Businesses that implement an online marketing strategy into their company strategies, according to Google, have a 2.8x greater revenue growth expectation and a 3.3x higher possibility of expanding their business and, as a result, their staff.
This means that if you’re not using online or digital marketing, you’re missing out on a significant chance for lead generation, conversion, and sales growth. The process of drawing online consumers will define whether a business is thriving and successful or has failed.
As long as the business has a high-quality website able to convert leads into customers, digital marketing is a powerful way to increase awareness, attract new leads and generate custom.
In the field of digital marketing, using various digital marketing tools and techniques, business owners will be able to give a tough fight to the competition and experience significant growth in their business. Whether the business provides retail services like Target or focuses on debt collection like the Fox collection center. Digital marketing is an indispensable tool for any business.
Any growing and upcoming business can benefit from a strong online presence. An online presence offers businesses a better opportunity to sustain, compete, and grow.
- What is the Impact of Online Marketing Strategy?
- How Online Marketing Helps to Grow Business
- How does Digital Marketing Increase Revenue?
- How does Online Marketing Improve Sales?
- How can you Increase Sales Using Digital Marketing?
- How does Marketing Contribute to Revenue?
- How to Track Marketing Contributions to Revenue Growth
- What are the Benefits of Online Marketing?
- How do you Grow Digital Revenue?
What is the Impact of Online Marketing Strategy?
The impact of digital marketing has forever changed the way companies operate and communicate with their customers. The effect of digital marketing strategies had consequences on profit margins and the ability of a business to grow. Without incorporating this style of advertising into a broader messaging campaign, a brand severely limits its ability to be successful.
Read Also: The Common Products that Consumers Purchase From Small Companies
A business that doesn’t embrace digital marketing strategies limits the growth opportunities for its business. If you want to grow your business with digital marketing, let’s look at its impact:
Connect with Your Consumers Over The Internet
With a website or mobile app, you can reach a global audience. You can have multimedia connections with your customers over the Internet for a minor investment regardless of their physical location.
Unlike traditional marketing methods, your digital marketing strategy does not need geographical restrictions, where your marketing targets a particular geographical region and any attempt to market to a global audience would cost a fortune.
Saves You Money
As mentioned above, the cost of reaching a global audience via traditional marketing can be prohibitive for many businesses.
But with digital technology or a digital platform, a social media platform and a digital marketing plan are more cost-effective ways for your business to reach your target audience at a lower cost than traditional methods.
Some creative digital technology, digital advertising and digital marketing campaigns cost a fraction of traditional marketing to reach your target market.
Improves Customer Service
Traditional marketing is a ‘spray and prays’ type of marketing. For instance, you erect a billboard hoping that your target audience will view it, but you have no precise way of determining how many people will see it.
However, digital marketing gives you detailed data and reports to assess your campaign’s performance. This information can help you improve your marketing. By analyzing your Google Analytics or social media data, you can use this information to determine what resonates with your customers and improve your customer service.
These days, most people start their customer journey online via Google, Bing, YouTube or social media.
Digital marketing enables you to meet your customers at the right moment and in the right channel to allow you to guide that customer through every step of the customer journey.
Levels The Playing Field
You cannot afford expensive print advertising, television adverts, and other traditional marketing efforts without lots of money and other resources.
However, digital marketing helps to level the playing field and enables you to compete with the big players in your industry.
Even if you can’t outspend the big players with digital marketing, you can out-think them regarding being more creative with your digital and social media marketing strategies.
Suppose you cannot afford expensive print and television advertisements or a fancy high street store. In that case, you can invest in a modern, responsive website that will enable you to have an online storefront to serve both local and international clients.
Stand Out From The Crowd
If you operate in a crowded market, one of the most critical things you can do is stand out from the crowd. Your digital strategy needs to highlight the benefits you offer your consumers that make your brand different from the competitors. Consistent and ethical digital marketing can help your brand stand out from your competitors.
Digital marketing is one of the most potent forms that allow you to measure your marketing efforts as you improve your strategies. Digital marketing allows you to target your ideal audience and personalize your marketing message to your perfect buyer.
Digital marketing fosters openness in your business dealings with your customers. It also enables you to monitor your competitors to observe what works for them and what doesn’t.
With this information, you can adjust your marketing strategies to help you improve your online presence and stay ahead of your competitors.
How Online Marketing Helps to Grow Business
1. Wider reach and geographical expansion:
Expanding your business to a new geographical location using traditional marketing strategies is a tiresome and time-consuming task.
By applying suitable Digital marketing plans, one can easily expand their business to new areas and locations without any terrestrial hurdles. Digital marketing campaigns can be set up easily and in no time, they are extremely flexible and you can target your kind of audience without any hassles.
2. Building a Brand name:
If a business is able to deliver what they promise to its targeted audiences, it plays a very important role in building a brand reputation. This will help in earning the trust of the end-users and build stronger and better relationships with the consumers.
According to Safari SEO Agency, brand awareness is one of the strongest (and most overlooked) elements of a successful digital marketing campaign. Satisfied and happy clients will certainly share their positive experiences with others, which will open up newer arenas and bigger markets for the company.
Whether your business is small or large, digital media marketing solutions can help each and every organization to build a strong and trustworthy brand name. Having a unique logo for the organization, and creating a tagline or a slogan can help the company in portraying a steady and reliable brand.
3. Cost-effective:
Small and medium businesses don’t have huge capitals to spend on different channels of marketing. TV ads are very expensive, and so are the charges of billboards and print ads.
All businesses do not have so much funds to spend on marketing their business. This is where Digital ads play a major role, Digital marketing plans do not require huge capital and they have the ability to reach a wider targeted audience at a lower cost.
Digital Media Marketing solutions provide businesses with improved and considerably cost-effective marketing channels which communicate more efficiently, converting a large number of target audiences.
4. Better revenues:
An effective digital marketing plan results in high conversion rates, which eventually helps the business to earn higher revenues.
Digital marketing plans help in generating much higher revenue as compared to the different traditional marketing channels.
According to Google, companies that have incorporated digital marketing plans, have 2.8 times higher revenue growth expectancy. Companies using digital marketing, have 3.3 times the probability of increasing their workforce and business.
5. Improved ROI:
As mentioned above, effective digital marketing plans will help in enhancing a company’s brand value and revenues. Similarly, it also helps in generating an Improved ROI as compared to traditional marketing. The strategies of digital marketing are very easy to monitor, helping you to measure the actual results for the impact on your targeted audience.
The key to a prosperous digital marketing plan is to produce a continuous flow of traffic that can be converted to leads. The higher the traffic is generated, the quicker will be the return on your investment.
6. Let’s you go global:
Businesses with a clear and well-planned digital marketing strategy have access to reaching out to millions of smartphone and tablet users.
Anyone who uses the Internet in any form is a potential customer for your business. According to available statistics, almost 75% of Google Chrome users now have access to the Internet on mobile devices.
Without digital marketing, your business is missing out of this excellent opportunity. SEO experts from Aspire Media predict that the mobile Internet market will be growing steadily in the near future and with a digital marketing strategy, there’s no need to wait to enter this market or that one. So long as you have an online shop and worldwide shipping, you can sell to your customers wherever they may be.
How does Digital Marketing Increase Revenue?
Knowing how to leverage digital properties correctly is key to business success. Digital properties can be anything from a medium to spreading brand awareness, company information, or a product pitch. These websites can sell services, maintain customer engagement, and find talent.
They can even take the function of service roles, finding financial advisors, or independent agents for insurance companies. Digital properties can be pretty much anything you can imagine. One of the most crucial questions a business can ask is how do we increase revenue through investment in digital?
Increasing revenue can be done in many ways digitally. Shopping, paid search, display, and retargeting are the most widely used form of pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) advertising techniques. SEO, content marketing, and social are crucial for getting more traffic on your pages of people looking for offerings.
Within content marketing, one can conduct a content gap analysis for content around offerings and services. This can improve your customer journey making it more efficient and profitable. This can also improve conversions by attracting the right audience to your website for the offerings that are available.
When doing all of these things it is important to measure channel effectiveness across channels, identifying gaps in each channel to get more performance. Optimizing the efficiency of these channels will maximize their effectiveness and the revenue these channels can generate.
If you drive qualified traffic to your digital properties it will improve business. If a company has offerings available on its website, driving more people to these properties will increase conversion provided these visitors are qualified. A qualified visitors or qualified traffic are people who would be interested in your goods or service and would be likely to purchase it.
Driving thousands of people who have no interest or ability to purchase something from a website does not really help a company’s top line. How do you identify those people in a sea of visitors? How do you effectively target these customers with offerings they would be interested in purchasing?
One of the largest banks in the US was looking into these same questions. In order to answer them they took a data-centric approach. They were able to use data from first and third-party data sources to understand their prospects better. The goal was to identify segments of current customers so they could sell other offerings to.
By precisely targeting customers with a high likelihood of conversion they were able to identify the most qualified audiences. This led to more than 20,000 new highly qualified prospects they were not able to precisely target before, which in turn led to an increase in revenue.
How does Online Marketing Improve Sales?
the main reason marketing improves sales is because of people’s interaction. Through it, brands and companies can get more clients. In other words, digital marketing allows us to expand our contact list. Thus, reaching more audiences than with traditional media.
More people can be reached through the Internet and various media than ever before.
For example, a campaign broadcast in the cinema or newspaper might not be effective. After all, not everyone attends the cinema or regularly buys the press. Because of this, not everyone was able to get the message.
In contrast, the Internet is almost a daily ritual for most people. No matter the time, we need to stay connected and constantly surfing.
Now, these are some reasons why digital marketing improves sales:
- It’s accessible Large and small companies can use digital marketing strategies to increase their visibility, attract customers and increase sales.
- It’s profitable Companies dedicated to digital marketing usually develop plans adapting to the company, its particular needs, and its budget. Many work with individual strategies, exploiting a particular area according to the client’s requirements. Unless a broader and more complete package is chosen, this implies a reduced cost. So the costs will depend on what is requested.
- Help build reputation To the extent that you provide, they will offer you. This is about being true to your vision and mission and, above all, about fulfilling what you profess. This applies both to the product or service you offer. The speed in answering a message, how you do it, the promptness and facilities at the time of completing the business, and of course, the quality of the product will determine customer satisfaction. From this satisfaction, you will build a long or short-term relationship. It all depends on the success of the negotiation.
- Increase trust in your brand A happy and satisfied customer is a customer who will recommend you. The more recommendations you have, the greater your company’s trust. As a result, your reputation, contacts, and sales will increase.
- Is adaptable You can quickly launch digital marketing content on different platforms with different formats. For example, cell phones, where we spend a large part of our time. This is the most attractive means of reaching people, capturing the attention of prospects, or closing sales.
How can you Increase Sales Using Digital Marketing?
Increase sales with Digital Marketing is possible if we make the choices for the best strategies. The right actions boost engagement, capture the target audience, generate conversions, and result in sales. Being an influential and well-known brand among your audience is something essential and positive.
There is no manual on how to increase sales with Digital Marketing. Still, there is a list of actions and strategies that are fundamental.
1. Optimize your site based on SEO
Websites have to be much more than just attractive and informative. These are basic requirements that engage a user. However, to generate traffic, it’s necessary to work on optimization, based on SEO standards.
Website optimization work is geared towards making adjustments that make them more suitable to what search engine algorithms — such as Google — require.
As a result, you’ll achieve a better ranking, with the sites appearing at the top of the SERPs.
This greater prominence will generate higher interest in the user. In a Google search, it’s natural that we’re more likely to access first page sites, especially those at the top.
In general, 75% of users do not access the second page of results, which says a lot.
An optimized site ranks better, appears on this first page, and is more visible in the eyes of those who performed the search. The chances of receiving clicks are higher, generating more traffic and conversion, with sales being a consequence.
Besides that, having a site with good speed performance can increase your page ranking and, in consequence, your sales.
2. Define who your target audience is
Who is your target audience?
In order to increase sales with Digital Marketing, it’s essential to know your audience first. They have specific habits and preferences that should guide your entire strategy and the actions you create in the digital environment.
The first step to achieving this understanding is to conduct surveys, collecting your data, and studying your preferences.
From the results, it’s possible to create a buyer persona that portrays in a certain way the customer you want to impact using Digital Marketing.
From this, you’ll understand some key points, such as:
- what tone of voice to use in communication;
- in what products your audience is most interested;
- what advantages they expect in their relationship with a company;
- on what channels they are.
3. Know where your audience concentrates
Once you have more information about your audience, it’s possible to know in what channels they concentrate on.
The importance of this is precisely to communicate through these platforms. The main ones are usually Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and also email.
In surveys, it’s possible to identify which of these channels your audience uses the most to get information, follow brands, and communicate with them.
You’ll know how to direct your Digital Marketing campaigns, with excellent results in conversions.
Knowing what channels your audience concentrates also allows you to invest in more appropriate strategies.
Having this accurate distribution of your Digital Marketing budget will enable you to have a satisfactory ROI when compared to the sales your company generated.
4. Define CTAs that actually convert
CTAs are definitely potent mechanisms when it comes to generating conversions.
It’s impossible to increase sales with Digital Marketing without using good calls to action. You must have a selection of effective phrases that attract attention, and that result in the suggestions proposed.
Besides being written in a way that encourages action, these CTAs should also be highlighted or, in other words, attractive. Therefore, it’s common for these phrases to be in buttons with striking colors. The important thing is that they stand out from the rest of the page interface.
Good CTAs will generate a high CTR and, as a result, more conversions.
5. Perform A/B tests about your strategies
Finding out what CTA converts the most can be difficult without testing. There will always be a doubt between two or more options, which makes it necessary to validate hypotheses.
A/B tests allow you to study what strategy options generate the most conversion rates, resulting in sales.
These tests are designed to compare two versions of whatever needs to be tested: CTAs, landing pages, colors used in a page, and headers, among other options.
So, the two versions run separately over a specified period.
The critical point is the measurement of results. The A/B test consists of analyzing which of these two versions showed the best results. The one that performed better should be chosen as the final version, running as the final one. Thus, it’s possible to increase sales with Digital Marketing in a precise and proven way.
6. Automate and track your email marketing campaigns
Emails are still an excellent tool for contact and lead nurturing. Knowing how to use them is the main point of the question. Automation is the feature that allows triggering emails to a broad contact base, standardizing the messages, and increasing the chances of reaching the contacts.
In this effort, it’s also necessary to track the reception and how the leads have been engaged.
These emails should carry information about products, discounts, content offers, and discount coupons, among other things. The idea is to approach and generate frequent contacts.
From this strategy, it’s possible to feed these leads and bring them to the deeper stages of the sales funnel. In this natural way, the results are, besides the engagement, the increase of conversions.
7. Start a Content Marketing strategy
Developing a Content Marketing strategy is an excellent way to increase sales with Digital Marketing. Blog posts have a great capacity to generate traffic to a site, raise consumer interest, and engage. To achieve that, you need to produce high-quality content!
Users are interested in posts that are educational but not too generalist. Many of these people also want to know directly about a particular brand product. Therefore, a content strategy should deliver posts for all levels of the sales funnel.
Suitable for SEO, including in their writing, these posts can attract the right leads, educate them, and generate the knowledge needed to make the purchase. Companies must know how to develop a strategy with content that contemplates consumers at all stages, from the initial interest to the purchase decision.
8. Define remarketing campaigns
Brands are always facing cart abandonment and monitoring consumers who visit product pages, choose sizes and specifications, but do not complete their purchases.
The understanding is simple: if they have done all that, they are already in the decision phase. Remarketing is the strategy that reminds these buyers about their interests. For that, banners are positioned with the offers left behind, appearing in the Google Display network.
As a bottom of the funnel strategy, this effort will work if the consumer is about to buy. Besides the banners on websites, remarketing can be done by email marketing, taking the product link to that consumer.
In some cases, incentives such as discount coupons or free shipping can help to close the sale more quickly.
9. Measure each one of your actions
The pursuit of increasing sales with Digital Marketing is all about implementing necessary actions. Still, they won’t be effective if there’s not adequate measurement. Each strategy adopted must be continuously tracked, which allows us to understand its effectiveness.
Metrics are the translation of the level of effectiveness of each action in Digital Marketing. Tools such as Google Analytics allow you to check these results in detail. Besides this, many Marketing automation tools can also measure them.
The increase in sales depends on the success of the strategy. When the expected results are not detected in the metrics, it may be time to change the approach. Measuring is essential to know when to make those changes.
It’s important to know that, to increase sales with Digital Marketing, it’s necessary to adopt fundamental successful strategies for any company.
How does Marketing Contribute to Revenue?
The goal of marketing is to generate revenue, of course. But, things often get complicated and marketing teams fail to directly connect campaign specifics to revenue, especially in the B2B space.
Earlier marketers would generate leads, qualify them, send them to sales and consider their job to be done. In this system, the role of the marketing team pretty much ends at handing over the generated leads to the sales team, which pursue the leads further. Sales would also need to do nothing on leads that are not ready for them to close. The buying process has changed and the status quo has changed with it.
By definition, revenue marketing refers to the holistic process of identifying specific channels in marketing that offer revenue growth and aligning sales and marketing efforts with revenue. In this form of marketing, a more comprehensive approach is followed where both the marketing team and the sales team work together to maximize ROI.
Marketing also needs to have a closed-loop system and fetch data from sales in a 2-way sync scenario (instead of the most commonly used marketing-to-sales data transfer). It is the combined effort of the sales and marketing team to drive revenue growth in a predictable way, by creating a constant and continuous loop of feedback. It seeks to develop strategies that can be effectively repeated to drive new customer acquisition and in turn predict sales and revenue.
Here’s what revenue marketing aims to achieve:
- Generation of sales-qualified leads and driving them straight into the sales funnel.
- Successful attribution of sales to campaign specifics for replication.
- Aiding the smooth and solid journey of customers across the funnel.
- Marketing enablement even after leads get passed on to sales.
- Aligning sales and marketing to work towards the common goal of generating revenue.
According to a study by Gartner a potential buyer in the B2B industry spends a good majority of the time researching brands and products independently, mostly online. Only 17% of the time is spent actually talking to a vendor.
Moreover, almost 63% of buyers prefer not to involve any sales reps in their search. They prefer doing research on their own.
This means that a sales executive gets a very small window to make his case, convince the buyer of the quality of his products, and induce action from the buyer. This also means your low-touch conversion system needs to provide the data marketing needs to connect with revenue.
For the same reason, a lead pursued separately by the sales team has a statistically lower chance of converting into a sale. Of course, this depends on the type of customers and the industry. High-ticket customers would still prefer to talk to sales. A holistic approach allows both the marketing team and the sales team to pursue the lead through different methods and improve the prospects.
To put this into perspective, here’s an example:
Marketing engagement – A prospect visits your website and engages with your copywriting and case studies. He/she signs up.
Sales Engagement – He/she then ends up having a quick conversation with your sales team on live chat.
Marketing engagement – He/she continues to engage with marketing content and emails (drips, newsletters, etc.) even after starting the conversation with sales.
Sales Engagement – Sales rep later closes the deal.
Marketing engagement – Customer continues to receive marketing communications after buying.
In fact, a study from MarketingProfs has shown that organizations with more accurately aligned sales and marketing strategies have been able to achieve almost 38% higher conversion rates as well as 36% higher customer retention rates.
Clearly, revenue marketing is the way to go in this day and age where people are more aware of their needs and businesses have access to better data.
How to Track Marketing Contributions to Revenue Growth
While marketing ROI can be calculated using a simple equation (more on that later), you’ll want to make a few decisions first to potentially avoid a costly miscalculation.
- What defines your marketing investment and revenue gained?
Determine which elements will factor into these values. For instance, paid advertising might be a given when accounting for your marketing investment, but you’ll want to make sure human capital is weighed appropriately before it’s included. Will your revenue gain look at the value of a lead or the value of a new customer? Are you looking at the overall revenue generated or net new revenue generated?
- Do you have the right technology in place to analyze results and close the loop from sales?
One challenge I often come across is how to determine which marketing programs or initiatives have the greatest impact on revenue growth. While it’s common to attribute success to a new customer’s final touch point, it can also be argued that the customer’s actions leading up to that touch point had a greater influence on their decision-making. Fortunately, this problem can be solved through the right sales and marketing technology.
If marketing is not getting feedback in terms of new revenue or what happens during your company’s sales process, then it’s impossible to get an accurate view of return on investment.
Understand the cadence of what you’re measuring, how it’s tied to your sales cycle (or close cycle) and how your sales cycle is contributing to closed-loop reporting. Your sales cycle will help you set expectations and determine checkpoints at which you can measure progress.
- Do you consider marketing a revenue driver?
If you’re measuring your company’s marketing ROI based on the value of a new customer, you’ll need to make sure the roles of marketing and sales are crystal clear and fully aligned. It’s possible to employ marketing tactics that generate record numbers of ideal leads and still fail to reach business goals due to sales failing to close on those leads.
What are the Benefits of Online Marketing?
Effective online marketing is really a complex ecosystem of techniques that can help your firm achieve greater visibility and credibility. But let’s get even more specific. What are some of the most important advantages of online marketing for professional services firms today?
1. Online marketing gives you many ways to demonstrate and build expertise.
For professional services buyers, the single most important factor in selecting a provider is expertise. Often, the challenge lies not in acquiring the requisite talent but in projecting that expertise to the marketplace.
The web is such a powerful platform because it allows you to use content to get your message across and demonstrate expertise in topics relevant to your target audience. You can accomplish this offline as well, but online tools make it much easier to reach a wide and relevant audience. Blogging, social media, and webinars all allow you to educate your audience on topics that matter to them, illustrating your expertise in the process.
2. You can use online marketing to establish and build relationships more effectively.
Online marketing allows you to create new relationships in a targeted way that simply wasn’t possible twenty years ago. Email marketing, keyword phrase targeting, and other strategies can help you target a tailored message with laser precision to, say, the CIOs of the hundred largest businesses in your industry.
Beyond targeting messages, you can use LinkedIn Groups to network and converse with other industry leaders in an ongoing way. Online tools allow you to meet new clients, colleagues, and influencers and strengthen relationships with those you already know.
3. You can target specific verticals or niches using online marketing.
Just as you can build relationships in a targeted way, online marketing empowers you to target a highly specific vertical or niche, delivering your message to a wide audience that needs your services. You can do this relatively inexpensively by targeting keywords in educational blog posts or participating in groups or industry hashtags on social media. Online marketing allows you to zero in on a niche easily and efficiently.
4. Online marketing isn’t tied to geography or time zone.
Online marketing techniques can be used in an asynchronous way, meaning your audience doesn’t have to be constrained by geography. To meet a potential client or contact in person, you have to be able to travel and synchronize your schedules, with all of the expenses that this can entail.
Speaking at industry events, for example, can be a powerful way to build your reputation, and is often worthwhile – but it’s also a major effort that can significantly disrupt an entire day (or multiple days). Giving a webinar to a similar or larger crowd, however, may take no more than an hour out of your day at the office.
Another advantage of this asynchronicity is that it empowers your audience to engage with your message on their own terms. They can learn about your expertise at their own pace through your blog or social media presence, and when they’re ready to explore your services, they know where to find you.
5. Online marketing is less expensive to use.
With online marketing, there are no travel costs, and you don’t have to pay for printing to distribute materials. Server costs, by contrast, are relatively low.
Some of your advertising costs can be replaced by online marketing tools, as well – and these online tools usually “pull more weight” by integrating with the rest of your online marketing program. Guest posts on industry blogs or publications, for example, can drive traffic to your site, build your reputation, and fuel conversation on social media.
6. The Internet is the most common way people check out your firm.
In fact, we conducted a survey of over 1,000 buyers of professional services for a more complete understanding of how purchasers check sellers out in today’s marketplace. We found that the second most common way professional services buyers check out firms is online.
7. Online marketing allows you to be everywhere your clients look.
Today, it’s important for you to be where your potential clients are looking. More and more, that means your firm needs a robust and diversified presence online. From our research, we found that purchasers are looking for experts online in a number of ways, including in search engines, by reading online reviews, on social media, through webinars, and more.
Maybe your clients tend to ask their peers about the strongest firms in your field – but once they’ve learned a bit about you, if they search for you online, you have to be easy to find. If you don’t have an online marketing component, potential clients will go looking for more information about you – and they won’t find you.
8. You can use online marketing to reach influencers and “invisible” prospects.
There are many people who influence the selection process, even if they might not be the final decision-makers. Some of these individuals may be professionals within your target firms, while others may be well-respected industry figures.
By the same token, you may have unrecognized or “invisible” prospects out there of whom you’re simply not aware. You likely know that certain firms would be good matches for your service, but there are usually others who are equally promising matches – they’re just geographically distant from you, or don’t participate in the same industry events, or you just haven’t crossed paths.
By using content marketing, they can find you, even if you don’t find them. Posting blog posts on a particular set of challenges or opportunities – and including the right keyword phrases so search engines pick up on them – allows you to “plant a flag” in the topic, helping the right audiences find your work and your firm.
9. Firms that generate leads online achieve greater profits.
The in-depth studies of lead generation strategies for professional services firms have found that firms with online marketing programs are more profitable, on average than those that do not.
![The Impact of Online Leads on Firm Profitability](https://i0.wp.com/web.archive.org/web/20221020013826im_/https://hingemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/online-marketing-profitability-chart2.png?w=640&ssl=1)
Until about twenty percent of leads are generated online, profitability stays more or less the same. But after twenty percent, profitability begins to rise steadily along with the percentage of leads generated online.
10. Firms that generate leads online achieve faster growth.
Similarly, this research shows firms that generate leads online to grow at a faster rate.
![The Impact of Online Leads on Firm Growth](https://i0.wp.com/web.archive.org/web/20221020013826im_/https://hingemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/online-marketing-growth-chart2.png?w=640&ssl=1)
We found that firms’ growth rates rise along with the proportion of leads generated online, up until the point where forty percent or more of leads originate online. Firms that generated between forty and fifty-nine percent of leads online grew at four times the rate of those with no online leads.
How do you Grow Digital Revenue?
Just a few short years ago, digital publishers could rely on advertising strategies to help them bring in revenue. However, between the societal shifts enforced by the pandemic and the growing popularity of ad-blocking software, businesses have discovered that they can’t count on this revenue stream like they once did.
Fortunately, there’s another way forward, one that actually is built on a past familiar approach: the digital content subscription revenue model. Let’s take a look at 9 strategies you can implement to grow digital content subscriptions and reader revenue online.
1. Offering Ad-Free Incentives as a Motivator
People subscribe to digital content channels because that subscription promises a more pleasant experience than other ways of receiving that content.
You can grow digital content subscriptions by offering an ad-free experience (with no need to turn to ad blockers or other third-party apps) as one of the key signup benefits. Admiral can help you set up these incentives for all visitors, or present only as an adblock paywall to those that prefer block ads.
2. Offering Free Trials
One key aspect of encouraging new subscribers involves removing as many potential barriers and risks as possible. Consider offering a no-cost, one-month free trial period to give potential subscribers a chance to test drive your content.
If they like what they see, they’ll stay on board after the trial period ends. As an alternative, you can offer an extended discount period for readers who subscribe during a limited promotional window.
3. Leveraging Your Email Newsletters
Email newsletters have proven their value as sales, engagement, and retention tools. They can also prove invaluable for capturing first-party data as interested readers sign up.
In addition to capturing basic contact information, you can set up an email preference center with a questionnaire that allows readers to tell you exactly what products, services, and subjects they most want to hear about.
This zero-party data then helps you construct your buyer personas and fine-tune your entire marketing plan to feed those preferences — while also aiding in the development of paid-only subscription content, which you can then upsell through the email newsletters.
4. Diversifying Your Products and Services
You probably know about the value of diversifying your personal and commercial income streams to gain a more solid, predictable financial footing in an uncertain world.
The same notion holds true for digital publishers, many of whom have expanded their lines of publications, products, and services to reach a wider audience.
Think about where your target audience’s varied interests might lead them, and then meet them thereby creating events, memberships, and informative content to suit those additional interests. Consider a visitor engagement platform such as Admiral to deliver the right options to each visitor at the right time to drive your optimal ARPV (average revenue per visitor).
5. Letting Your Customers Give Subscriptions as Gifts
If you’ve ever experienced the happy surprise of receiving a subscription to a favorite publication as a gift, you’ll understand why offering such gift options might make so much sense as a way to grow content subscriptions.
For the recipient, it’s the ultimate no-risk trial; for the giver, it’s a quick, easy way to give a thoughtful, useful gift. That recipient will hopefully renew that subscription, transfer it to another first-time recipient, or even purchase multiple subscriptions to hand out as gifts, essentially serving as a sales agent for your publication.
6. Adding Customization Options for Individual Subscribers
Nobody wants to leap into a digital subscription that doesn’t quite suit their needs, budget, and preferences. You can remove this potential objection by offering a few simple customization options via subscriber management software like Admiral’s Transact module.
Give your subscribers the ability to choose from different subscription terms, price points, and bundled content packages. The more control your subscribers have over their digital content subscriptions, the more likely you are to keep them onboard for years to come.
7. Creating Tiered Multi-Reader Membership Plans
The same basic customization strategy that appeals to individuals will also appeal to institutions such as schools, government agencies, corporations, and other institutions or organizations looking to add value for their members.
If your publication is relevant to the B2B arena, create corporate membership plans, educational plans, and other plans that will cater to these groups. Offer multiple tiers, starting at the most affordable base level with opportunities to purchase more comprehensive or specialized content at the higher levels.
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Organizations that see the value of keeping their constituents happy may renew these subscriptions year after year without a second thought.
8. Optimizing Your Subscription Payment Systems
It’s all too easy for digital subscribers to miss a regular payment out of sheer neglect or distraction, only to see their subscription expire. you may or may not ever see those subscribers again, so make sure your subscription payment systems and policies aren’t allowing this kind of churn to occur too easily.
Implement some sort of grace period to give subscribers a chance to correct that accidentally missed payment. Automate your collections system, introducing an auto-pay option if you don’t already have one.
9. Introducing a Super-Premium Subscriber Level
On the surface, it might seem counterintuitive to make your digital content more expensive as a means of boosting your subscriptions. When couched in the form of a super-premium subscriber level, however, you can turn this potential objection point into an outright attraction.
Gated premium content increases that content’s perceived value. The simple fact that not everyone gets to view it makes it that much more special, and therefore more desirable.
The creation of a premium-priced level that offers “the works” also lets you set a top price point for your subscriptions.
Even the subscribers who shy away from that price point will see the lower tiers as a comparative bargain and sign up for them that much more readily. Either way, you grow content subscriptions.
Bottomline
Online marketing provides a suite of powerful tools to help grow your firm’s reach and reputation – and ultimately, your firm itself. By fully leveraging the advantages of online marketing through tools such as content marketing, social media, email marketing, online video, and more, you can create a powerful lead-generating machine that puts your firm on the path to greater profitability and success.