Media is an incredibly broad and widely used term. Colloquially, the most common usage refers to news and editorial outlets (e.g., the media). At its broadest, however, media refers to the suite of communication outlets and tools that provide information. Underneath this umbrella falls digital media—the information storage outlets that are encoded in machine-readable formats.
Per our expertise in online advertising, we’re going to focus on digital media in this article. That’s not to dismiss the merits of other forms of media—holding a real-life newspaper and looking at it intently while you drink hot black coffee is one of the best ways to feel like an intellectual. Alas, we must stick to what we know best.
Digital Media Marketing Tip #1: Softwares
An essential tactic for any SaaS marketer is offering prospects a simple, free tool. Let’s say your company sells a software that optimizes promotional emails. Using your tool, a prospect can enter the headline, copy, and CTA of one of the emails his team recently sent out. Then, your tool tells the prospect all the areas that need improvement—headline needs to be shorter, CTA needs stronger language, and so on.
As you can imagine, a less-than-great report from your tool would strongly encourage the prospect to try out your software. Effectively, free tools allow software companies to provide a helpful service and demonstrate the value of their product.
Digital Media Marketing Tip #2: Video Games
You can describe the clarity of your graphics and the intensity of your story mode all day long—it’s not going to move the needle. What gets consumers truly hyped about a new video game is a peek inside. That means video content. More specifically, that means social media video content.
Video is far more engaging than text and static images. Plus, posting it on social media creates the opportunity to go viral and reach an immense number of consumers. Make a two-minute trailer for your video game and post it on Facebook. Once the likes, comments, and shares get going, you’ll be surprised by how many enthusiastic gamers you can reach.
Digital Media Marketing Tip #3: Blogs (and websites more broadly)
Anyone who runs a blog and wants to drive more traffic needs to use search engine optimization. SEO is a suite of practices you can use to rank more highly in the organic (non-advertisement) search results. You’re optimizing such that search engine users can easily find your blog.
On-page SEO refers to practices you can use directly on your site. For example, when you write a blog post, the keyword you’re targeting (trying to rank highly for) should appear in a lot of different places: the URL, the title, the headings, the body, the images names, the alt texts, and the meta description. Additionally, your site should be fast, secure (HTTPS), and super easy to navigate, particularly on mobile devices.
Off-page SEO really comes down to one thing: earning links to your content from other websites, specifically ones with good reputations. Each time another website links to yours, it’s a signal to Google to push your content up the organic rankings. Publishing high-quality content, writing guest blogs, and doing outreach are all good off-page SEO practices.
Digital Media Marketing Tip #4: Streaming Platforms
This last category applies to three of the digital media without which life is hard to imagine: TV, movies, and music. Although these three products are widely different, they’re all available for streaming over the Internet, and one great marketing tip applies to them all.
Two words: free trial. This is similar to the free tool recommendation we made for software companies. Whether your company offers visual media or musical media, as few as 7 days is all it takes to get a prospect hooked on your service. How could anyone get a week of unlimited access to The Office, only to shrug and move on when it’s taken away? Answer: they can’t.
Offering a free version of your platform works, too. When college kids are getting ready for a night out, the last thing they want to hear is a 30-second ad in between songs. If you advertise the all-access, ad-free life for long enough, eventually they’ll cough up a few bucks a month.
For more online advertising wisdom, read the WordStream blog.
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