You’ve gotten things rolling last year and are ready to take your business to the next level. Website? Check. Social media? Check. Digital marketing strategy? Well…
One of the most important things you can do for your business is have a digital marketing strategy to take you through the entire year. It should be an integral part of the overall marketing strategy. Why? First, digital marketing is crucial to engaging your target audiences. Also, digital and mobile channels are used to acquire and retain customers that may not be aware of your business. Here’s why a digital marketing strategy makes sense:
- Provides direction
- Prevents competitors from getting your market share
- Helps define your online value proposition
- Helps with optimization
- Cost-effectiveness
- Helps identify and learn online audiences
- Establishes your brand presence
Now that you know why you need a digital marketing strategy, how do you create one that works? An effective digital marketing strategy should have elements that accomplish the following:
- Reach
Growing your online audience.
- Act
Implementing tactics that encourage interactions and leads with the brand.
- Convert
Increasing your sales through gathering data and optimization.
- Engagement
Building customer loyalty.
- Resources
Using the right tools to help create and implement your plans and campaigns.
Buyer personas
Building a good digital strategy takes work. You can start by creating buyer personas. These personas represent your customers and provide information on your target audiences. You build these personas based on demographic, or quantitative information. Demographic information usually includes location, age, income and profession.
You also build buyer personas through psychographic, or qualitative information. This is building goals your persona should achieve. Gathering input from internal stakeholders like customer service people, sales teams, coupled with information from customers will accomplish this. Any challenges, hobbies and interests should be integrated into this brand persona.
Identifying goals
Identifying goals and digital marketing tools you need to accomplish your marketing goals. These goals should be tied back to the overall goals of the business. Every digital marketing goal should align with the brand. You should work to understand how to measure it, be able to measure it, and have those tools in place to provide that data.
Evaluate what you are already doing
Even if you don’t have a written digital marketing strategy, chances are you’re doing something to enhance your brand identity. Consider what has worked and what needs worked. Are you using paid media? What about your owned and earned media? All of these elements work together to determine the channels you will use.
These terms may be a little confusing to you, so here’s a little breakdown. Owned media is digital assets your business already owns. This could be your social media profiles, website, blogs, or anything your business owns and controls in the digital space. Earned media is what you’ve earned from being in the digital space. That means content you share on other sites, PR work, word-of-mouth, and other forms of recognition. When people share your content, or you get great reviews, that is earned media.
Paid media is when you’re paying to get your brand noticed. This is using a variety of vehicles and channels that you spend money on. Google AdWords, paid social media posts, sponsored posts, and other vehicles where you pay.
Audit and plan your owned media
Your content is owned media. Your messages should be strong, clear and engaging. Every page should have great visuals and relevance to ensure your strategy will reach your goals. You should also audit your existing content and identify any gaps to make sure you know and understand what’s working, and putting things in place to correct what’s not.
Create your content plan
Create your content plan to pull everything all together. Every piece of content should have a title, which format, goals and your promotional channels.
Finally, you put it all together. Defining your goals, knowing where you want to go and putting those elements in place to make sure you reach your targets makes the difference. Let us help you get it right the first time! For more information, contact the team at Black Tie Digital Marketing today!
