Content Summary: Having a digital marketing strategy for your business is a great way of keeping your marketing efforts on track. To come up with an effective digital marketing plan, follow the steps listed in this article.
Advertising is an important aspect of every business. This practice allows your target audience to learn about the products and services you offer, which can then help you increase your sales and earn more money.
There are many ways that you can promote your business. One of these is through digital marketing.
What Is Digital Marketing and Why Is It Important?
This refers to any marketing efforts that you conduct using an electronic device or the internet. You can choose from any of the available digital channels, such as search engines, social media, and email, to promote your business or products and services.
Digital marketing can help you enjoy various benefits that will surely help your business. One of the main advantages of utilizing digital marketing is being able to communicate with your audience where they spend most of their time—online. Additionally, through this practice, you will be able to monitor the performance of your marketing efforts in real-time.
Digital Marketing Strategy
If you plan on delving into the digital marketing world, you need to start by coming up with an effective strategy. A digital marketing strategy is an essential tool that you can use to achieve your brand’s objectives. It is a plan that will guide every marketing activity that you do for your business.
Here are the steps that you need to do to create an effective digital marketing strategy for your business:
Build Your Buyer Personas
The most important thing you need to do when coming up with a digital marketing strategy is to know who you are marketing to. You should know the characteristics of your target audience in order to tailor your advertising efforts to their needs and preferences.
To learn about your ideal customer, you can gather data through research, surveys, and interviews. You should ensure to base your buyer personas on real data as much as possible because making assumptions about your target audience can lead your marketing plan in the wrong direction.
There are two types of information you can gather about your target audience depending on what you need for your marketing strategy. These are the following:
Quantitative and Demographic Information
- Location
- Age
- Income
- Job title
Qualitative and Psychographic Information
- Goals
- Challenges
- Hobbies and interests
- Priorities
Identify Your Goals and the Tools You Need
The marketing goals you set for your business should always be in line with your company’s fundamental goals. Ensuring this will allow you to have a clear idea of where your marketing efforts should take you.
To make the goals identification part much easier on your behalf, you can use the SMART goals framework. You should aim for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. Once you are done, you should come up with something similar to “I want to receive 10,000 visits per week on my website every week within 6 months. To accomplish this, I will do X, Y, and Z.”
After setting your goals, you should prepare the tools you will need to monitor your strategy. These will provide you with the opportunity to measure the success of your plan. Some of the tools you can utilize are Salesforce and HubSpot’s Dashboard and Reporting Software.
Evaluate Your Existing Digital Channels and Assets
Determine the digital marketing channels and assets you will use in your strategy. To do this, you should gather what you have and categorize each one in a spreadsheet, where you can clearly see your existing owned, earned, and paid media.
Owned Media
This pertains to the digital assets that your company owns, including its website, social media profiles, blog content, and images. Owned media can also refer to some content that you own but is not hosted on your website. You have complete control over these resources.
Earned Media
This refers to the assets you have earned through word-of-mouth marketing. Earned media may pertain to the exposure and recognition you get because of the content you have shared on other websites, PR work, and customer service you have provided.
Paid Media
If you have tried using Google AdWords or taking advantage of a PPC management service, you might have encountered the term paid media. Basically, this refers to any digital channel that you pay for to catch the attention of your target audience. Paid media can come in the form of paid advertisement, paid social media posts, and native advertising.
Once you have a list of your existing digital channels and assets, you should decide on the ones that can help you meet your goals. Incorporate these into your strategy to become one step closer to digital marketing success.
Plan Your Content
By now, you must know how important content is to your digital marketing efforts. This can help you improve your brand’s online presence and boost your search and organic traffic. You can also use content to communicate your brand message to users and convert your website visitors into leads and customers.
The first thing you need is a strategy, which you will use in creating, distributing, and managing unique content that will attract users to your website. When creating one, you should keep your buyer persona in mind, especially the type of content they consume, in what format, and the people or groups that they follow. Knowing these will allow you to customize your content into something that your target audience will prefer.
You should also audit your existing content and see if there are any gaps you need to fill. Add more topics to your content strategy to ensure that you are providing your audience with all the information they need.
Next, you need to think about the keywords that you will incorporate in your content. Using the appropriate keywords will allow you to organically improve your SEO positioning and increase the chance of users finding you on search engines.
To identify the right keywords that you need for your content, consider the following parameters:
- Relevance of the keyword to your brand
- User intent when searching for the keyword
- Search volume
- Competence level
Finalize Your Digital Marketing Strategy
After going through all the steps listed above, it is time to implement your plan and measure your outcomes. Analyzing the results after a while will help you determine if you have earned your expected ROI. This step will also help you find out the aspects you need to work on to achieve the goals you have set at the beginning.
It would be best if you measure each of your actions using KPIs to have a more quantitative perspective of your experience. You should also set a monthly, weekly, or even daily goal for each key metric and establish the controls you will use to ensure that you are on the right track.
Having a digital marketing strategy is important for your business. This plan will help guide you and your team on what you need to do to accomplish the marketing goals you have set for your company. Ultimately, it will help you avoid wasting time and money on marketing efforts that will not benefit your business.
Author Bio:
Jerry Little | I’m still hoping to have a nephew named Stuart, because how fun would that be? I’m a freelance writer, and my interest ranges from the hottest chili in the world to the ergonomics of a good office chair. My most recent accomplishment: I took a selfie.
