Creating a digital marketing strategy for any business can be exciting and challenging! With the right research and planning, you can create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy to engage your customers and increase sales. Before creating a digital marketing strategy for a business, it’s important to understand what digital marketing strategy is in general and what it consists of.
Here are the essential elements of digital marketing strategy:
- Understanding the nature of the business/products/services.
- Identifying the target audience or group.
- Analyzing relevant search terms or keywords.
- Analyzing competitors.
- Building a media plan (channel selection).
- Setting and measuring goals.
Ready to dive in? Let’s get started!
To make sure we are on the same page, let’s first discuss what digital marketing strategy is in simple words.
What is digital marketing strategy?
Digital marketing strategy is an essential part of any business’s success. It involves the use of digital channels such as websites, search engines, etc. to promote a company’s products or services, reach out to its target audience, increase brand awareness, and eventually increase sales or revenue.
At its core, a digital marketing strategy is about understanding the nature of your business, and your customers and building relationships with them in order to increase sales and build customer loyalty. A successful digital marketing strategy should consider all aspects of the customer’s journey from initial contact through post-sales service.
In simple words, a successful digital marketing strategy is like a GPS system that guides a customer to their destination while considering all possible routes, traffic patterns, and any detours or delays along the way. It is comprehensive and considers every step of the journey.
What are the elements of digital marketing strategy?
At its core, a good digital marketing strategy incorporates 5 key elements. These are:
- Nature of the business.
- Target audience or group.
- Competitors analysis.
- Relevant keywords research.
- Selecting appropriate digital channels.
- Setting & measuring goals.
You need to understand all these 5 elements to build your successful digital marketing strategy. The diagram below shows how these 5 elements fit together to build a system.
Understanding the nature of the business (know your product/service)
When you start creating a digital marketing strategy, the first thing you do is to understand the nature of the business. This includes checking at which level the business operates – local, national, or global. What the business is selling – products or services or both. Check what the revenue model of the business is. Does it require direct sales or leads, etc.?
You can store this information in any file, for example, Excel or Word, or even in a diary. Make sure you’ve written it somewhere.
Understanding the target market (customer persona building)
It is essential to understand the target audience or target group when planning and executing digital marketing strategies. The target audience or target group in digital marketing refers to the individuals or groups who are most likely to benefit from the purchase of your product or service and respond positively to it.
Marketers must have a clear understanding of their target customers and their needs in order to create effective campaigns. Depending on the type of business, different demographics may be targeted, such as age, gender, income level, buying habits, and more.
Identifying the right customer base is key to creating successful digital marketing campaigns that will result in increased sales and conversions. Additionally, it’s crucial to consider how best to reach this targeted audience for them to take notice of any given message or advertisement.
If you want to make a simple and useful persona, then check out this free tool from HubSpot Make My Persona – Free Buyer Persona Template Generator (2022) (hubspot.com)
Analyze the relevant search terms (keyword research)
In today’s information age, it’s crucial to understand what people are saying about your product or service on the internet. The process to know this is known as keyword research.
Keyword research plays an important part in creating a digital marketing strategy. It is the process of researching, analyzing, and selecting key terms related to a product or service that can be used in search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns or pay-per-click ads.
Keyword research provides you with ideas to create content. For example, for informational keywords, you can create blog posts to educate your prospects. Whereas, for buyer intent keywords you can create landing pages with irresistible offers.
Let’s see how analyzing keywords can help grow your business using SEO. In SEO, keywords are one of the most significant factors that can help you achieve greater visibility on various search platforms like Google.
By creating content around these keywords, you’re more likely to come up when someone searches for them. This is why keyword research is essential for any successful digital marketing campaign – the right words and phrases will give your business the best chance of appearing prominently on search engine results pages (SERPs).
The goal of keyword research is to identify terms and phrases that will attract visitors who are actively searching for products or services similar to yours.
Competitor analysis
It’s essential to have a thorough understanding of your business competitors in order to create and execute effective digital marketing strategies. Analyzing competitors is one important aspect of making sure your digital marketing strategy is on track.
By taking the time to review competitor activities, you can identify areas where they are doing well and determine how you can capitalize on their successes while avoiding their pitfalls. Analyzing not just their tactics but also their messaging, branding, customer base, content production, and more will give you a better understanding of what they are achieving and help inform your own decision-making.
Additionally, looking at their weaknesses will reveal opportunities for growth that you may be able to leverage in your marketing plan.
For example, you can copy the competitor’s website in a keyword research tool and find the keywords their website is ranking for. This will speed up your keyword research process and will give you a competitive edge. Once you’ve got the keywords they are ranking for, you can optimize or build content around those keywords to rank high in SERPs. This way you can quickly gain a decent market share.
Selecting channels to deliver your message
When developing a digital marketing strategy, selecting the right channels is essential for success. Now you may be wondering what a channel is. In digital marketing, a channel is a medium that helps deliver your message to your target audience or group. For example, the website is a channel, and social media such as Instagram is also an example of a channel.
In order to maximize your business reach and engagement, it’s important to select relevant channels that will meet the needs of your target audience or group. Knowing which channels to use can be a daunting task for marketers, but with proper research into consumer behaviour and preferences, you’ll have a better chance of achieving your desired outcomes.
It’s important to identify the channels that offer the most potential value when creating your digital marketing strategy. Factors such as cost-effectiveness and potential reach are key considerations here. For example, if you’re looking to target a younger audience then social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat may be a more suitable option than traditional advertising mediums like TV or radio.
Setting goals
Digital marketing has revolutionized the way businesses can reach and engage with their customers. It’s a powerful tool to help organizations meet their goals, from building brand awareness to increasing sales. However, success in digital marketing requires careful strategizing and goal-setting for optimal results.
Goals in digital marketing are the objectives that marketers strive to achieve when executing campaigns. Common objectives include increasing website traffic, boosting leads and sales, improving customer loyalty and retention, enhancing customer engagement, growing brand awareness, and generating more conversions.
Marketers use the SMART approach to set up their goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. By following the SMART framework, businesses can create specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound objectives that will help them stay focused on what needs to be done.
Many popular organizations use the framework called OKRs to set their SMART goals.
OKRs stands for Objectives & key results. Here’s the simple definition of the OKRs framework.
For every SMART goal, you have an objective and 2-3 key results. The objective defines “Where do you want to be?” Whereas, the key results define “Whether you’ve got there or not”?
Let’s understand this with an example. Let’s say you are building a Google ads campaign to sell the products of a coffee shop. Now, you can use the OKRs framework to set up SMART goals like this.
First, set a specific & time-bound objective. Let’s say your objective is to increase sales of coffee mugs & coffee bean packets by end of Q3. Second, you set up 2-3 key results to ensure that you’ve achieved your objective. In this case, your key results will be to sell 100 coffee mugs & 150 coffee bean packets.
Setting up goals this way allows you to measure performance over time and adjust the course accordingly.
Note that your objective is specific & time-bound. And your key results are measurable, attainable, and relevant to your objective. Hence, following the SMART approach.
You can use online SaaS tools to create your SMART goals using OKRs. Or to get started you can use spreadsheet tools such as Excel or Google Sheets.
The bottom line
In conclusion, creating a digital marketing strategy is an essential part of any business’s success. It allows you to reach a wider audience, increase brand awareness and loyalty, and grow revenue. With the right tools, resources, and guidance, you can create your own powerful digital marketing strategy that will help your business reach its goals. It’s time to act and get started on crafting your own unique digital marketing strategy today! Don’t wait any longer – let’s make it happen!