Gone are the days when billboards and newspaper ads were the most effective means of promoting a brand and products.
Digital marketing is a necessity for every business, and having a marketing strategy is the key to your success.
There are many options when it comes to digital marketing, and it can be stressful to figure out where to start on your own.
In this post, we will look at how to create a digital marketing strategy from scratch that will be comprehensive and help you achieve specific goals of your choice.
1. Define what you want to achieve
What do you want your digital marketing campaigns to accomplish? Do you want to build brand awareness? Generate leads? Get more sales or email subscribers?
Great! Whatever it is, you need to name it.
DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
These are the methods by which a business gets full crossover; a fitting comparison is online dating. If you go on a bunch of blind dates with no idea what you're looking for, it might work out with the first person, but it might also not work out for a long time. If you have a list of traits and qualities you want to find in a person, then you are much more likely to find your exact match.
Your goals are important, and you will need to take specific steps to achieve each one. We will look at this in more depth a little further down.
2. Develop an online sales system
The digital sales funnel is an important marketing concept that you need to understand before you actually develop your strategy. It consists of several different stages that buyers go through to reach the point of purchase and/or become long-term customers.
Depending on who you ask, the stages may differ in number and have different names, but they usually include the following:
Discovery. People hear about your brand or product for the first time.
Research/consideration. Some brand recognition has been established, and the user is ready to look at your products or services to learn more. They may also research your competitors at this stage.
Purchase. Users are ready to become customers and buy from you at this point.
Loyalty. Repeat customers can become loyal to your brand or product and eventually become advocates for your brand.
Users who are at the discovery stage will not respond to your ad content in the same way as someone who is at the loyalty stage. They will interact with your brand in different ways, across different platforms/devices, and your strategy should be adapted to their interests and needs.
3. Create buyer personas
The next step you will need to take to create your strategy is to get a solid understanding of who your audience is and what motivates them. This will be essential because it will help you determine which platforms you can reach them on, what messages and content to create for each type, and what they expect from you.
Buyer personas should be specific. You do not want to just say "young mothers" as a persona and stop there. You want to have "Supermom Mary, aged 25-29 with at least one child under five, who has a limited budget in a middle-class home. She is trying to be a good mother and wife, but finds personal fulfillment in work. She is trying to live an organic lifestyle, but works at McDonald's during busy weekday evenings." Each persona will help you understand more about your potential customers, their pain points, and what you can do for them.
It is important to note that your buyer personas must absolutely be based on research. Skip the thinly veiled stereotypes and instead use the analytics you already have, including Google Analytics and Facebook's Audience Insights.
4. Determine where to find users at all stages of the funnel
You have a good understanding of who your audience is, so now you want to figure out how and where to connect with them. Again, refer to your analytics for this and cross-reference them with your buyer personas.
Let's say you run a home repair company. You do everything from floor repairs and plumbing damage to creating their dream kitchen. There is a good chance you have a very diverse audience at all stages of the funnel.
Here are a few examples:
Someone who is spending a lot of time planning an expensive bathroom renovation may discover you by searching Google for phrases like "bathroom design ideas" or by browsing Pinterest. If they find a blog post of yours featuring images of renovations you have done, that may be a way to get a client to like and hire you.
A person whose home has been flooded after a burst pipe is currently looking for someone to come fix the flooring before mold takes over everything. Your best bet will be to reach them through Google Ads, because that is a place where someone can discover a company for any service and compare different offers.
Some clients dream of a new bathtub but have limited funds and a wrong idea of the price of such a service. You run a Facebook campaign showing how affordable and high-quality certain types of bathtubs can be, and you create interest in someone who until then only had desire, but no intent. Another client is excited about the work you did, such as installing built-in lighting in their home. You use email to let them know that you offer a special discount for a home security system, and they show interest and make a purchase again.
Think about all paid and organic marketing channels and consider which members of your audience use them and at what stage of the funnel they are. This will help you determine the marketing channels you should target in each part of your digital marketing strategy.
5. Apply specific tactics to achieve your goals
You have chosen your marketing mix and you know how you expect your audience to respond. Once you have done that, it is time to start putting everything together through specific tactics that will help you achieve those end goals.
Some of these tactics may include:
Lead generation tools or email list signup forms on all blog posts, along with a CTA at the end of the posts to grow your subscriber list.
Sharing influencer content on social media in order to build relationships and increase visibility and brand awareness.
Encouraging reviews with email plugins that you can then place on your site, or asking users to submit reviews for your business on Google to improve your reputation and organic search results..
Again, specificity is key here. Map out very specific steps you will take to achieve your goals. Be consistent: "Create posts for your blog to attract potential clients" and include CTAs and links on each one as you start getting results.
6. Automation and personalization
As you launch your campaigns, you should use every opportunity to make them as impactful and effective as possible.
There are two good ways to do this: more personalization and more automation. In many cases, the two can overlap..
Sometimes, the most personalized and relevant marketing messages your audience receives are delivered as a result of their specific actions. This includes ads that use remarketing to show users products they have viewed on your site, or triggered automated email responses that show customers products similar to those they have seen in the past.
Use audience segmentation, personalization, and automation whenever possible to write specific content for groups of people, based on the information you have about the relationship they have established with your business. They will see the message at the ideal moment, and it will be highly relevant to their needs. This will take your strategy one step further.
7. Look for Gaps in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
I lovingly call this last step "troubleshooting" in your funnel. Your digital marketing strategy is set up and working. Both in the early days and in the long term, you will want to carefully evaluate its results. Since there are often multiple elements, platforms, and campaigns, this can be difficult.
Google Analytics is a big help here, along with the native analytics of the networks and channels you use. You want to evaluate how customers interact with your campaigns and how that helps you achieve your goals. It does not matter much if your blog post was shared 5,000 times in two days if you did not get a single inquiry or sale - that is the whole point.
Set goals in Google Analytics and review behavior flow to look for drop-off points in your funnel. You can do the same with almost any platform. Are you getting a lot of clicks on a PPC ad, but then no conversions, or are people opening emails without clicking? Find out why. Identify where users drop off and look for any telltale clues that might be the cause. Run a few tests and see what you can learn.
Conclusion
Although it may seem tempting to jump in and start using multiple platforms, it is important to remember that starting small and building up information can keep you from shooting yourself in the foot. Running any kind of marketing campaign (even just search engine optimization) without specific goals is like wandering around Paris without a GPS - it is more like boarding a sailboat without a map.
The chances of getting lost at sea are high.
Without a marketing strategy, it is impossible to get insight into the results achieved. And trust me, with all the time and money you have invested, that is the last thing you want.
Do you want help implementing your digital marketing strategy?
Contact us and see how we can help you.
