Why are 82% of marketers expecting large increases of their digital marketing budgets come 2019?

Whether startup or enterprise, B2B, or B2C, companies of all types are finding digital marketing at the forefront of their sales strategies. Regardless of size or industry, modern organisations now rely upon their online presence and marketing strategies for the majority of their leads.

Let’s explore what digital marketing has done for companies in many different fields and what digital marketing can do you for you.

What Are the Benefits of Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is an extraordinarily cost-effective way to boost ROI. Many types of digital marketing build momentum with time, growing more effective as they continue.

Digital marketing is scalable: you can commit to as much or as little digital marketing as you desire. Further, digital marketing is granular. You can use digital marketing to target very specific demographics, increasing the odds of securing quality leads who are likely to be interested in your product or service.

5 Winning Digital Marketing Strategy Case Studies

It can be difficult to conceptualise just how valuable digital marketing is without seeing for yourself. The following are some notable digital marketing strategy examples from different industries and each with a different emphasis on their core strategy.

Through these examples, you can gain a better understanding of what digital marketing is and how effective it can be.

How Mint Used Online Marketing to Successfully Launch a Digital Empire

When Mint first launched in 2006, it was nothing more than an account aggregation service. Yet Mint has now become a household name with over 20 million users.

Acquired by Intuit for $170 million in 2009, Mint is a personal finance tracker that makes it easy for customers to achieve their financial goals, track their budget, and find deals on credit cards, loans, mortgages, and auto loans.

Mint faced an uphill battle, as it needed to convince users that it was safe to consolidate their banking data under a single service. When the aggregation service first came out in 2006, this was something many users were told never to do.

Despite this, through a comprehensive online marketing campaign, Mint was able to successfully start acquiring revenue through lead generation by 2008 — leveraging its referral fees.  

Mint’s challenges were two-fold: they needed to convince customers that this was a service they needed and that they were a reputable, safe service to use. They were able to do this through their multi-channel marketing, which built authority and brand awareness throughout their targeted millennial audience.

Key aspects of their marketing strategy included the following:

The MintLife Blog

Mint understood that their major customer demographics were likely to be millennials who wanted to get a foothold on their finances. The MintLife blog was directed at bringing in younger individuals who had questions about their finances.

What goes into a credit score? How do you get started buying a house? Is it possible to purchase a car with bad credit? Blog-based content marketing brought in an audience demographic that was likely to be interested in their services.

Social Media Interaction

Through social media, Mint became extraordinarily responsive. The team at Mint hosted promotions, gave away free items and discounts, and engaged with the audience that they expected to be most interested in its service.

By establishing relationships with known brands through social media — such as credit card companies — Mint was also able to easily build its perceived authority with its potential audience. Mint’s social media was not self-promoting; instead, it focused on giving its millennial audience information about money saving tips, financial news, and more.

Explainer Videos

Finally, Mint still needed to tackle the concept of a financial tracker — showing its audience that it needed the tool that it was providing. It was able to do this through a sequence of explainer videos and articles designed to show the value of the website.

As a free website, Mint only needed to convince its users to convert to a free account — from there, the value presentation was within the tool itself.

Mint needed to explain the benefits of its services in a clear way. Video marketing was the best overall solution.

Ultimately, Mint was able to grow its business by establishing authority, creating a wide array of content marketing, and offering clear, understandable explanations about the usability of its tool.

Recommended reading: Why You Need to Have Explainer Videos in Your Marketing Strategy

Dropbox Grows from 1 Million to 500 Million Users in Just 7 Years

Ranked as one of the most valuable startups in the world, Dropbox is currently one of the most used digital utilities across the globe. Dropbox has a total of 500 million users, and its usage has been growing steadily ever since. From 2009 to 2016, Dropbox was able to achieve growth from 1 million to 500 million users. Much of this dramatic growth was fuelled by online marketing.

As an online service, Dropbox’s online marketing was particularly important. Its users were already there — it just needed to find a way to tap into them. It was able to do this in a scalable, cost-effective way by essentially recruiting its own customers. Dropbox encouraged customers to invite others through a variety of social media platforms, which turned the ordinary user into a brand ambassador.

Further, Dropbox had to segregate its marketing campaigns. It wasn’t just a B2C utility; its ultimate goals were to serve to businesses who would be more likely to pay for a premium model.

This meant that Dropbox had to reach a certain saturation point. The more ubiquitous its product became, the more likely it would be that commercial enterprises would invest in premium services. This underscored the importance of fast, even chaotic, growth.

Key aspects of their marketing strategy included the following:

A Clean, Clear Landing Page

Dropbox’s landing page immediately describes its product in a single sentence and then prompts users to commit. As a free product, Dropbox yields the best results by encouraging users to test out their service.

Once users test out their free service, ideally their company will be encouraged to pay for a premium version.

Built-In Marketing Incentives

Dropbox encouraged users to connect with others and promote Dropbox as a service by giving them more space for their files. By sharing content on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, users could get an upgrade to the amount of space that they had.

Not only did this bring users closer to the brand, but it also made for fast-paced grass roots growth.

An Inspiring Market Platform

As an overall utility, Dropbox had to reach a very large audience. It geared up for this audience engagement through a unique online marketing campaign that was designed to show its values.

Customers began to see the brand as standing for something, rather than being yet another software utility.

Of course, none of this marketing would have gotten as far as it did if it wasn’t for the utility of the service. The advantages of a freemium model really only work when the service is clearly worth paying for. Nevertheless, the marketing strategies listed above were instrumental in securing Dropbox incredible, sustainable, and exponential growth.

Golden Heart Senior Care Leverages Reputation Management to Build Trust

Plumbers, restaurants, and long-term care services — they all have something in common. People seeking these services are likely to look up reviews, testimonials, and third-party ratings before making a decision.

Companies that offer personal services have a long road ahead of them. Without an online reputation, few customers will be willing to give them a chance.

Golden Heart Senior Care needed to make sure that customers saw them as trustworthy and reliable. To that end, they turned to online marketing.

Through a digital marketing team, they were able to boost their online reviews as well as develop themselves as a trustworthy authority regarding long-term senior care. Active social media accounts, a polished blog, and reviews on multiple platforms were all able to bolster the care service’s reputation.

Reputation management is the art of pushing positive content to the top. Not only do reputation management companies need to promote positive contact, but they also need to be able to bury content that may be incorrect or outdated. Nothing can ever be removed from the Internet; instead, through SEO and content marketing, digital marketers have to promote the best content first.

Key aspects of their marketing strategy included the following:

Managing Online Reviews

Through a curated online review platform, Golden Heart Senior Care was able to share positive reviews as well as curating reviews that were incorrect. Golden Heart Senior Care was offered the opportunity to address any negative reviews while also encouraging satisfied clients to post their own reviews.

The more reviews posted on an online review platform, the more relevant it became to search engines — and therefore, the more it was pushed to the top of results. Presently, Golden Heart Senior Care can be seen on multiple senior care review websites, ranking at a 5 out of 5 stars.

Posting Original and Curated Information

To establish themselves as an authority and reach out to their leading demographics, Golden Heart Senior Care began to produce and share valuable content about seniors and their abilities.

In addition to this, Golden Heart Senior Care also shared curated information, establishing themselves as an all-around resource and giving them additional content to share beyond the custom content that they themselves had created.

Together, this made for an active, versatile social media presence.

Engaging with Followers Online

A long-term care service is an intensely personal relationship. Golden Heart Senior Care was able to connect with potential clients or their loved ones directly through their social media.

One-on-one interaction with potential clients improved perception of the care centre, while also addressing any questions or concerns that followers might have. Even potential clients who did not have questions could see how responsive the care centre was online, which mattered in terms of reputation.

As a relatively small company, Golden Heart Senior Care has a fairly specific demographic: seniors (and their families) within their geographic area. This type of marketing requires an extremely personal touch.

Through reputation management, Golden Heart Senior Care was able to capture an audience who already knew that they needed their services, but who also had questions and concerns about the process — and who wanted to find the most trustworthy service available.

In a rating-filled world, companies need to be especially conscientious about positive and negative reviews and how they may adversely impact them.

First Fruit Wellness Center Expands to Three Locations through Social Media Engagement

Converting followers to leads is one of the major challenges of any marketing campaign. Yet this wellness centre had a unique and personal take on social media marketing. By engaging with followers one-on-one, First Fruit Wellness Center developed close relationships with potential customers online. Social media campaigns don’t have to feel impersonal — though they often do.

Wellness centres have a unique marketing challenge: they need to show their clientele that there is a need for them. Wellness centres need to be able to reach out to those who are interested in improving their health and show the value of their services before customers walk in the door.

Most social media campaigns are primarily based around the idea of brand awareness: making it known that your business is open and available. But First Fruit Wellness Center went a step further by actively engaging their followers — asking them questions about their health and their goals and encouraging them one-on-one to come into the centre and see what it could do for them.

For larger enterprises, this type of constant one-on-one interaction might seem taxing. But for a brick-and-mortar wellness centre, these personalised interactions ultimately led to leads.

Key aspects of their marketing strategy included the following:

Building Out Their Content Marketing

It was through content marketing that the First Fruit Wellness Center was able to initially build an audience. Engagement campaigns cannot work without followers already available.

Posting interesting content, sharing curated content, and interacting with similar brands were the first step towards building First Fruit Wellness Center’s social media campaigns.

Connecting Directly with Followers

When followers connected with First Fruit Wellness Center, the marketing team began to interact with them immediately — asking them questions about their interests and their goals.

This type of personal interaction is extraordinarily rare on social media today and served the purpose of not only establishing relationships with customers, but also showing them that this company was different.

Getting the Followers to Come In

Ultimately, to get leads the marketing team needed to get people in the door. Once relationships were sufficiently established, the marketing team of First Fruit Wellness Center encouraged potential customers to come in to find out more about the centre and what it could offer to them. By bringing in leads in this fashion, nearly all of the nurturing was done through the online platform.

Despite the time commitment, these strategies are scalable. Many large brands — most famously Wendy’s — have extremely active social media accounts, through which they interact with customers and respond to customers regularly.

Unique to First Fruit Wellness Center, however, is the type of ongoing interactions, relationship building, and lead generation that the marketing team engaged in.

By establishing an individual rapport with each follower, the centre was able to send a message that it valued them.

@Tawnycat How are you Tonya? I see that you're a chef! What's your favorite meal to prepare??

— Nancy J. Williams (@DrNancyHolistic) September 2, 2014


 
(Embedded Twitter)

First Fruit Wellness Center is interesting in another way: shortly after expanding to multiple locations, they appear to have discontinued their marketing campaigns.

As a direct consequence, their account can now be seen to be mostly inactive — and all of the social media momentum they built died off. This is a sobering reminder that social media is a living entity and that it needs to be continually refuelled and revised.

Roofstock Uses Press Releases, News Sites, and Paid Advertising to Disrupt Real Estate Market

Not many individuals are interested in purchasing investment property sight unseen. Yet this is exactly the premise that Roofstock needed to sell. Roofstock is a disruptive real estate service, designed to make it easier for investors to purchase properties from anywhere in the world.

Once properties are purchased online, they are managed by local property management companies. Investors are able to reap the benefits of an investment property with none of the negatives — at least, that’s the theory.

Of course, that’s a hard sell to a lot of investors. Experienced investors already have their own networks in place, while inexperienced investors may fear such a high-risk strategy. That’s where Roofstock’s digital marketing came in.

Rather than just focusing on traditional content marketing and social media, Roofstock acquired coverage in magazines such as Forbes. Online press releases and news articles were used to build both credibility and awareness.

This was further augmented by paid marketing campaigns on communities such as Reddit, directed towards investors.

Roofstock additionally embarked upon reputation management, and presently there are a number of solid reviews and ratings for the service — showing it as a reputable and trustworthy resource.

Together, these strategies were used to establish the company in a disruptive space, providing a service that many had otherwise never heard of before.

Key aspects of their marketing strategy included the following:

Placement in Reputable Magazines and News Outlets

For Roofstock, traditional blog posts and content marketing wasn’t enough. A company asking investors for tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars needed more. Positioning themselves in Forbes, Business Insider, and other high-quality online venues allowed for a better perceived reputation.

Reviews and Reputation Management

Reputation was important for Roofstock as many would be looking up the company to make sure it was legitimate. Roofstock invested in reputation management enough to ensure that it had positive, reputable reviews showing up whenever potential clients searched for the company on a search engine.

It wasn’t enough for Roofstock itself to rank highly in terms of SEO; its reviews and testimonials needed to as well.

Paid Advertising

For high-value companies such as Roofstock, the ROI of paid advertising is even more extraordinary. A company can spend a great deal on procuring leads if each lead brings in thousands of dollars.

However, just general advertising often isn’t enough to bring in interested leads. Roofstock was able to leverage the communities of Reddit for targeted advertising services.

Roofstock not only needed to explain to users what its service did, but also establish credibility within the industry.

Disruptive businesses often face significant challenges when advertising, as they need to show users that there is a new way to accomplish their goals.

Roofstock was able to build its reputation and credibility through the use of pre-existing finance and business venues. Simultaneously they ran an education campaign that explained to prospective clients what its service did and how its service was better than its predecessors.

Conclusion

Not only have we explored a number of different businesses and industries, but we’ve also seen how marketing campaigns can shift in focus depending on a company’s needs.

The above digital marketing strategy examples are all vastly different, but each of them were able to achieve substantial results through the skills of a talented marketing team.

Online marketing is a necessity within the digital era — but there also isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Every marketing campaign must be customised to a business and continuously modified to continue suiting the company’s needs.

As an audience grows, the marketing campaign must evolve and adapt. In so doing, it will yield even greater returns.

If your organisation is interested in developing a digital marketing strategy, the time to begin is now. Contact us to find out more about how we can develop the right digital strategy for you.