Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing is tricky and everyone claims to know the secrets of making content that encourages engagement, generates a lead, and most importantly provides value to the user to ensure loyalty to your brand. There are a lot of ways that you can make your brand stick out with sincere marketing that inspires loyalty rather than just bringing people to your page. When your top priority is to bring users to your page, you usually end up with no new data because bringing people to your page does not necessarily mean that they will follow you. Usually, people only follow you if you (1) have something to offer them, (2) build a relationship with them, or (3) your content adds some sort of value to their life. Let’s talk about the three deadly crimes to commit against marketing! Are you guilty?

Clickbait Marketing

Have you ever been scrolling for your feed and you saw a video that said, “follow to view more?” The account is usually private and when you follow, it takes some time to be accepted. By the time that you are actually accepted, you notice that the video is nowhere to be found. Did the account expect that you would forget about the video and see their content on their feed? Whatever happened, you see content that you probably were already seeing with the account you follow, so you unfollow. What did you gain from that? Was the account’s promise to show you the video fulfilled? Now you do not want to follow them and you have a distaste for their brand. This happens to a lot of people.

Whether someone follows an account because they promise that they have the secret to perfect skin or a scandalous piece of information, brands are ruining their reputation with clickbait. Maybe you post a story with an inaccurate caption, you will watch your follower count dwindle and your existing followers engage less with your content. We can often forget that followers are only a meaningful goal if they are engaging and investing in what you are offering. You want to build a community, not a crowd. Know the difference. 

 Follow to Win Marketing

Let’s end this in 2021! There is no reason why you are a marketer should still be doing a promotional follow giveaway. We all remember the free bathing suit giveaway that none of us actually got back in 2017, right? The account was on everyone’s feed and was shared all over the United States and Canada. The account blew up, and the world waited until the realization came that there were no free bathing suits and the world unfollowed. This is just an example of how poorly follow, like and share to win campaigns end up working. Although, we see growth, it falls quickly and there is little to no faith in the brand today. Here’s what the world learned from this, promotional campaigns are only effective if they are from a small pool of people and if they are a high value for the user. High stakes or small groups are the only two factors that apply to the promotion or follow to win campaigns. 

An alternative to giving away something substantial like a MacBook or a car would be to host events and to give awards to your attendees! Whether they are virtual or in person, your brand will be better known and you can obtain enough information to maintain the relationships that you build online through email marketing! Hosting giveaways for a controlled group is a great way to encourage users! We know that asking users to like, follow and share in exchange for and entree into a competition hardly every results in consistent engagement, meaning that it is nearly impossible to sustain a community. 

Cold Messaging Marketing

We have all received a message from an account asking us to follow a brand or letting us know that we were chosen to become an ambassador with a free item with the small price of $20 for shipping or 80% off an item that is worth less than the discount price. These scams have paraded our inboxes for years and are built on a market that relies on their income to come from their “ambassadors” to buy their products. Don’t be tempted to try these tactics. Your users will lose respect and loyalty for your brand even if they liked your content. Rather than cold messaging people to follow you, simply show people that you have what they are looking for. Find influencers to share your content in exchange for either giftcards, payments, or other forms of value that they agree to. There are a lot of ways that you can influence larger groups of people without sacrificing the trust of the majority. 

5-Second Summary

  1. When creating marketing strategies, it is important to avoid using clickbait to encourage people to find your content. When they realize that your account is not what it appeared to be, they will unfollow. Understand that just because users are brought to your page does not necessarily mean that they will follow you.
  2. End the temporary follow, like, and share promotion giveaways. The engagement might be incredible and unless you have a flawless marketing strategy that is catered to the whole world, you will not keep most of your followers which means that they will also not participate in future giveaways. When doing giveaways make the challenges more focused so that a specific group receives them so that each person participating has more of a chance to win! Rather than having them like and follow, try having them enter to win!
  3. Lastly, avoid cold messaging! Be honest when you are looking for people to influence your brand rather than sending your message to the world with fake markdowns. Your users are smarter than you think. Now even if your product was sincere, you will most likely end up getting blocked because you might seem like a bot. 

The Takeaway

Now that you know what marketing strategies to AVOID, let’s get you started on restoring your brands’ reputation online! Consider this your digital probation.