. 

Don’t get trapped in the classic pitfall of thinking that long-form content is always better. While there is strong evidence that suggests search engines favor longer content, that is only one piece of the puzzle. Factors such as site speed, readability, authority, trust, value and quality of what you’re producing are significantly more important than generating bloated content that wastes your user’s valuable time just to hit the ‘magic mark’ of a two thousand-word article.

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