Increasing Leads and Sales with Digital Marketing

Summary: Looking to increase your digital marketing leads? WSI has some tips to help boost your leads and sales.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2018 and has been updated with additional content in January 2022.

With all the clutter and distraction of the digital world, getting the attention of your audience is an increasingly difficult task. Content, video and social media marketing are all worthy digital tactics – but they have one thing in common: they take time to deliver their value to audiences and don’t generate quick sales.

Properly managed digital advertising campaigns, however, are a fast and efficient way to drive new leads and sales to your business. To show you which digital advertising strategies to use – and when to use them – we created a video on how to Increase Leads and Sales with Digital Advertising:

Step 1: Identify the Right Search Criteria

The one big advantage marketers have is access to an unprecedented amount of data on customers (or at least the groups customers belong to). The key is using this data to identify the right search criteria for digital advertising campaigns.

Details like location, age, interests, and Internet activity provide valuable insight businesses can use to not only better target their ads but also make them less intrusive. Many consumers and Internet users are wary of ads but maybe that’s because most ads are poorly targeted and invasive? As marketers, we can do better!

Step 2: Advertise On the Appropriate Ad Networks

It’s impossible to make a catchall ad platform recommendation because the truth is the best platform is different for every business. If you have a great Facebook business page and receive lots of engagement on your posts, then Facebook Ads are for you. But if you don’t have an existing audience on Facebook then you aren’t likely to generate one with a few ads.

Like it is for many other digital marketing components, knowing your audience is more than half the battle in achieving success.

Step 3: Put Campaign Tracking in Place

When you implement campaign tracking as part of your digital advertising strategy, you’ll immediately know when certain keywords, times or target groups aren’t working. And to a strategy that revolves around paying money for clicks, it’s crucially important to stop your campaigns the moment they aren’t performing to the standards you expect – because then you’re just wasting money. Put campaign tracking in place – it’s worth the extra work!

Step 4: Carry Out Split Tests

In the same way, tracking campaigns is important, split testing similar keywords, images and text is a great way to maximize the ROI of your digital advertising campaigns. If you’ve got two keywords you like you don’t have to guess which one is better – split test them and use the one that performs better!

Step 5: Building an App

Building an app is an effective (and easy) way to increase traffic to your business website or digital marketing services. Work with an app creator to help you to design an app that works best for your business. Once you set up your app, you need to get customers to download it and purchase your services. You can do this by offering them unique services, discounts, and app features that your competitors do not. Remember that your app needs to be user-friendly to your existing clients or customers while offering value to potential clients or customers.

Tips to attract users to your app:

• Ensure your app has a good User Interface (UI) as first impressions matter, even in the digital world.
• Your app should load fast and have no delays or crashes.
• Make sure that your app is compatible with a range of mobile devices.
• Ensure the user has access to customer support or help options should an issue arise with the app or your website.
• Initiate routine updates to keep the app up-to-date and secure.

Step 6: Make Videos for YouTube and Vimeo

Vimeo and YouTube are online video platforms with millions of users and viewers daily. You should be using these leading platforms as they can help your business to grow via video views alone. Upload and create videos that target your specific audience. Videos can be done by you, your team, or (for more professional videos), a videographer or photographer. Ensure your content is relatable to your audience or create videos specifically related to your business.

Examples of video content you can include:

• “How to” videos
• Virtual tours of your business or company
• Instructional videos
• Testimonial videos or business reviews
• Any team-building events at your company

Make sure to link your video back to your website by adding the URL to your video, channel, or in the description box to increase leads.

Step 7: Set Up a Blog

Creating a blog, or guest blogging, can help you to publish more in-depth and personal content for your audience. Blogs related to digital marketing can provide useful information for people looking for your marketing services. Along with the information it provides, blogs can also help you to sell your service offering by showing readers why they need to contact you and how you can help them with their digital marketing. When creating blogs on your website, don’t forget to add relevant keywords to attract customers, and link them back to your website or landing page

Write a guest post

Guest blogging is a popular marketing strategy that you can utilize to boost your business and increase your website visits. You need to ensure that the content you create offers value to the website you are writing for, and is also relatable to your business. If you create a guest post, choose a reputable business or blog – this will help you to promote your brand as a credible and successful business, which in return will help you to generate leads.

Step 8: Offer Free Audits

Offering free audits to businesses or potential clients can show them just how exceptional your digital marketing services are. Whether you choose to do a manual audit or use tools is up to you. Audits are essential to any digital business but the delivery of the audit information to your clients is most important. When you have finished gathering all the information you need, create a PDF document with a report of your findings. These findings should include recommendations and key changes that should be taken into account, as well as how you can help the business to tackle its digital marketing goals.

If required you can arrange a live video call with potential clients to discuss key areas that need to be worked on. Meeting clients face-to-face or via a video call can help you to deliver audit information while promoting your business, your fees, as well as answer any questions the client may have. It will also help you to set up follow-ups and fees should the client be interested in more services that you have available.

Step 9: Create Informative Gated Content

Gated content is an effective marketing strategy to entice your website visitors to take action. To achieve leads through gated content, you need to create high-quality and engaging content that encourages your visitors to provide their names and email addresses in exchange for your services. You can also create gated content specifically asking users to follow your social media channels or to share your content.

Examples of gated content:

• Download links for a free checklist
• Download links to eBooks or White Papers
• Webinar links
• Links to courses and tutorials
• Personalize demo of your services
• Discounts or vouchers for your services
• Links on your social media feed/stories

Step 10: Create Tools that your Potential Customers Need

Working in digital marketing can be tough without the right tools. Businesses are always looking for digital marketing tools to help them to optimize their client’s marketing campaigns. To gain potential leads, you can offer your website visitors or potential clients tools to help their business to grow.

The tools you should create should be something that your potential clients and targeted audience need. An example of this includes a tool for search engines (SEO) for clients to use to track the progress of their social media campaigns. Blogs are also useful here as you can create content that is related to these marketing tools and link it back to your website page.

Step 11: Host Events

Events marketing can help you to increase lead prospects by drawing attraction to your business. Events don’t have to be big and as the pandemic has taught us, event marketing can occur successfully on a virtual stage. The idea behind event marketing is to reach the right target audience and create awareness of your brand. An example of an event your business could use in an online free webinar featuring effective digital marketing tools. For this event, you not only provide useful information that a business can use, but you also showcase how your business can help them.

Step 12: Measure, Improve, Repeat

There are many different forms of digital advertising. There’s only one way to tell whether PPC, social or display ads are best for you: try them all and measure your results. May the best format win.

If you would like more information on digital advertising or professional help implementing digital ad campaigns, get in touch with your local WSI Digital Marketing Consultant today.