7 Fundamental Steps To Create A Digital Marketing Strategy

Nowadays, digital marketing has taken the world by storm. People spend more time on the Internet, and digital marketing continues to receive more of the marketing budget. In order to achieve the best returns for your digital marketing investment, you must develop a clear strategy first. A right plan will help cut down on waste, and continue on what campagin is already effective.

Digital marketing can be executed in so many different ways. Without a clear strategy, you will be wasting time and money. Here’s how you develop a successful digital marketing strategy:

Learn about steps to create an effective digital marketing strategy

Here are 7 steps for creating a digital marketing strategy:

1. Analyze the current state of your business

An effective approach begins with research and analysis. Analyzing the current state of your business helps you understand your business, your rivals, and your target audiences.

• Analyze your current performance: Analyze your performance over the previous year to start. Evaluate which campaigns are effective and which ones are not.
• Research your rivals: Take some time to research the online presence of your rivals. The beautiful thing about internet marketing is that since everything is out to the public, it is simple to observe what your rivals are doing. Explore the content gaps between your competitors by using SEO tools.
• Be familiar with your clients: If you are advertising on Facebook, use Facebook Audience Insights to learn more about the size, demographics, activities, and interests of your audience. Another free and useful tool is Google Trends.

2. Develop a digital marketing strategy

Create a clear plan of action based on your objectives and preferred methods. You can coordinate your plan by using the GSOT strategy framework, which stands for goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics.

• Your ultimate goals: For instance, sales can increase by 5% or to get 200 people to sign up for an event.
• A strategy is how you execute to achieve your desired goals: This is typically described by the marketing funnel stages; you can decide to concentrate on awareness, interest, desire, or action.
• Measure & calculate factors: For instance, if I want to increase sales this year by 5%, I must generate at least 200 leads or connect with 400 individuals.
• Your objectives and tactics are compatible: For instance, if I need 200 leads, I might tempt potential customers with a landing page, a webinar, and social media.
• Focus on channels or areas that can stimulate business success: There are many things to consider in running a digital marketing campaign; the difficult part is how to pick the most effective methods.

Deploying an effective marketing campaign will take time and effort

3. Identify your target audience

Next step, you need to identify your target audience. Consider customer demographics, content, navigation, and calls to action and be as specific as you can. Creating buyer personas or customer profiles to help you visualize the right market for your product or service.

All efforts to increase on-site conversion should be generated from the target audience. The voice of a company goes beyond just words. Therefore, failing to comprehend the possible customers for your products will definitely result in fewer sales.

4. Develop a content strategy

A content marketing strategy should include an outline of your main consumer and business needs as well as a specific plan for how you will use content to meet those objectives.

Try to answer these questions: Who are you assisting? Why are you developing content?, and How will you help them better than anybody else? An effective content strategy will let you acquire more organic traffic, and will result in higher sales and lower costs than just paying money for Paid Search.

5. Choose the suitable marketing channels

Choose the suitable marketing channels for your brand. For example, if you target the US-UK market, Twitter can be the right channel for you. 

Checking all the digital platforms and marketing resources. Following that, prioritize according to the plan you developed. Consider how you run advertising on each channel.

6. Set KPIs and benchmarks

At this stage, businesses start wondering if they are really getting leads. Every campaign or project will need KPIs that serve as your yardstick for success. Set benchmarks after that. Your goal serves as your baseline. For instance, in email marketing, my KPI might be email open rate, with 25% or above serving as a benchmark.

Optimize your digital marketing strategy frequently

7. Run and optimize digital marketing campaigns

Digital marketing is flexible. You are not required to follow a fixed plan. For instance, stop a campaign and test different methods if it isn’t generating leads. If visitors to your website aren’t being converted, test different calls to action using A/B split testing. For example, you can compare the performance between CTAs like “Sign up now” and “Learn more”.

Digital marketing is a useful tool for business owners who want to find their customers online. While developing a digital marketing strategy, you would also want to catch up with new tools and platforms To improve your results, develop a clear plan and maintain focus. For more advice on digital marketing strategies, please contact One IBC.