A digital marketing strategy is a plan that helps your company achieve specific goals by utilizing carefully selected marketing channels such as paid, earned, and owned media.
Running a digital marketing campaign without a strategy is similar to exploring a new city without a GPS – you are likely to take many wrong turns, resulting in frustration and an unnecessarily long route to your destination.
When you plan a trip, you probably start by creating an itinerary to ensure you make the most of your time and money.
The same is true for digital marketing; a marketing strategy is required for increased efficiency.
1. Setting Goals: Decide Where You Want To Go Map
You have a destination in mind when creating an itinerary. The destination of a digital marketing strategy is a set of defined marketing goals that you hope to achieve through your efforts.
These marketing objectives should be linked to the overarching goals of your company.
For example, if your organization’s goal is to increase its clientele list by 20%, your marketing goal should be to generate viable leads to contribute to that success.
Whatever your goal, you must also ensure that you are measuring your progress.
Perhaps your goal is to increase the number of email subscribers. Increased sign-ups would be your key performance indicator (KPI) in this case.
2. Understanding Your Target Market Local Purchasing At The Market
You know how important it is to understand how locals interact when travelling; you don’t want to stand out as an odd tourist.
The same can be said about digital marketing campaigns. This entails comprehending your target audience’s demographics as well as the psychology of existing and new customers.
A potential buyer must go through several steps before making a purchase and, ideally, becoming a long-term customer.
The stages may differ, but they typically begin with brand awareness and education, progress to the consideration phase, and finally end with a decision and sales conversion.
Content Marketing That Works
You can’t just write anything or use a “spray and pray” approach.
You must be strategic about what you write about, what words you want to own, have an SEO keyword strategy in place, and consider continuous content optimization.
3. Create A Crowd Of People To Represent Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) And Buyer Personas.
Meeting new people is one of the most enjoyable aspects of traveling! But it’s pointless to try to communicate with someone who doesn’t want to talk to you, right? Maybe there’s a language barrier, or maybe they just don’t care about who you are or what you do.
This also applies to marketing. As a digital marketer, you must create buyer personas so that you know exactly who you want to talk to and that they have a mutual interest in talking to you.
Remember that the personas you create should be based on research. Have you had prior success with a specific group of people? Great, now go after them! It is advantageous to be specific.
Avoid stereotypes by investigating factual insights using readily available tools such as Facebook Audience Insights and Google Analytics.
With basic background information such as job title and location, you can begin to identify these personas.
You should also figure out what this person wants, such as a solution to a specific problem (that your company can solve)! Next, figure out the best way to contact this person, which brings us to step four.
4. Determine The Most Effective Marketing Channels And Buying Stages
We’re Open Sign Welcomes You In.
If you want to meet local beer connoisseurs, you could go to a local pub. In turn, if you want to meet decision-makers in a specific industry, you must decide where to find them as well as what messaging to users based on where they are in their buying journey.
During the awareness stage, decision-makers in ideal client verticals may be targeted for education and expertise.
This campaign’s key performance indicators (KPIs) could include reach, impressions, and engagement.
The consideration stage would influence and incentivize by promoting or incentivizing those who participated in your awareness campaign.
Lead generation could be one of the campaign’s key performance indicators.
By retargeting previous website visitors, the conversion stage would drive sales.
The key performance indicators (KPIs) for this campaign could be a meeting scheduled via a contact form or a signed contract/proposal.
You will move more strategically towards your marketing and business goals if you structure your campaigns to meet the buyer where they are in their journey.
Consider buyer personas. You have a good understanding of your target audience and how they buy, but now you need to know where to reach out to them.
For example, if your buyer persona is a 35-year-old journalist who reads the news online, Twitter may be the best channel through which to communicate with them.
Choosing the appropriate digital channels will assist you in increasing ROI.
There are more marketing platforms available than ever before, so be strategic in determining where your buyer personas are and connecting with them through those channels.
5. People Interacting At A Bar: Get Your Messaging Right
Assume you’re travelling alone and decide to sit at a local restaurant’s bar.
You see someone you want to speak with and are aware that approaching them requires skill and etiquette. The same can be said about your marketing campaigns!
Create messaging that is relevant to the audience you are attempting to reach.
Your campaign’s voice and content should speak to them in a way that they can understand. This is where your previous research and planning comes full circle.
You should know where to start the conversation if you’ve determined where they are in the sales funnel.
If they don’t know anything about you (prospecting stage), you should start by establishing your expertise and gaining their trust.
If you’ve identified their buyer persona and are selling a service, you should be aware of their pain points and be able to explain how you can help them.
If you are selling a product, you should be aware of their preferences.
Your audience will be far more receptive to what you have to offer if you take the time to perfect your messaging, perhaps even personalizing it.