Digital marketing strategy is an umbrella term for all your online marketing activities. It is a sequence of actions that help you achieve your business goals using online marketing channels. These channels include paid, earned, and owned media, and can all support a common campaign around a particular line of business.
A digital marketing strategy is a plan to achieve a single or multiple desired results. For example, your goal is to generate 30% more buyers through your website this month than you made last month.
Depending on the size of your company or the company you’re selling your services to, your digital marketing strategy might involve multiple strategies. Each strategy has different goals and a lot of different functions. Coming back to this simple way of thinking about digital marketing strategy can help you stay focused.
What Are Its Benefits of a Powerful Digital Marketing Strategy?
In a world where more than 30% of us are online regularly, did you know that over half of small businesses don’t have a website? What an opportunity to consider digital marketing in your business! Having a strong online presence will support you in several ways. It will help your customers to find you, make it easier to create awareness and engagement with your existing and potential customers, build a stronger brand and will kickstart word-of-mouth and social signals.
Having a powerful digital marketing strategy will increase your credibility, help you convert cold website visitors into raving fans who will want to buy your products or services and shorten the buyer’s journey by presenting the right offers at the right time Not to mention, it’s cost-efficient marketing.
What Is the Difference between a Digital Marketing Strategy and a Digital Marketing Campaign?
These two terms are not the same thing. As mentioned, a sequence of actions that help you achieve your business goals using online marketing channels. And your digital marketing campaign is a specific action taking place, for example, an email marketing campaign to promote a product to your mailing list or a Google ad to grow your mailing list or a Facebook ad to increase brand awareness.
Steps to Creating your Digital Marketing Strategy
1. Identify your goals and make them measurable.
Every professional marketer knows how important this stage is. Without goals, the strategy simply will not work, so defining them is your main task. To make sure that the goals you developed are suitable, and make them measurable.
2. Define your customers.
Here are some tips to help you find your business’s ideal customers: A) Define your product or service from the customer’s point of view. B) Define the ideal customer for what you sell. C) Determine the specific benefits your customer is seeking in buying your product. D)Determine exactly when your ideal customer buys your product or service. E)Determine your customer’s buying strategy.
3. Create a buyer persona.
The most effective marketing strategies are incomplete without them. A buyer persona is a profile that represents your ideal customer. By creating your own buyer personas, you’ll gain the ability to tailor your marketing efforts and connect with your target audience to meet their needs and solve their problems.“When you combine the Buyer Profile with Buying Insights, you will have clear guidance for the decisions you need to make to win their business.”
4. Create your website.
Your customers expect it, It provides social proof, you’ll show up in Google search results, you can create an easy-access resource center for your staff, you can showcase your products and services, and the list goes on.
Websites work. No matter what your business or profession, a website can generate business, promote goodwill among customers and prospects, and deliver strong marketing messages – whether your business is small, large or in-between, well-established or brand-new.
Increasing visibility is one major factor that makes having a website important. Even if people have heard about your company, they may want to carry out research online first, before entertaining the idea of leaving the comfort of their own home.
5. Perform keyword research for search engine optimization and search engine marketing.
If you are planning on running pay-per-click ads or optimizing your website for search engines you will need to do some keyword research. Keywords are terms that users type into search engines in order to find a product/service or answer a question.
Tip to finding keywords for your business: Anticipate what ideal customers are looking for. Mind map a list of keywords that you think your customers will be searching and then test them! You can type words into Google and let your search bar autofill. This will help you get an idea of what customers are searching for.
6. Set up your social media handles.
Wherever you decide to share your website’s content or to advertise your products and services (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter) you will need to create engaging advertisements that resonate with your audience.
Make sure that you manage and post regularly on social media and interact with your customers on all your social media accounts as well as reply to dissatisfied customers who give you bad reviews. Reaching out to people who have had a bad experience (although it may be scary at first) builds trust and rapport with your customers.
Social media offers an easy and low-commitment way for potential customers to express interest in your business and your products. Lead generation is such an important benefit of social media for business that many social networks offer advertising formats specifically designed to collect leads.
7. Start growing your email list and implement an email marketing strategy.
Email marketing is a vibrant and powerful way to connect with people. Bringing it home, think about your own experiences. Do you even know anyone who doesn’t have an email address? You probably receive a number of HTML emails each week (I sure do). You read them, get inspired by them and even look forward to the next one. Email is a big part of our lives. A very big part.
You can use social media to collect emails which you can then use to build a lookalike audience for your campaign. Now, you have a list of people who have opted to receive news and special offers from you! You can also use emails to encourage follower growth on your social media platforms.
Setup email automation or hire somebody online to do it for you. Automation can be created to welcome users, nurture your relationship with your email subscribers, remind them of the product or service they were interested in, update them with what’s new in your business and more. You set up the email once, and as people meet the trigger you defined, the email will send without any additional effort on your part. It essentially “automates” your email marketing for you. Score!
8. Set up remarketing campaigns.
Remarketing campaigns are used to show ads to people who have visited your website or used your app. These campaigns provide you with extra settings and reports specifically for reaching previous visitors and users.
Remarketing is a tool that you should be using throughout your digital marketing campaign. It allows you to capture sales that you might have otherwise lost. If someone browses your products but does not make a purchase you can target them with social media ads, Google Ads or emails.
9. Implement a content creation strategy.
A good starting point for your content strategy plan is to set out a content marketing mission statement. This is a brief statement that makes it easier to focus on what’s important – and what’s not – in creating your content so your content marketing strategy stays on track.
Content marketing increase customer engagement, and help to answer questions that your customers have. Moreover, if someone clicks on one of your blog posts and spends time reading your article, Google thinks that your content is important which can ultimately help you move up in search.
10. Create a Digital Marketing Strategy Funnel
A marketing funnel describes your customer’s journey with you. From the initial stages when someone learns about your business, to the purchasing stage, marketing funnels map routes to conversion and beyond.
With careful analysis, a marketing funnel lets you know what your company must do to influence consumers at certain stages. By evaluating your funnels, you can potentially drive greater sales, more loyalty, and stronger brand awareness.
Because we know that funnels are the backbone of your digital marketing efforts, we have created a category for that.
