Did you know?
85.4 percent of internet users conduct at least one online search per month.
On average, Google processes over 40,000 search queries per second. That equates to over 3.5 billion searches per day!
Before making an in-store purchase, 70% of smartphone owners conduct additional research on their devices.
28 percent of "nearby" or "near me" searches end with a purchase.
SEO digital marketing agencies predict that at least half of all consumers will use voice search by 2022.
These are the basic needs of an hour that can be easily attained by formulating a digital marketing strategy plan. Initiating digital marketing activities without developing any plan or strategy will definitely drive your efforts toward failure.
But the question arises - How to start developing a digital marketing strategy?
It remains a common challenge despite many businesses already recognizing the importance of digital and mobile channels in acquiring and retaining customers. But they still lack an integrated plan to support digital transformation and business growth and effectively engage their audiences online.
Even if your company does not have a strategic digital marketing plan (also known as an internet marketing strategy) aligned with your business plan, it will lose out to more digitally savvy competitors. Let’s have a look at the journey to develop a winning digital marketing strategy:
Why Create A Digital Marketing Strategy?
Developing a digital marketing strategy is equivalent to running blood in the body. You may use digital marketing campaigns and techniques to build your business and keep your current clientele intact by utilizing the digital options accessible to you. Therefore, a digital marketing plan can benefit your company by:
● Building your buyer personas based on research. You'll be able to generate leads and learn what your consumers are looking for.
● Determining your business and marketing objectives and, thereafter, achieving the same by utilizing the necessary digital marketing tools.
● Investigate your digital channels to cross-check resource allocation and utilization effectiveness.
● Enhancing your market share through digital marketing analysis and optimization.
● Adding a powerful online value proposition.
Time To Develop Your Digital Marketing Strategy!
Though opting for a digital marketing approach can help you expand your business, every approach begins with a plan. Before creating a digital marketing plan that is effective for you, you need to investigate many facets of your company.
Not sure where to begin? Here is a step-by-step journey for developing a successful digital marketing plan for your company:
1. Evaluate Your Current Digital Presence
A practical approach begins with research and analysis. This helps you grasp your starting position compared to your competition and target market. Start with examining how you performed over the previous year. Next, analyze your data to find out which approach worked and which of them failed while learning the why behind them. Always keep in your mind that it is beneficial to be aware of your progress, even if it's almost non-existent. It will allow you to concentrate and pursue your business goals.
You can comprehend your primary marketing channels, including:
● Web page
● Internet
● Email Advertising
● SEO and Content Marketing
● PPC in digital marketing
Check which of them is bringing you the most traffic and leads. Also, sort the various media outlets and types of content on a scale from most effective to least. You can prepare your online marketing strategy based on the loopholes, filling in the voids for better engagement and increased reach.
2. Determine What Sets You Apart
Once you know your target client, it is time to research your rivals. Think about the services they provide and the web marketing strategies they employ. Next, consider the graphics and language they use on their website and social media pages.
Do not miss out on making your firm stand out using the information you discover. It might offer you unique expertise to reasonably price and improve the quality of goods to beat your rival. In other words, incorporating such information would enable you to persuade individuals to buy your products with practical digital marketing activities.
3. Know Your Target Audience
It is essential to know whom to target with your campaigns. According to some marketers, this is the initial stage to deciding on the upcoming phases in your marketing approach. You must be able to describe the traits of potential customers interested in your products. Collect information about your target audience for identification, including:
- Age Group
- Gender
- Educational Background
- Marital Status
- Family Status
- Occupation, And
- Hobbies
You must also consider the nations and regions where your target audience resides. It is because the specifics vary according to your work sector and the goods/services you are attempting to market. Also, do not forget to investigate your Google Analytics data, Facebook audience insights, and Google Ads reports as you begin to develop your customer profiles.
4. Define Your Buyer’s Persona
Once you know your target audience, it is time to establish detailed buyer personas. They are the foundation of the most significant digital marketing tactics as they depict your ideal customer. You can develop these personas by investigating, polling, and speaking with your company's target market.
However, do not forget to highlight this data based on actual facts. It is because making blank assumptions about your audience might lead to misaligning your web marketing strategies. Your research pool should comprise various customers, prospects, and individuals outside your contacts database. Also, it must fit your target demographic to gain a complete picture of your business approach.
5. Set Your Trackable Marketing Goals
Setting objectives is the best way to advertise your brand. Decide on specific goals for your digital marketing plan. Your objective has to be both explicit and quantifiable. Based on them, you can determine if you're on pace to achieve it and promote your entire company.
However, remember that your marketing objectives may alter if you aren't prepared to sell or launch something. So, to make things practical, you can aim to increase website traffic or to follow by 20% over the next year and redefine your internet marketing strategy for the same.
6. Explore The Right Platforms For The Right Audience
Choosing which digital marketing channels to concentrate on is the most challenging issue in this situation. Why? It is because every social media site has its own personality and means of communication. While LinkedIn is fantastic for exchanging professional skills and business information, Twitter is great for discussions and hot topics. Instagram Stories are just as fleeting as Snapchat Stories. So, to ease things up, you can do the following:
- Start with small, hyper-focused campaigns to understand the effectiveness of a particular channel.
- Go for paid ads by setting a goal, implementing a slight marketing push, and running paid ads over Instagram and Facebook.
- Keep track of analytics to predict the effectiveness of successful digital marketing campaigns on different channels.
- Gather as many pertinent data points as possible and regularly test marketing strategies and target markets.
Make sure you are familiar with the communication protocol and spend some time learning the channels you are considering. This will assist you in choosing the ideal platform(s) for your business and avoid awkward communication situations.
7. Keep An Eye On Your Competitor’s Strategy
Keep the element of competition in your mind as you develop a strategy to improve your online presence. Examine what your rivals are doing and debate if it is a sound business plan. Additionally, you can also utilize your competitors to determine what they're lacking:
- Is there a void they're not addressing?
- What details do clients need that your rivals don't offer?
- Which trending keywords are your competitors using?
You must develop a digital content strategy idea by researching your rivals. If you don't know what your competitors are doing, you won't be able to compete with them or outdo them.
8. Market your Content Strategically
Next, creating a content strategy highlighting your marketing goals and target audience is time. It must indicate the key subjects or content categories covered in your implementation. You can follow these four ideas for content inspiration:
- Take inspiration from a study of your competitors and target market.
- To view the queries people are typing into search engines, visit “Answer the Public.”
- Use visuals to increase engagement and give way to hashtag search to see what is popular.
- Review the Google Search results to know what people want about your niche.
9. Frame Content Calendar For Timely Posts
You should create and implement a content schedule to guide visitors into and through your marketing funnel. Your content calendar should include the posting schedules for your blog, email newsletter, and various social media platforms. The calendar might also indicate when and what you'll post. It is recommended to avoid posting content between 9 am and 5 pm if your target consumer is an executive. However, if your business caters to college students may wish to post throughout the day.
Additionally, consider any planned sales or releases as you plan your content. Consider the content you can provide to promote that launch or sale. Your content schedule is the ideal location to strategize how to create enthusiasm for a new product. It will allow you to prepare your audience by publishing pertinent content before your launch. Do not miss out on examining whether there are any circumstances where blogging or sending an email is such a case.
10. Focus On SEO Moves
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the finest strategies to increase your online visibility despite daily algorithm changes. Learning SEO is the first step to reaching out to people when they search online due to better SERP rank. According to digital marketing strategists, there are two types of SEO: On-site SEO and off-site SEO.
- On-Site SEO is all about the Content. You should research keywords and employ internal and external links to improve SEO. Additionally, provide instructional content that probably corresponds with the search terms used by your target audiences.
- For Off-site SEO, you will need to focus on the technical aspects. Start by ensuring that your site is configured correctly, has a straightforward URL structure, and loads rapidly. In addition, off-site SEO also involves establishing trust through backlinks.
While working on SEO digital marketing, always remember that your ideal consumers will come to you naturally if you can rank effectively for keywords associated with your industry. So, you must also utilize a keyword research tool. Besides, SEO and website audit tools can also improve your on-page and off-page SEO.
11. Assign The Right People For The Right Role
You may start delegating duties and responsibilities if you're partnering with an agency for digital marketing strategy services. You must have experts under each department to take over the following responsibilities:
- Devising a content strategy
- SEO and SEM
- Managing E-commerce
- Social media marketing
For instance, you can hire a social media expert to handle your company's Facebook and Instagram marketing. Further, your company can employ a website content manager or SEO consultants to oversee your SEO and SEM. You can also allocate workers to various areas if your marketing team lacks specific skills. Once you start dividing the workload and the area, your team won't neglect any crucial duties because everyone will know what to focus on. This will streamline your company’s operations and ensure that every sector is covered.
Read More: Digital Marketing Essential Roles And Which One To Select For Your Business
12. Track KPIs
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are measures that brands monitor to ascertain the efficacy of their marketing. It includes:
- Return On Investment
- Bounce Rate
- Conversion Rate
Though companies begin their execution too frequently, they find it difficult to determine whether they actually see benefits. So, every investment should have a defined performance marketing strategy with KPI as your success yardstick. You can set benchmarks for each indicator while keeping your objective as the baseline. For instance, the KPI for an open email rate in email marketing can be marked with 25% or above as a benchmark.
Read More: 15 SEO KPIs To Track Your Success With Every Effort
13. Implement A/B Testing For Better Outcomes
It might be enjoyable to manage a digital marketing plan for a time manually. However, total time and energy can be saved by smart work. Use A/B testing from the start of your digital marketing campaign to ensure the most incredible level of success. A/B testing includes comparing the outcomes of two quite identical adverts or emails.
For instance, you may run two advertisements with different photos but the exact ad wording. Alternatively, you might run two advertisements using the same image but various copies. Let the advertisements run for a few days to observe which performs better. You may then determine which content or image your clients respond to the most to improve your future marketing initiatives.
14. Review and Recycle
The field of digital marketing is quite active. In order to keep up-to-date and relevant, it is crucial that you constantly review and adjust your digital marketing approach. Utilizing KPIs and other indicators to analyze your campaign is the best approach. For every form of digital marketing strategy for a brand, the following KPIs are crucial:
- Number of visitors to a website
- Expense per visit
- Cost per conversion
- Rate of Clicks
- Quantity of conversions
- The quantity of micro-conversions
- Bounce rate Time on site
- Number of social shares
- Number of Comments
If you have a robust analytics system that monitors these for each campaign, things might get more streamlined. However, do not forget to include finding new channels to include in your plan as part of your review. Further, examining your competitors' techniques and deciding which ones you can use in your own marketing mix is always a brilliant idea.
Closing Thoughts
Digital Marketing methods are one of the finest to expand your consumer base and meet your company's objectives. Additionally, it provides a range of tactics to accomplish your particular goals, including video, email, and social media.
In other words, digital marketing is the way to go if you want to raise sales, income, awareness, or customer loyalty. However, how well you create and implement your digital marketing tactics will determine their effectiveness. For this reason, companies collaborate with a trusted digital strategy agency that offers specialized, outcome-driven end-to-end marketing solutions.
