The coronavirus pandemic and its resultant measures have taken their toll on the world of business, with many companies furloughing staff and drastically reducing their promotional activity. As we come out of lockdown, the focus must shift toward customised digital marketing, with every element designed with a brand’s target audience and key goals at its core.
Whilst there will always be a place for traditional promotional formats, the need has never been greater for intuitive and responsive inbound marketing practices. Rather than taking a scattergun approach, inbound marketing uses techniques that cater toward specific types of visitors and draw them to a website, leading to a greater volume and higher quality of web traffic.
The types of online marketing that will bring the best return on investment are websites built on search engine optimisation, or SEO, and digital communications that present an opportunity for conversation, such as blog posts and social media. Not only will a website that incorporates advanced SEO be more efficient and lucrative, it also achieves cost efficiency for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the majority of visitors will fit your brand’s buyer personas, therefore increasing the likelihood of a call to action being followed. Prime examples of this are the visitor downloading a brochure, signing up to a newsletter or making an enquiry into your service offering. In turn, your company can save time and money due to prospects coming to you, rather than countless hours being spent approaching potential customers via unsolicited and intrusive methods, such as cold calling.
By moving the majority of a company’s marketing toward web-based activity and digital campaigns, it will also benefit from the ability to track acquisition, behaviour and conversion. Knowing who is visiting your website and how they arrived there is valuable insight into how your marketing is performing. Meanwhile, understanding how they interact with the site highlights strengths and weaknesses related to the navigation and content. Being able to see the ratio of visitors that convert into customers and the speed of the process is also practical, as it can be used to shape the further development of your website and communications.
A professional web development and digital marketing agency will define a company’s target audience and goals at the very start. This is followed by the design, building and testing of the site, ensuring that it reflects the brand’s mission and vision before going live. Once active, the site and its associated digital channels will attract new interest quickly, which will continue to grow and evolve when combined with monthly reports that recommend additional improvements.
Paul Scott is the Managing Director at Eyeweb, a digital marketing agency based in East Yorkshire: “As we come out of lockdown, businesses need to know that their marketing budgets are bringing a strong return on investment. Our clients are still benefiting from advanced SEO even during the pandemic, such as Prestige Recruitment and Hanson Caravans, who are listed at the top of Google for relevant search terms.”
With responsible budgeting being more important than ever for businesses of all shapes and sizes, SEO and inbound digital marketing are set to play the leading role. The accountability that they offer is also key, as by analysing awareness, engagement and conversion, companies and entrepreneurs achieve a clearer vision of where their brand could be in the near future and the activity required to lead it there.
To find out more about how Eyeweb is helping businesses to thrive through web development and digital marketing, please call 01482 628830.
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