Four States Small Business Blog

Many businesses put in a lot of time and effort to have their brand go viral. It increases awareness, traffic, memorability, and positive engagement. And while there’s no magic formula for “going viral,” every brand hopes that their content will be seen and shared by the right people. However, once you do achieve viral status, it’s important to have a strategy in place to capitalize on the momentum you’ve built. That’s where digital brand management comes in.

There are seemingly infinite digital marketing tactics available, so it can get confusing when it's time to decide which ones are best for your business. However, reading about each and every one would take a while, and when it's time to run promotions, it's important to get moving instead of spending countless hours on research. Yet, with over4 billion internet users worldwide, you can't afford not to add digital solutions to your marketing toolkit.

Managing your brand is essential for your digital presence. It allows you to create a consistent brand image and experience across all channels. Digital brand management takes traditional branding practices and applies them across digital mediums to enhance the customer experience. When done right, companies can successfully build brand awareness, engage with customers and expand market reach. Below are some of the top digital marketing solutions to use for your brand management efforts:

There are now almost 4.2 billion people who are active internet users, and 3.4 billion who are active social media users. With that in mind, it's easy to see that a company that does not engage in digital marketing is missing out on opportunities to reach, attract and engage customers online. Fortunately, this type of marketing is inexpensive and the barrier to entry is low, especially when compared to other forms of high-reach advertising.

Think social media is just for teenagers? Think again. Social media usage continues to grow across all demographics. In fact, a staggering 3.1 billion people are active social media users in 2018 - that’s nearly half of the world’s total population! Not only that, but 11 new people start using social media every second, with the average American spending more than two hours per day on social media. Given these statistics, it should not come as a surprise that more companies are prioritizing social media as part of their marketing strategy.

Marketers use a number of acronyms everyday, but KPI might be one of the most important, right behind ROI. A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric - typically expressed as a numeric value - that indicates the growth, success, or failure of an advertising campaign or individual channel or component.

Digital advertising isn’t always as simple or straightforward as it may seem. For brands trying to integrate digital for the first time, there’s so many options that it can be overwhelming. And more experienced marketers may want to create an entirely new digital strategy because their current strategy isn’t working. 

Advertising has certainly come a long way over the years and nowhere is that more evident than in digital marketing. Advertising tools continue to become more complex and intuitive, allowing your advertisements to be both more effective and less expensive at the same time. One of the big recent shifts is in the migration of many marketers away from paid advertising and towards display advertising. Many marketers are finding that keyword-based display advertising is helping improve their overall ROI and keep costs under control.

How amazing would it be if your advertisements traveled throughout the internet, seeking out people who recently visited your website? Letting them know that the special product or service that they recently reviewed was now on sale, or was running low on inventory? This may seem like a far-future functionality that sounds cool but isn't available. For marketers -- it's just called retargeting or remarketing, and we do it every day. This relatively new feature allows you to wrangle those individuals who didn't quite make it to the finish line on their purchase back into the fold, and back into a measurable customer journey. Retargeting is perhaps the best way to help prospects walk through the entirely convoluted sales process, as each lead may interact with your business in a slightly different way. Retargeting allows you to reach out with the most relevant message to a prospect who is already engaged, making your advertising dollars work harder and smarter! See how you can use retargeting to boomerang new customers straight back to your website.

Creating a stellar website is only the first step in getting people to find your business online -- your site must also be discoverable. The process of creating a website that's appealing to search engines is called SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. In its simplest form, SEO is defined by industry-leader Moz as "the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results". This sounds fascinating, but what does it really mean? The rules around SEO can be complex and are changing on a regular basis. Here are the top five ways that search optimization practices have changed in the last decade.