Nathan Elly, Branch Manager, Digital NextDigital marketing has quickly become a necessity for businesses who want to reach their target markets. It’s more accessible and, in most cases, cheaper than traditional marketing and advertising methods, as well as enabling you to reach both a geographically wider and more demographically targeted audience.The necessity of digital marketing has also led to intense competition in the space. Marketing professionals across the globe are competing for online visibility, making it difficult for any one campaign to stand out.Trying to compete online may lead you to seek out an SEO Agency.Using a professional agency can help guide you through the digital marketing world and allow you to create a strategy to differentiate you from everyone else who is also trying to get likes on social media, traction on their PPC campaign and loyal content readers.While everyone is competing in the same online arena, the strategies you use to approach your online activities is what will ultimately allow you to stand out.Increasing competitionIt can be overwhelming at times to manage digital channels due to the heavy competition in what can seem like every channel. What seemed brilliant and easy when you were adjusting your marketing strategy to incorporate the latest trends for the year, now seems frustrating and pointless because you’re doing the same things as your competitors are doing.For example, content strategies have been really popular over the past few years. You’ve been told you need more content and you need to become a thought leader in your industry so that your customers will look to you for information and guidance. This is a great strategy, but everyone else knows that too. Consumers are being inundated with content, whether it’s in their email inbox, on their social media feeds or on their Google search result. What is going to make them stop to read your piece of content over some else’s?Deliver valueThe easiest way to stand out in the competitive digital space is to focus on quality over quantity. Rather than drowning your customers in content, throw them a life raft in the form of a genuinely useful piece of information.Churning out content for the sake of having content is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in digital marketing. Everything you create and do as a marketer should have a purpose and strategy behind it.The article you’re writing should have value for the reader and it should fit into your larger marketing strategy. Creating one high quality piece of content is a better use of time, money and effort than creating 20 pieces of content that no one is going to read.Delivering value is also a good thing to keep in mind for your social media strategy. Having a presence on every social media channel isn’t going to help your overall marketing strategy very much and it’s just going to take time, money and effort away from the channels that are really impactful.Whatever you are doing online, it’s important to first figure out what your customers are doing. Know what they’re searching, what their problems are and where you can reach them. Then design your strategies around these factors so that in the end, your strategy will have maximum value.Play the long gameIf you want to look for areas of the digital marketing world where you can surpass your competitors, think about your long term strategy.The thing most people like about digital marketing is that they can create campaigns quickly and then get quick results. Less people are thinking about long term strategies and the reality is that if you slowly build a long term strategy, it’s going to ultimately give you a better, more sustainable result.Long-term strategy also comes back to the idea of value. Carefully cultivating your content strategy and building your SEO campaigns over time are going to be more valuable to your customers then quickly shoveling out articles and PPC ads. The long term strategies may take longer to see a return, but they will perform more steadily and build you a stronger customer base.If you want to set your digital marketing strategy apart from the competition, just remember to think about your customers. The more specifically you think about your customers and their needs, the more successful you will be at standing out in what is becoming a very large crowd.[author]About the Author: Nathan Elly is the branch manager at Digital Next, a full-service digital agency based in South Melbourne specialising in responsive Web design, SEO, PPC and social media marketing. He's a passionate digital marketer specialising in business development and long-term strategy, with experience from a multitude of SEO disciplines combined into a role which supports and progresses online businesses.[/author]