The importance of a digital marketing strategy

As many business owners know, digital marketing is essential for growth and having a good, structured plan can do wonders for your company! Today I am going to be explaining what digital marketing is, how you can use it, and the steps you need to take to create your own digital marketing strategy.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is when you sell services and products through online channels such as email, apps, and social media. I suppose it’s in the name, any form of marketing that uses electronic devices is under the digital marketing umbrella. Digital marketing helps to effectively capture the attention of a number of users globally, and the best thing with this process is that your products, if done right, can only be a few clicks away from prospective customers. Digital marketing can be a more defined and enhanced method of promotion. It’s more affordable than traditional advertising and can yield better results as it is a broader form of advertising. If you are unable to distinguish your business online, and target and land prospective clients then your business will struggle to survive in the long run.

Key areas to focus on

There are multiple ways of marketing your business online as the world of digital marketing continues to grow. The areas you need to focus on include; content marketing, native advertising, pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO) , social media marketing, and email marketing. Focusing your efforts on these important areas can help your business achieve your digital marketing vision!

How to create a solid Digital Marketing Strategy

Now I am going to go through ten basic steps you need to take when you come to creating your company’s digital marketing strategy.

Step 1

The first step you need to do is to create a customer persona. Usually digital marketers would collect qualitative and quantitative information about the target audience. This data would include; age, gender, interests, location, and occupation. Recently the definition of a potential customer has been taken to another level. Buyer personas have started to take over and have made it so even the most effective marketing strategies are incomplete and can fail without them. Buyer personas is a term used that describes the ideal customer that has the ability to be defined by contacting predefined target groups and with the use of surveying too. 

Step 2

To identify your business’ goals and tools. Every marketer will know the importance of this step. Without having goals in mind your strategy would simply not work. Also, you need to make sure that the goals set are suitable and measurable in order for this step to do its job! An example of a weak marketing goal could look like: Let’s increase the website conversions for next year and create three promotional offers. This goal is non-measurable and that is not what you want. Here is another example of how it should have been formulated: Let’s increase the website's conversions by 30 percent within the first quarter of 2023, and then drop three promotional offers: a free marketing book, a list of tips for digital marketing, and a marketing report. Let’s have them online and functioning by March, April, and May. The measuring of your company’s progress is now possible in this format.

Step 3

Utilise blogging. Spending more focus on blogging can help expand your content for your marketing strategy. Creating high-quality content is very important for any digital marketing strategy. The use of a blog section on your website can reinforce your social media presence, bring you more online traffic, help position you against other businesses, and can help with ranking with keywords and long-tail search queries. The use of a regularly updated blog section on your website can help visitors find meaningful information and can also help your website be found easier through search engines. There are blog writing services you can use if you don’t have the capacity to tackle the blog yourself!

Step 4

Evaluate other existing digital marketing channels. Analyse different digital assets and channels your company is already using. This includes; blog content, your website, social media accounts, native advertising, paid advertising, and so on and so forth. Make sure to ask yourself how effective they were for your company and how they can be used to be even more effective for the next business year. This will help you understand what you need to do digitally in order to reach your goals!

Step 5

Automate your marketing. Marketing automation is huge these days and continues to get better and better thanks to today’s software and technology. Automating your marketing will allow you to free up time for other tasks, you can automate content such as; email marketing, lead generations, content marketing, and more! There are many marketing automation platforms that can be used to help!

Step 6

Mobile optimization is crucial. If your website doesn’t work well on mobile then you may as well not have a website! Most people these days do their online shopping and browsing online on their phones, so if your website is all clunky and doesn’t work properly then prospective customers will find another service with better mobile optimization. No matter how good your product or service is, if your website doesn’t work well on mobile then you will lose customers.

Step 7

Make it easy for your customers to get in contact and reach you! Every business is all about connecting and communicating with potential customers. Make it easy for your website goers to contact you or ask questions about your product or service. Engaging with your customers is vital for your business’ growth and success.

Step 8

Use suitable technology so you aren’t wasting time! You’ll need to implement such tools as; marketing automation software, industry tools such as Snapshot Report by Vendasta, and of course a can do attitude! The use of suitable tools will help your business achieve its goals and can help track where website visitors are coming from.

Step 9

Confirm your business’ differentiators. If your company is not different from your competitors then you should not expect high profit margins. You need to make sure you are different from other companies and you need to show these off and shed light on the reasons people should buy your products! Highlight your business’ unique selling points and show what sets you apart from the competition.

Step 10

Track your process and track your progress! Note down everything you do, everything that goes well, and everything that doesn’t. Constant monitoring is needed to ensure that your strategy is working!

Now that you have read this blog about digital marketing, it’s time for you to get on it! If you need any other information or help then you can speak with one of our Digital Marketing Experts by clicking Get help here

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