Digital Marketing: An ultimate guide for beginners in 2023

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur looking to get started in digital marketing? or interested in entering the ever-growing world of digital marketing? If so, you’re in the right place!

In this guide, we’ll provide a comprehensive introduction to digital marketing and how it can help you reach your or your client’s business goals. We’ll give you all the basics, from understanding what digital marketing is to developing effective strategies for success. You’ll learn how to get started, where to spend time, and what you should be doing to have success in digital marketing.

With our guidance and advice, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a savvy digital marketer in no time.

Let’s get started!

What is digital marketing?

Let’s first learn what digital marketing is.

Digital marketing is a revolutionizing force in the modern business landscape. It’s combining technological advances with customer-focused strategies to create a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. With digital marketing, companies can more precisely target their audiences and get their messages heard loud and clear!

The main idea behind digital marketing is simple: promoting products/services using online resources to reach potential customers quickly, easily, and effectively. Using tools like search engine optimization, content creation, email campaigns, and social media management allows brands to engage with their customers in an interactive way that’s tailored to each individual user’s needs.

Additionally, digital marketing provides measurable results that can be tracked over time – providing valuable insight into how effective any given campaign is!

Whether you run a small business or are part of a more giant corporation, digital marketing offers something for everyone.

Why do you need digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a powerful tool that offers tremendous advantages for businesses and individuals alike. It can be used to reach potential customers, increase brand awareness, generate leads and so much more!

The advantages of digital marketing are plentiful and can help you obtain a competitive edge in the market.

For starters, it allows you to target your desired audience with precision using factors such as location, demographic information, devices, or interests. This ensures that your marketing efforts are reaching the right people and not wasted on those who may not even be interested in what you have to offer.

Additionally, digital marketing offers cost-effective solutions to promote your products/services that can provide great returns on investment compared to traditional forms of advertising.

Plus, it’s incredibly easy to track results with analytics tools which helps you quickly identify areas where improvements need to be made in order to maximize success. The data collected by digital marketing platforms, such as Google Ads, helps you make your ads personalized for individuals to increase engagement & hence produce better results.

What are the main media types in digital marketing?

Now that you know why you need digital marketing. Let’s now understand the fundamental building block of digital marketing – the media types. In digital marketing, you’ll have 3 types of media – paid, owned, and earned.

Paid media include channels where you need to pay a fee to use market your product/service. For example, search engines like Google allow you to place ads based on the search terms of its users.

The owned media include channels that you directly control. For example, your company’s website, social media pages or blogs, etc. Here, you don’t pay any fee to market your products.

The earned media is the world of organic mentions. This includes channels where users talk about your business. For example, Google reviews, and Facebook reviews. Comments, shares, mentions, etc. Here, you’ll not pay any fee to market your products/services.

All digital channels can overlap, for example, one channel can be any type of media. Let’s take social media for example. Now Facebook is paid media if you run paid ads, owned media if you post content to engage your customers, and earned media if you receive reviews from customers.

These channels collect a tremendous amount of data which helps you personalize your marketing message to fully engage your customers.

What are funnels in marketing?

Digital marketing is a field that’s constantly growing and evolving fast, and one of the most important concepts to understand within it is the funnels. In marketing people talk about funnels all the time. Some of the examples you may hear are – sales funnels, inbound funnels, lead funnels, etc.

In general, funnels are visual representations of the journey your target audience goes through when engaging with your brand online.

Funnels are an effective way to showcase how potential customers interact with your product or service. Using funnels offer a number of benefits such as

1. They can help you measure success in your campaigns.
2. You can identify what works and what doesn’t work.
3. They can help decide which steps need improvement in order to optimize conversions.

Although there are many versions of funnels, however, all funnels follow the same concept. The image below shows the commonly used funnel in digital marketing.

As shown in the image, a funnel has four stages – Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

In the awareness stage, you perform activities to raise the awareness of prospective buyers about your product or service.

In the interest stage, your prospects start exploring your product or services. In this stage, people know about your brand and are exploring your products or services.

In the desire stage, your prospects are considering your products or services. They are keen to know more or would like to see what your brand can offer, for example, a free demo or a free trial.

In the action stage, you have prospects that are ready to turn into customers. They are already in the buying mindset and are ready to make a purchase in the near future.

You can refer to this funnel as the AIDA model as well. Where AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

You can divide this funnel into 3 sections as shown in the image above. Top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.

At the top of the funnel, you bring potential customers (prospects) in. For example, by running display ads.

In the middle of the funnel, you nurture your leads to inspire them to take your next action. For example, giving a blog post to read, giving a free trial, etc.

At the bottom of the funnel, you turn your prospects into leads or customers. For example, you can run Google search ads to bring leads for any service-based business.

One important thing to note is the shape of the triangle shows that a large number of people would never turn into leads or customers. Every business has its average conversion rate and your goal as a marketer is to identify that average and try to gain the average score.

By understanding and using funnels as part of your digital marketing strategy, you can make sure that every touchpoint along the customer journey is optimized for maximum engagement! The best part about this process? It’s actually quite enjoyable!

What is the buyer journey in digital marketing?

Now that you are aware of what funnels are in marketing. Let’s see the practical benefit of the funnel in digital marketing.

You can define the buyer journey as all the steps your potential buyer takes from the awareness stage to buying your product.

However, your buyer’s journey will never be straight from the awareness stage to the action stage. Your buyer will move up or down the funnel. They can exist or reenter the funnel. We as marketers need to account for a number of factors to keep our potential buyers engaged and help them to move down the funnel.

To help you build your buyer journey map, write the answers for the following questions on a spreadsheet, word file or on any tool of your preference.

1. How will my buyer become aware of their problem?
2. How will they become aware of a solution?
3. How & why would they become interested in my solution?
4. How & why they would consider my brand?
5. What would motivate them to convert?
6. What can stop them to move down the funnel?
7. What will they need to move down the funnel?

Keep iterating your answers over time and you’ll find yourself with an improved version of your marketing strategy.

One more thing you can do to practice your buyer journey skill is to keep a journal of the steps you take to buy anything. You’ll be surprised how your decision to make a purchase is influenced by various factors.

How to create a buyer journey?

Creating a buyer journey is essential to understand the customer experience from beginning to end. The buyer journey can help you gain insights into how customers move through the funnel and allow you to identify potential opportunities for improvement or expansion.

One of the biggest challenges in digital marketing is knowing what to say and when to say it. Truth be told you’ll rarely get it right on the first attempt. However, this shouldn’t demotivate you from getting started.

Building a digital marketing strategy is an agile process. It’s not a one-off job. Every marketing strategy acts as a living document. You keep updating it over time as you learn more and more about your product & customer.

To get it right, the best way is to create & maintain a customer journey document. You can use any tool of your choice to create it. Let’s create one together for a pet grooming business.

This doesn’t need to be complex. Just start simple.

Let’s create a table with the following headers – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action, and Loyalty. As you know these are our funnel stages. Leave the first column header empty. We’ll use it to list down our activities based on the funnel stage.

	Awareness	Interest	Desire	Action	Loyalty

Now in the first column, write down the below-given items.

1. Activities: This row will include all the activities you’ll be doing in each stage of the funnel. For example, for the pet grooming business, you may write – in the awareness stage my customer is searching for a pet grooming business near me on the Google search engine.
2. Goal: This row will include what your customer wants to achieve in each stage of the funnel. For example, in our case, in the awareness stage, our customer is looking to get his/her pet grooming done in the near future.
3. Thoughts: In this row, you’ll include the thoughts your customer might have. For example, in our case, it can be the customer is thinking to get a pet grooming on a weekend or on a specific date.
4. Emotional state: This row describes the emotional state your potential customer is in. It can be happy, sad, excited, etc.
5. Channels: This row describes where your potential customers can or will interact with your business. For example, in our case, Google search can be our channel where people search for a service and show up as ads on Google.
6. Objectives: In this row, you’ll include what is your objective for each stage of the funnel. For example, do you want to give a free trial, or want your potential customer to sign up for a newsletter, etc?

This is how your buyer journey map table should look like.

	Awareness	Interest	Desire	Action	Loyalty
Activities
Goals
Thoughts
Emotional state
Channels
Objectives

You should read it every day and keep updating it as you get more ideas. You may have multiple answers for each stage. Don’t worry, add as many as you want. But remember do not overcomplicate it. Keep it simple and to the point.

How to create a digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that outlines how you can use digital channels such as websites, email campaigns, and social media platforms to reach your target audiences. It is an essential aspect of any business’s overall marketing efforts and helps to ensure that an organization can make the most out of its existing resources.

Building a digital marketing strategy is not a quick and easy solution. It’s always in motion and you need to keep improving your digital marketing strategy over time.

Every digital marketing strategy consists of 4 key components. These are:

1. Understand your value proposition.
2. Identify your target audience.
3. Understand your competitors.
4. Identify marketing channels.

Let’s understand each point in detail.

Understand your value proposition.

A value proposition is an argument that explains why a potential customer should purchase from your business. It outlines the benefit and value of buying from you, and how it differs from other companies in the market.

A good value proposition will help you stand out amongst competitors and attract more customers to your business.

Defining your own company’s value proposition can be a challenge, but it’s essential for creating an effective marketing message. The key elements of a value proposition include identifying what problem you are solving, emphasizing the unique qualities of what you offer, speaking to the emotions/needs of customers and providing evidence to back up claims.

Additionally, make sure that you focus on benefits/results rather than features when outlining what makes your product or service different. Finally, ensure that your statement is clear and concise so that potential customers understand why they should choose you over competitors in a matter of 5 seconds.

Identify your target audience.

Target audience is an important concept in marketing, advertising, and customer relations. If you’re looking to maximize the success of your campaigns, it is important to know who your target audience is and how to effectively communicate with them. Defining a target audience can help you get more out of your marketing efforts and ensure that customers have a positive experience interacting with your business.

Your target audience is the people you want to take your solution/service/product to.

To define a target audience, you can use the customer segmentation process. In this process, you take your broad audience and break it down into smaller groups. For example, you can create a segment using demographics (age, gender, marital status, income) and behaviors of a certain group.

To create more segments, you can use a combination of demographics, interests, behavior, psychographics, or technographic.

To define a target audience, start by asking yourself questions about who would be most interested in what you’re offering. Consider their age range, interests, location, income level, gender identity, and other factors that may influence their behavior when interacting with your brand or product.

Once you have those answers nailed down, use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to learn more about potential customers and refine the definition of your target audience even further.

In the beginning, create at least 3 customer segments. Add more as your strategy evolves.

How to create a customer persona?

Alright! Now that you know how to identify your target audience using customer segmentation. Let’s learn what are customer personas and what are they used for.

A customer persona is a fictitious persona that represents your target group really well.

Marketing is all about getting the right message in front of the right person. And to do that you have to know your customer really well. And to know them use customer persona.

Every target group (customer segment) will have a persona attached to it. Your persona should be on a single page and easy to digest in about 10 minutes.

Now you must be wondering how to create one.

Let’s do that!

Just answer the following 4 questions and you’ll have a customer persona for your target group.

1. Who are they?
2. What needs do they have?
3. What barriers do they need to overcome?
4. What motivates them?

Imagine you are working as a digital marketer for a toy-selling company.

Let’s create a persona for such a company’s ideal customer using the above-mentioned four questions.

First, who they are? The ideal customer would be a male or female of the age group 25-35, living in an urban area, and working full-time. They love to connect with other parent peer groups.

Second, what needs do they have? They want attractive and hygienic toys for their kids.

Third, what barriers do they need to overcome? They want to make sure the toys are durable, attractive, and made of good quality. They want to quickly choose the right toy for their kids as they are busy doing other stuff.

Fourth, what motivates them? Well, reviews from other peers. Certifications of the toy-making brands or testimonials, etc.

Well done! You just have created your own customer persona.

Using this approach, you can easily create customer personas for your ideal target groups. And the best part is, you don’t any tools for it except time and pen & paper.

One last thing, to make your customer personas feel more real, add an image and a real name to it.

Check out this free tool from HubSpot to create really professional customer personas – https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona.

How to set goals in digital marketing?

Setting goals in digital marketing is the crucial first step. By setting clear goals, you can develop plans that are tailored to your objectives and measure your success along the way.

To be effective, your goals should be measurable.

And how can you develop measurable goals?

It’s easy. Use the popular approach called SMART. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Your marketing goals should be SMART i.e., They should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

You can use the OKR framework to set your SMART goals.

Let’s see how you can use the OKR framework.

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. In this framework, you first set your objective. Your objective should clearly define where you want to go.

Then you set 2-3 key results. Key results define how would you know that you’ve got there.

Let’s use the OKR framework to set SMART goals for an online coffee shop business.

Our objective is to increase sales of coffee packets and mugs.

The key results we want to see are:

1. 120 sales of coffee packets.
2. 80 sales of coffee mugs.

You can see our objective is Specific – we want to increase sales for 2 products (coffee packets & mugs).

Our key results are Measurable, Attainable, and Relevant to the objective.

You can Time-bound the objective by week, month, or quarter. A common approach is to time-bound objectives by quarter.

You can use spreadsheet software to note down your SMART goals and measure your progress over time.

How to define KPIs in digital marketing?

Alongside your broad marketing objectives and goals, you need to measure granular success metrics for each of your marketing objectives. Tracking & measuring these granular metrics allow us to see how our marketing efforts are contributing towards your marketing objectives.

One of the common approaches is creating KPIs.

KPIs stands for Key Performance Indicators. They measure how successful you are in achieving your goal. It’s like a race: if you want to win, you need to know how fast you’re running and where you are in the race compared to the other runners.

In digital marketing, KPIs help us understand whether our marketing efforts are working or not. For example, we could set a goal of getting 100 new followers on Instagram each month.

We’d then look at whether we reached that goal each month to see if our strategies are successful or not – that’s what KPIs tell us!

It’s important to remember that everyone’s goals will be different – so everyone will have different KPIs too. That’s why it’s important to decide what your goals are before setting KPIs for your digital marketing campaigns.

Always map your KPIs to the biggest pain point while achieving your marketing objective.

For example, if you are running an online ad to sell 300 T-shirts then you would set a KPI of Cost per Acquisition (CPA) to make sure your customer acquisition cost is not exceeding a certain limit (set based on your profit margin).

How to create a one-page marketing plan?

Alright! Now that you’ve collected all the required details to create your digital marketing strategy. It’s time to organize these knowledge nuggets in a meaningful way.

Although there are many approaches to this. One of the simplest and quickest approaches is to use the lean canvas. It looks something like in the image below.

Just do a simple search on Google saying “lean canvas template pdf download” and you’ll find plenty of examples.

Now, you must be wondering what is leans canvas. Let’s define that first.

A lean canvas in digital marketing is like a map that helps you find your way from where you are to where you want to be. It’s a tool that helps you understand how to get the most out of your digital marketing efforts.

Think of it this way: if you were going on a long trip, the lean canvas would help you plan your route and decide which stops along the way make the most sense. Similarly in digital marketing, it can help you figure out what kind of content to create and which social media platforms to use to reach your goals.

For example, if your goal was to increase website traffic, the lean canvas would help you identify which channels (e.g., Facebook, Instagram) and content types (e.g., videos, blog posts) might be most effective for achieving that goal.

Let’s learn about the boxes in the lean canvas.

First, the problem box. Here you’ll write the problem you are trying to solve and 2-3 existing solutions.

Second, the customer segment box. Here you’ll write your target audience or groups.

Third, the solution box. Here you’ll write 2-3 ways your product or service can solve your consumer’s problem.

Fourth, the unique value proposition box. Here you’ll define your unique value proposition to show why customers should pick your solution over your competitors.

Fifth, the channels box. Here, you’ll mention the channels you’ll use to reach your customers.

Sixth, the revenue streams box. Here you’ll mention all the revenue streams that can help generate income for your business.

Seventh, the cost structure box. Here you’ll write the costs involved to run and market your business. For example, your marketing costs, etc.

Eight, the key metrics box. In this box, you’ll mention the KPIs you’ll use to measure your marketing effort’s performance.

Ninth, the Unfair advantage box. Here you’ll write what you do that your competitors can’t copy or at least are very hard to copy. This will set you apart from the rest of the competition.

It’ll only take 20-30 minutes to fill out these boxes and it’ll bring clarity to your quest to create a robust digital marketing strategy.

Persuading customers with data in digital marketing

Digital marketing is a way to reach people and tell them about your product. While building your digital marketing strategy, you’ll face many challenges.

One of the biggest challenges in digital marketing is to convince people to buy your product or service.

To persuade customers to buy your product, you would have to show them why it’s special, how it’ll solve their problem, and why they should get it.

Think of it like trying to sell lemonade at a stand.

You could make a big sign that says “Lemonade!” but you would also have to explain why someone should pick your lemonade over everyone else’s.

What makes it special? Is it the sweetest? The freshest?

People will only buy if they know what makes your product better than the other ones.

Apart from your side – the product, you’ll have to evaluate the customer side too.

Start by asking yourself this question.

What information would help persuade people to buy my lemonade?

Answering this question would give birth to many other questions. These questions would help you build your marketing strategy.

For example, in our case, you may ask questions like:

1. Is my customer searching for lemonade to drink?
2. Maybe my customer recently subscribed for a lemonade subscription.

Creating and answering these questions help you shape your digital marketing strategy.

You can then use this information to build campaigns to target your potential customers.

For example, if your potential customers are searching for lemonade to drink then you can set up Google ads or Bing ads campaigns to show your ad in SERPs.

You’ll get many content ideas. Just write down your ideas and ask yourself these 2 questions.

1. How will I obtain this information?
2. How will I use this information for my benefit?

If you’d like to become more persuasive, start by answering the question, “What information will help increase my persuasiveness?” Once you do that, you’ll have laid the foundations for an effective marketing strategy.

Role of analytics in digital marketing

Your success in digital marketing depends upon the data you collect and analyze. To make your digital marketing journey successful, you must focus on data thoroughly, not just the big picture.

You might think where can you find marketing data?

Well, nowadays, it’s quite easy. Almost all marketing platforms collect a tremendous amount of data.

For example, Google Data Analytics is a great free tool to collect and analyze your website data. You’ll find a lot of analytical tools on this platform such as you can see where are your customers coming from. What are they looking at? What devices are they using? Etc.

In digital marketing, it’s always recommended to ignore your intuition and focus on what the data is saying.

If you understand how this marketing-related data is being collected by various platforms then it’ll be easier to understand the hidden stories behind your data.

On the web, almost all actions you take are being tracked one way or other. And two popular approaches to collecting data are – cookies and pixels.

Let’s understand what are cookies & pixels.

Cookies are like tiny pieces of information that websites remember about you. It’s like when you go to a store and they ask for your name. They remember it so they can say “Hello, [your name]!” next time you come in.

On websites, cookies help the website remember what pages you visited or if you clicked on something. For example, if you were looking at a blue shirt in an online store, the website might put a cookie on your computer so the next time you come back, the website will remember that you looked at that blue shirt and show it to you again.

Cookies are also used to keep track of certain things like how many times someone visits the website or how long someone stayed on the page. That way, websites can show different things depending on how often someone visits or if it’s their first time there.

Now let’s understand what are pixels.

A pixel is a one-by-one transparent PNG image file that is mainly used to record conversions on marketing platforms like Facebook.

Tracking pixels are like little helpers used on websites. They help the website work better for you. Think of them as tiny invisible robots that are always watching and helping out.

For example, if you visit a website to look at clothes, the tracking pixels can remember what kind of clothes you looked at so when you come back later, they can show you more clothes that might interest you. That way, it’s easier for you to find exactly what you’re looking for!

Together cookies & pixels help advertisers to collect useful information about website visitors to better serve their needs.

One important difference between cookies & pixels is that the cookies live on the visitor’s computer whereas pixels live on the web server.

As you can see data, analytics, and marketing are connected. Just get in the habit of looking at your metrics every morning and find new ideas and connections between relevant data points. This will help take your marketing skills to the next level.

How to capture key insights in digital marketing?

The world of digital marketing is ever-evolving, and it can be difficult to keep up with the latest trends. To ensure success in this competitive field, it is essential to capture key insights that will allow you to make informed decisions about your campaigns.

In this section, you will learn how to capture key insights in all three media types and use them to improve your overall performance.

The easiest way to start capturing key insights is by using your website (owned media).

You can use tools like Google Analytics to capture various insights like how many users are visiting your website. The number of sessions? Where your users are coming from? What devices are they using? How long they stayed? Etc.

You can use these insights to optimize your website and campaigns to better serve your customers.

Let’s see how to capture key insights in paid media.

No matter which paid channel you use to run ads, it’ll have a reporting platform built in.

For example, Google Ads is a great beginner-friendly platform to run ads. Here you’ll the platform is collecting hundreds of data points such as cost per click, impressions, clicks, cost per customer, etc.

All these metrics help you decide the health of your campaign. Tracking and monitoring these metrics allows you to keep your campaign aligned with your business goals.

Let’s talk about earned media now.

To be honest, capturing key insights in owned media is a bit difficult. You’ll have to do some manual work. For example, you’ve to collect data from various platforms such as views on your YouTube videos, likes on your Facebook page, interactions on your tweets, etc.

Nowadays, you can find many SaaS products that’ll help you measure your earned media channel performance by integrating data from multiple sources.

The important thing to remember is that no matter which platform you use to create your campaign, you’ll need to make sure that you have got a tracking system set up. Because without collecting data you would never know how your campaign is trending toward your goals.

How to model your digital marketing presence online?

The core of your digital marketing strategy is the content you own. Your content exists in form of text, images, videos, etc.

You then distribute that content on various digital channels to reach out to your potential customers.

Planning and managing your content will get complicated fast. So, what’s the solution?

Well, you need a blueprint to plan, manage, and distribute your content.

Meet the Hub and Spokes model.

Now, what is the Hub & Spokes model?

The Hub and Spokes model is just like a bicycle wheel. At the center, you’ve your hub i.e. the content you own.

The spokes represent the digital channels you’ll use to distribute your content to reach your target audience. You can see an example in the image below.

You can have as many spokes (digital channels) as you want. However, remember each spoke will need management resources. So, always stick to the number of spokes that you can manage.

Now, how will you select your spokes?

It’s quite simple.

Just answer the following two questions and you’ll know which spokes to use.

1. Where your target audience hangs out?
2. Where your competitors are active?

Answering these two questions will help to select the right spokes for your digital marketing strategy. Remember, the first thing is to create your content. The best is to start with a blog as it’s a cheap way to get your message to the market and then start distributing your content via various relevant digital channels i.e. your spokes.

How to select your digital marketing channels?

Alright, in the previous section, you learned about the Hub and Spokes model. As we know that each spoke is our digital channel. Now, what’s the best way to select our spokes?

Let’s discuss that now.

As we know the more spokes have the more resources we’ll need. It’s impossible to remain active for all digital channels.

Therefore, you have to select the digital channels that make more sense for your business.

For this, first, you’ll need to understand the channels available to market your business.

Now the problem is we have an array of digital channels. And all these channels seem quite lucrative. Some are big and some are small.  This is why selecting the right digital marketing channels is a challenging task in digital marketing.

For each channel, just answer these three questions.

1. Where your target audience interacts with your business?
2. What mindset they are in while they are on that channel?
3. Where your competitors are active?

For example, let’s say you are advertising for a local Pest control business. For most local businesses you’ll see that the majority of people search on Google.

There fore, running ads on Google will be more lucrative than running ads on Facebook.

It doesn’t mean that you’ll get zero ROI on Facebook. However, it’ll likely be low than Google because on Google your potential customer will be in the buyer mindset whereas on Facebook they’ll be just scrolling the posts, not looking for your services particularly.

The important point to note is as a marketer you’ll have to go where your customers are. Just go there and persuade them to buy your products and services.

Another point to note is that you may fall into the trap that you should go after some platforms just because they are big and popular.

Don’t do that.

Just explore the channel available – no matter big or small – and go after the ones that make more sense for your business.

The bottom line is your message should land with the right audience regardless of the size of the digital channel.

How to prioritize your ideas in digital marketing?

Digital marketing is an ever-evolving field that requires constant innovation and a steady stream of fresh ideas. However, coming up with new and innovative ideas is only the first step in creating an effective digital marketing strategy.

The real challenge lies in prioritizing these ideas to ensure that you are focusing on the most impactful ones.

For example, selecting digital marketing channels for your digital marketing strategy is a challenging task.

You must evaluate the available options and select the ones that are suitable for your business needs. You must not and you shouldn’t be on all digital marketing channels.

Let’s see how can we solve this challenge.

You can use the ICE model to get out of any analysis paralysis situation in digital marketing.

Now, what is the ICE model?

First, ICE stands for Impact, Confidence, and Ease.

In this model, you’ll assign a number to each aspect – impact, confidence, and ease. And then you multiply those numbers together to get a final score.

This final score will help you decide which idea or in our case digital channel to choose.

 Here’s how it works.

First, you set up a table with five columns as shown below.

Marketing channel	Impact	Confidence	Ease	ICE Score
Facebook
LinkedIn

Now for each idea (in our case marketing channel), you’ll set up the score on a scale of 1-10 for impact, confidence, and ease.

Then you multiply these scores across and calculate the iCE score.

Now let’s see how we can score each aspect – impact, confidence, and ease.

For impact, ask yourself how much value or improvement this idea will bring in for your marketing goals i.e. what will be the impact? Enter a value from 1-10. 1 being of very little to no value and 10 is a significant value.

Next, ask yourself, how confident you are that it’ll bring in the impact score you’ve mentioned in the previous column. For example, if you’ve marketing data to prove that this idea will have a positive impact then assign a higher value, say 6 or 7. And if you don’t have marketing data and just guessing the results then assign a low value, say 2 or 3. If you’ve hard evidence that it’ll work then you should assign 10.

Next comes ease. How much time and effort will it take to implement that idea in your marketing strategy i.e. how easy it is to implement? If it’s quite hard then assign 0 and if it’s easy then assign 10. You can assign any value between 0-10 to play around.

From here, just multiply these scores and calculate a final ICE score as shown in the example below.

Marketing channel	Impact	Confidence	Ease	ICE Score
Facebook	8	7	8	448
LinkedIn	6	5	7	210

Now simply reverse the ICE score and you’ll get your ideas (in our digital marketing channels) in the order priority. This method will help you get our analysis paralysis situation and focus your marketing efforts in the right direction.

How to write powerful marketing messaging?

Your messaging is a crucial component of your digital marketing strategy. It remains present in all stages of your marketing funnel.

In every funnel stage, your customers interact with your marketing messaging.

How impactful your messaging is, defines whether your customers would buy from you or not.

That’s why having simple, consistent, and impactful messaging is very important.

How would you do that?

Let’s find out.

First of all, think through your marketing messaging strategically.

It’s no rocket science. All you need to do is to write your messaging simply and consistently.

The best message is always consistent and simple.

Make sure your marketing messaging aligns with you what you do, why you do it, and your business goals.

To know whether your marketing messaging is simple and consistent here’s a simple exercise you can do.

Just write down these four questions and ask for answers from your team, colleagues, customers, etc.

1. What is it that our company does?
2. What is the problem our company is trying to solve?
3. How our company is different than our competitors.?
4. Why did you buy from us?

When analyzing the answers to these questions, you’ll find gaps in your marketing messaging. Just fill those gaps and you are all set.

While filling your messaging gaps, you’ll develop some content. I want you to keep these 5 best practices in mind while developing any content for marketing.

1. Tell a convincing story: Storytelling attracts people’s attention. Craft a convincing story around your product and tell people how great results can they achieve with your product/service.
2. Evoke emotion: As we all know people buy on emotion and then they justify with fact. So remember that the results of your product/service should be a significant milestone or achievement for your potential customers.
3. Be consistent: Consistency in your marketing content is a must. Consistent messages are easy to remember and more powerful. Just repeat a simple message again and again in your marketing messaging.
4. Be clear: Never try to be smart by throwing some fancy words or jargon in your marketing messaging. Remember, people have many options and less time. So tell your message in more conventional language.
5. Be obvious: Never assume that your potential customer would know this. Always tell them what to do. And define terms that are not obvious. Again try to use conventional language and simple words as much as possible.

Also, remember that your marketing messaging should be around the theme of your value proposition. It should have the same tone across all the marketing platforms.

Tips for effective marketing copywriting

Marketing copy is one of the most important aspects of any successful marketing strategy. It is the voice that speaks directly to your target audience, conveying your brand’s message and values.

However, creating effective marketing copy can be challenging, especially with so much competition in the market.

Here are some tips to make sure your marketing copy stands out from the crowd.

To be effective, your marketing copy should be lean and accessible.

Now, what is lean marketing copy?

Imagine I’m visiting your website. And found that your website is full of complex jargon words. I would have to spend time understanding those terms or jargon.

Do you think it’s a good customer experience?

Remember, people, skim content on the website and rarely read it in full. On top of that, in today’s competitive marketplace, people have many options. If they don’t get it in 5 seconds they’ll just pass.

Using complex words wouldn’t make you or your brand sound smart. It’ll just make it hard for the user to understand what you are trying to say.

Always remember, the best marketing copy is short, concise, and to the point.

Now, what about accessible?

Well, you have to consider the assumptions you are making while writing your marketing copy.

People make many decisions every day. They rarely have all the information required to make decisions.

So, what do they do?

Well, they simply rely on their intuition. Everyone’s intuition depends upon their past experiences.

For example, many people believe that eco-friendly cleaning products are not strong as compared to synthetic products. Though it’s an incorrect theory still many people believe it.

So how would you tackle it?

If you know that people have incorrect beliefs about your product then focus your efforts to break these beliefs. Tell and show your customers that it’s an incorrect belief.

The bottom line is never to throw jargon in your copy and write explicitly to break your customer’s incorrect assumptions.