Digital marketing consists of various strategies with a common goal: to build sales. Be it print ads, TV commercials, social media ads, and more, you’re ultimately chasing one goal, just taking different routes to reach it.
For your new business, choosing the proper route is crucial. Get lost once, and it could be hard to track your path and start all over again. Hence, before deciding to employ a specific digital marketing strategy, it’ll help to know which ones are the most effective.
But what if your budget is limited? We’ve also laid out the costs of the best digital marketing tactics, so you can make it a realistic goal to invest in them now or in the future.
The Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies
As of 2018, SmartInsights found that the most effective digital marketing strategy was social media marketing. Data management was discovered to be the least successful, and SEO earned a good ranking somewhere in the middle of it all.
That doesn’t mean, however, that you should only use social media marketing and nothing else. Digital marketing is a bit of a trial and error process. What’s works for one company may not work for you, or vice versa, hence you need to consider more than one strategy.
As you plan your digital marketing road map, be flexible on the following:
- Shifting SEO patterns
- Future trends
- Content calendar and timeline
- Best-performing social channels
- The KPIs to focus on
- Progress report sources, and where you can discuss and regroup
A successful digital marketing strategy will continuously need some adjustments, so you have to be active in monitoring its progress. A team of professionals, such as outside consultants, is vital for startups where the workforce is still limited. They’ll be the ones to analyze your metrics and recommend new strategies should the one you’re using turns out ineffective.
Costs of Effective Strategies
1. Social Media Marketing
This strategy is the use of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to post ads and sponsored content. Its average cost can range from $20 to $350 per day. You may also pay for them monthly, which can cost your startup $600 to $10,500 every month.
2. Pay-per-click Ads (PPC)
PPC ads mostly come from Google ads, but other options include search ads, local search ads, and social PPC ads. If you’re using Google, you’ll have to pay the search engine for it to list your ad on top of the search listings when a user types in a related keyword. When the user clicks your ad, you’ll then pay the cost per click.
Effective PPC services involving keywords can cost around $0.50 to $50 per click. And on Google, the average cost per click is $1 to $2.
3. Organic SEO
Organic SEO is the strategy that drives organic traffic to your website, meaning there will be no cost per clicks or any bidding involved. Instead, this includes keywords relevant to your business that your target audience also types in search engines.
Currently, organic SEO costs anywhere between $1,550 and $5,000 every month. One-time projects can cost $5,000 to $30,000, while consultants may charge $80 to $200 per hour.
The Secret to Success
Any digital marketing strategy can be useful for your business, as long as it reaches and appeals to your target audience. You need to do more than mapping out your plan and practicing the flexibility mentioned above. You should also outline each phase of your buyer’s journey, understand what makes your content compelling, leave room for improvement, build a library of content, and visualize a clear direction to your goal. These actions will make the perfect recipe for a successful digital marketing strategy.
Again, it can be a trial and error process, so it’ll more or less be a gamble. But with competent professionals at your side and your knowledge to guide you, your investment will be well spent.
