3 Tips for Standing Out Online

The corporate world is changing rapidly, and even more so with the pandemic. Many companies and merchants have had to adapt and make the digital leap. Since the beginning of 2020, online commerce has really taken off in Quebec, with a 118% increase. But on the Internet, faced with giants and well-established businesses, competition is fierce. How do you stand out?

 

In an interview with Jonathan Durante, co-founder of Expandify Marketing Inc., a company specializing in digital marketing that has been located in the Alfred-Nobel business centre of the Technoparc Montréal since its beginnings, he explains how important it is to follow the latest marketing trends.

Digitally, everything evolves quickly and to be visible, you have to be original, different, innovative and proactive. Consumers are constantly confronted with numerous advertisements on all platforms. If we take Facebook as an example, by the end of 2020, the platform had passed the 10-million advertiser mark according to the Statista website. That’s a lot of companies and ads to compete with.

Jonathan Durante gives three tips on how to get the basics of a digital marketing strategy right and stand out from others.

1. Get your ads seen by the right people

Today, with 3.7 billion followers worldwide, most consumers use social media. However, not everyone is a potential customer. So the first step in a successful digital strategy is to define your target audience (also known as persona) and, most importantly, to find ways to reach them. Many companies spend a lot of money on marketing but fail to reach their target audience.

However, it is possible to target your customers based on several factors (demographics, geography, interests, etc.). The more specific your target audience, and the more you communicate with them – with the right message and in the right way – the more you will achieve your sales goals.

2. Using data

As social media advertising campaigns progress, companies will be able to see what worked and what didn’t. Companies will also be able to see who has visited their social media pages or website. Saving data and statistics is crucial for future campaigns.

With this data, not only can the companies tailor advertising, but they can also target people who have visited their website, signed up for a newsletter, or clicked on an advertisement in the last six months or year, and send them specific and attractive offers.

3. Track your return on investment (ROI)

Directly from the social media platforms, it is possible to track the return on investment of marketing campaigns. For example, on Facebook, this information is integrated into the Ads Manager platform, which allows you to view the performance of your ads against your budget and thus analyse the ROI of ad spending, cost per website purchase, cost per lead and much more at a glance. So you can stop campaigns that are not working and adjust successful campaigns to get even better results.

With a successful digital marketing strategy, you spend less and get more sales. Almost half of all businesses do not have a well-defined marketing strategy, which means they are certainly wasting time and money, with little return on investment. It is therefore important to lay the foundations of your digital strategy, and then continually improve and refine it to increase your sales, while spending less.

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Headline photo credit: Igor Miske

2nd photo credit: Will Francis

3rd photo credit: Stephen Dawson

4th photo credit: Brian Jones