There are many tools available today to help you manage your online marketing. But no matter what platform or tool you use, there is one thing that is universal: You need a strategy. You wouldn’t build a home without a blueprint — the same goes for your digital marketing strategy. The most important thing to remember is that your digital marketing strategy should be both measurable and achievable.
Having an effective digital marketing strategy isn’t just about having an online marketing strategy, but also creating a plan that works for your business or brand. In order to create digital marketing strategies, you need to do a little bit of research and planning before doing the actual execution. This is a step-by-step guide that will help you plan your strategy so your business can be successful online. Let’s get started!
Define your digital marketing goals
The first step in creating a successful digital marketing strategy is to define specific goals for your company’s digital marketing efforts and then align those objectives with your company’s broader business goals.
When it comes to defining your company’s digital marketing goals, they should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely).
Start by thinking about what it is you want to achieve with your digital marketing. Do you want more website traffic? More leads? More sales? More brand awareness? Define the exact goal for each campaign you run, so you can measure its success accurately.
Set your target audience
In order to market the business successfully, one must have a deep understanding of what their ideal audience wants. Determine the demographics like age, gender, location, occupation, etc., which represents the target audience well to accurately profile these individuals as well as a list of questions or prompts from past events like webinars or conference calls with them to guide this research process. The goal is not only for building credibility over time but also for determining how they can best serve their needs.
Identify your buyer personas
Before you can begin marketing, you need to understand your buyer personas. These are the people who represent your target audience for your brand. It’s important to note that you may have multiple personas or buyer types for a single brand.
The best way to identify these personas is through research and interviews with current customers or leads. You can also look at the data from your website and social media accounts to see if there are any trends or patterns that indicate who might be interested in your products or services.
Analyze the competition
Competition is everywhere. There’s no way to avoid it, but you can learn from it. The most effective marketing strategies for your business hinge on a thorough understanding of your competition.
By learning what they’re doing right and wrong, you can give yourself a huge advantage in the market. Here’s how to analyze your competition and create an effective digital marketing strategy.
Know your competition
Before you begin any analysis, make sure you know exactly who your competitors are. The competition includes all businesses that offer the same product or service like yours in the same area, even if they do different marketing strategies. You can divide them into three categories: direct competitors, indirect competitors, and expansion-stage competitors.
Direct competitors are businesses that offer the same product or service like yours in the same geographical area. If you sell coffee in downtown Chicago, Dunkin’ Donuts is a direct competitor because they sell coffee across town.
Indirect competitors are businesses that offer something similar to what you have but not exactly the same thing. For example, if you operate a coffee shop with locations in different cities, an online coffee delivery service might be an indirect competitor because they offer something similar — coffee — but not at a physical location like yours.
Expansion-stage competitors are those that did well and are more established in the market than you.
Evaluate your current digital marketing efforts
An essential step to creating a digital marketing strategy is evaluating your current online presence.
Evaluate each of the following areas and determine how you can improve them:
Website – Is it an accurate reflection of your brand? Is your content appropriate and up to date? Is it mobile-friendly?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Does your website appear in search results when users look for keywords relevant to your business? Are there any roadblocks, such as outdated information or broken links that prevent search engines from indexing your site? What are the landing pages associated with organic searches?
Social Media – Do you have a social media presence? If so, are you using it as an effective marketing tool or do you simply post occasional updates about upcoming sales and specials?
Paid advertising – Have you ever paid for advertising, like Google Adwords or Facebook ads? How effective was it, and what did you learn from the experience?
Develop a content marketing strategy
One of the most important types of digital marketing strategies is a content marketing strategy. Content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a clearly defined audience — with the ultimate goal of driving profitable customer action.
A good content marketing strategy can help you to reach your target audiences by giving them the information they need to make informed decisions about your products or services. And it’s also great for SEO purposes. Content marketing is also really cost-effective, especially when it’s done at scale.
To create an effective content marketing strategy, you need to define your audience very clearly — both their characteristics as well as what they care about. This will help you to provide content that actually helps potential customers make purchasing decisions.
After you have a good grasp on the market and customer base, it’s time to develop your content marketing strategy. This may include starting a blog, creating videos, writing guest blog posts on other websites, or posting on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Build up a social media marketing strategy
A social media strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. It guides your actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing.
The more specific your strategy is, the more effective the execution will be. You want to get to the point where anyone can read it and say, “Yep, that’s our strategy.”
Here are the components of a social media strategy:
Goals. These should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). For example, one goal could be to generate 100 new sales-ready leads per month from Facebook.
Audience. Who are you targeting? What are their interests? Where do they hang out online? What content formats do they like most?
Competitors. Who are your main competitors on social media? What are they doing right? Doing wrong? How can you differentiate yourself?
Platforms. Which social networks will you target? What will your presence on each platform look like? How much time will you devote to each network?
Content. What types of content will you create? How often will you post updates? Who will create the content? Will it be outsourced or in-house?
Influencers. Who are the influencers in your niche? How do you get influencers to view things positively about your work? What do you feel is the best strategy to build relationships with influencers in your niche market?
Create/Plan for paid ads/pay-per-click ads
Paid ads have become a very effective tool for digital marketing and are expected to grow in popularity in the coming years. It is important to understand the different types of paid ads so that you can use them in the most effective way possible.
Social media advertising. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offer paid advertising options using which you can target your exact audience based on demographics, interests, location, and more.
Search engine advertising. Google is currently the top search engine in the world. It offers two types of advertisement options—pay-per-click advertising and cost-per-thousand impression (CPM) advertising. In pay-per-click advertising, you only have to pay when someone clicks on your ad, whereas in CPM you pay per thousand impressions of your ad on Google’s network.
How To Plan And Carry Out A Successful Digital Marketing Campaign
The more you plan, the better your marketing strategies will be.
Our digital marketing strategy template is based on the methodology used to develop many of our successful campaigns. It takes you through the essential steps that most strategies follow, and is designed to help you create a clear and actionable plan. The template has been broken down into chunks to make it easier for you to fill out, but make sure you complete the entire thing before launching your campaign.
The template is made up of seven sections:
- Goals – What are you trying to achieve with this marketing plan? Are you looking for a certain number of customers or conversions? Or perhaps you want to increase the number of followers on your social media channels? Whatever your goals may be, it’s important to write them down.
- Target audience – Who are you trying to reach with your marketing efforts? You can make this as detailed as you like, from age and gender to location and interests. Just remember that the more targeted your marketing strategy is, the more effective it will be.
- Competitive analysis – Look at your main competitors and see how they are reaching their customer base. You can also see if they’re doing anything particularly well or badly that you can learn from.
- Key messaging – What do you want your target audience to know about your brand? You should have clear answers for what distinguishes your business from others, how you can help solve their problems, and why they should choose your company over others.
- Marketing channels – Where are your customers most likely to find out about you? Channels can include social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, email newsletters, podcasts, and trade shows. Work out which channels are best suited to helping you meet your goals and make a note of them here.
- Budget – Marketing can be expensive and time-consuming, so budgeting is vital. Make sure you set aside sufficient funds for each channel and any external support that may be needed, such as freelance writers or graphic designers.
- Timeline – With a clear schedule, you’ll know exactly what needs to be done and by whom. A timeline should also help you and your team stay organized and on task, making it easier for everyone to work towards a fixed goal.
Optimize Your Digital Marketing Strategy Today
Developing any kind of digital marketing strategy is tough. But you can reap big rewards if you take the time to create content that appeals to your target audience, even if it takes you some time to learn how to optimize your strategy. The good news is that creating a digital marketing strategy is really no different than developing other kinds of long-term marketing strategies. So follow this guide and start planning your digital marketing strategy today. You’ll be glad you did!