How to use digital marketing to grow your business?

To take your business to the next level of success, you must sell more, whether to existing customers, new customers or both. You may have to launch new products or services, target new types of customers or sell in new locations. Selling overseas can be transformative, with technology now making this quicker, easier and cheaper.

But people will not buy from you if they do not know you exist, or what you offer and why they should buy it from you. Marketing makes this possible. In simple terms, marketing is attracting people’s attention, getting them interested in what you sell and convincing them to buy from you and keep coming back for more. Read on to find out how to harness the power of digital marketing to grow your business.   

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing describes using online channels, technologies and methods to promote brands, products and services. Digital marketing can enable all businesses to reach targeted audiences, even with limited budget and know-how. Businesses of all sizes, types and sectors can use digital marketing to:

• build brand awareness and trust 

• significantly increase their reach 

• target specific customers 

• sell more and ensure customer loyalty. 

  
  

The advantages of digital marketing

• Cost-effective: You can reach many people even with limited budget. 

• Targeted: You can target specific customers. 

• Effective: Get it right and it can bring fantastic results. 

• Measurable: You can track clicks, leads, conversions, etc, learn and improve. 

• Scalable: You can scale up your digital marketing and as your business grows. 

  
  

Key digital marketing channels 

1 Your website 

Your website should look professional (it encourages trust), work well and successfully showcase your products and services. It needs to explain what sets your business apart and why visitors should buy from you. Websites are a huge influence on buying decisions.

Your website imagery should be engaging, attractive, high quality and “on brand” (ie consistent with what your business is and stands for). Your website should not be overburdened with images, text or pages. It should be fast-loading, mobile friendly and easy to navigate. Your website should be your main marketing hub.

Top tip: Make sure your website features clear calls to action (eg “Buy now!”, “Contact us”, etc) on every page in several places.  

2 Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Even in the age of AI, your website should still be optimised for search engines (Google chief among them). Even though AI tools answer questions directly, they source from top-ranking websites. Successful SEO is about making your website discoverable, relevant and trustworthy. The right keywords must appear in the right density and in the right places (ie headings, subheadings, body copy, title tags, meta descriptions and image alt text).  

Top tip: Your website should feature valuable, relevant, engaging and regularly updated content that is original and authentic, because this also aids search engine visibility.   

3 Email marketing

Sending emails to customers/prospects to promote products, services, share content, news and offers remains one of the most cost-effective digital marketing channels. It is a proven way to attract and retain customers for little cost. Email marketing includes welcome emails sent to new customers, monthly newsletters, promotional emails with news of discounts, events, sales and product launches, as well as re-engagement emails. 

Success is determined by having good email subject lines, as well as concise, engaging and appealing content that is timely and relevant, with strong CTAs (calls to action). Regularity is also key to success. Make sure your contact lists is well maintained and only include people who have opted in to receive your emails. Also, A/B test different versions of your emails to see what brings the best results.      

Top tip: Segment your customers/prospects (ie split them into smaller groups who share similar characteristics, needs or behaviours) and send tailored versions to each.

4 Social media 

Social media marketing means creating and sharing content on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, etc, to achieve marketing goals. It can be a highly effective way to increase awareness of your brand, generate leads and sales, build relationships with customers and prospects, support them and create a loyal community around your brand.  

Social media marketing can be highly cost-effective. Your campaigns can be highly targeted, while potentially giving you access to a huge audience (an estimated 5.66bn people around the world use social media).

Paid social media means paying for advertising to promote your business on social media. These ads are typically labelled as “sponsored” or “promoted”, but they too can increase reach, visibility, engagement and conversions.  

Top tip: Success comes from setting measurable objectives, having a clear strategy, understanding your audience, choosing the right platforms, creating engaging content and analysing your performance to improve. Consistency and timing are crucial. 

5 Digital advertising

This means displaying adverts (eg banners, images, videos, etc) on third-party websites, apps and social media platforms. Advertisers use platforms such as Google Display Network, Meta Ads or programmatic ad exchanges. Ads are served based on user behaviour, context or real-time bidding, with performance trackable. Display advertising can be a great way to retarget visitors who left your website without buying. 

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising involves paying a fee each time someone clicks on your advert, so you buy visits to your site. Ads appear on search engines, social media platforms or websites in ad networks. PPC offers many advantages: your ads can appear at the top of search results soon after you place them, campaigns can be highly targeted and easy to measure, while you can also set daily or campaign budgets to control spending. 

Top tip: If you are new to PPC advertising, choose the right platforms, set budgets and start with limited test campaigns, so you can ditch or scale based on your results.

6 Content marketing

Content marketing means creating and sharing value-rich, relevant content to attract, engage and retain customers. Content marketing can be used to establish authority, build trust and relationships, whether through blogs (for your website or someone else’s), videos (tutorials, explainers, case studies), podcasts, infographics (visuals that aid quick understanding), how-to guides, whitepapers or webinars (live or recorded online sessions) that provide genuine value.  

Top tip: Your content should help your customers or prospects to solve problems, answer questions or increase their knowledge. Good knowledge of your customers’ needs should guide your content choices.

7 Mobile marketing

Mobile marketing targets customers and prospects via their smartphones and tablets, using SMS and MMS messaging (direct text or multimedia messages), mobile apps (in-app ads, push notifications, etc), websites (optimised for small screens and fast loading) and social media (“mobile-first” platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc). Because 95% of UK adults aged 16+ own a smartphone (source: Ofcom), mobile marketing potentially offers great reach for UK businesses. 

Top tip: Keep your SMS marketing messages short and clear, with a strong call-to-action. You need to gain consent before sending SMS marketing messages, while offering recipients the opportunity to easily opt-out. 

Which digital marketing channel should you choose? 

A wide range of digital marketing channels is available, and a mix rather than just one or two is likely to provide the solution. Offline marketing options, such as leaflets, brochures, postcards and print adverts, still work very well for many UK businesses, so some of these might be part of your overall marketing mix. Continually test and measure your campaigns, so that you can learn and improve. If something is not working – stop doing it. Why waste any more time or money?   

How to plan a digital marketing campaign

1 Decide your objectives 

Make them SMART: 

• Specific: You should know exactly what results you need to achieve. 

• Measurable: Assessing key metrics allows you to judge success.  

• Achievable: Your aims must be realistic, otherwise failure is inevitable. 

• Relevant: Your aims should align with your business’s broader growth aims.  

• Time-bound: You should have a clear deadline for achieving your objectives.

Setting SMART goals ensures that you know exactly what you need to achieve and by when, so you can stay focused and judge campaign success. SMART objectives enable the tracking and evaluation of results, so you can improve your success.  

• Examples of SMART objectives: Increase your website traffic by 10% within two months; generate 20 new leads a week; or increase your online sales by 20% by the end of the quarter. Ultimately, your aim should be to sell more, of course. 

  
  

2 Target the right buyers

Be clear about which customers you are targeting and let other decisions be guided by your deep knowledge of them. If you lack that knowledge, carry out market research to avoid the risk of wasting time and money on ill-conceived campaigns.  

Top tip: Segment your customer base (ie split it into smaller groups by age, location, buying habits, sector, size, etc), clearly define your specific target audience and tailor your messaging/content to their needs, tastes and behaviours. 

3 Choose the right marketing channels 

Knowing precisely which customers/prospects you are targeting should tell you which channels to use – providing your knowledge of them is good enough. While mobile marketing, TikTok and X might be right for some customers, for others it could be LinkedIn, email, blogs, digital advertising or offline marketing.

Top tip: Most business use a mix of channels, with experience telling them which ones deliver the best results. Find out what channels work best for you, but always monitor your results and remain open to changing tactics. 

4 Create engaging, valuable, individual content

Once again, knowledge of your target audience is key. How can your content solve a problem for them, help them to save money or time or increase their knowledge? Your content must engage and hold people’s attention. It should be visually appealing. A constant stream of blatant sales messages will turn off many people; be much more creative than that. Provide clear value, be original, relevant and timely.  

Top tip: To save time and money, repurpose content across various marketing platforms to maximise your reach. 

5 Measure and improve where possible

Always analyse key metrics, such as CTR (click-through rate), page visits, page views, conversion rate, CPA (cost-per-acquisition). They help you to evaluate and improve the performance of your digital marketing campaigns. Crucially, you need to find out what your return on investment is, to see whether a campaign has been worthwhile or not. Adjust your budget and tactics based on performance. 

Top tip: Run test pilot campaigns. Focus on one or two channels before extending. Learn from each campaign and seek to improve. Budget permitting, get help from digital marketing experts, if it will cost-effectively bring you better results.    

Digital marketing key takeaways

• Marketing is critical to growing your business. 

• Marketing is attracting people’s attention, getting them interested in what you sell, convincing them to buy from you and keep coming back for more. 

• Digital marketing means using online channels, technologies and methods.  

• Digital marketing is highly measurable, scalable, cost-effective and you can target specific customers. It can deliver impressive results, even with limited budgets and experience.  

• The key digital marketing channels include email, search engine optimisation, social media, advertising, content and mobile marketing. Your website should be you key marketing hub. 

• A mix of offline and online (ie digital) marketing channels will likely provide the right solution for your business.

• Find what works for you and do it well.