With the rise of technology and digital advancements everywhere, businesses can’t avoid building an online presence. The goals vary: some want to reach wider audiences, while others plan to build a stronger brand.
Whatever the case, one thing is clear: companies need a unique digital marketing strategy to achieve multiple goals simultaneously. That’s why 95% of businesses will increase their digital marketing budget in the upcoming years.
Why should you do it if everyone’s already doing it?
Well, quite simply, it works.
Thinking strategically about your digital marketing strategy is as important as choosing your website builder, CRM and domain name.
The key is to build a better and more customized digital marketing strategy if you want to stay afloat.
And this guide will help you begin and plan a killer digital approach with simple steps.
Why do you need a digital marketing strategy?
Have you ever started a project you thought would be very successful? At some point, though, you found yourself in a maze that was hard to get out of?
Well, let’s get you out of that twist.
The digital world is vast. It offers various marketing channels, communication platforms, and business tools to help customize your strategy as much as possible. Unfortunately, with so many handy options, you might get confused about where to begin and how to implement successful marketing campaigns.
A well-crafted digital marketing strategy is an in-depth approach to expanding your marketing opportunities and results. It helps focus on the right audience, boost your lead generation process, craft a good message, use the necessary tools, and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Still not convinced? Here are some specific reasons why your business needs a digital marketing strategy.
- Gives you precise directions.
- Helps understand your marketplace and audience.
- Defines better marketing spending.
- Provides various marketing options.
- Helps build more flexible marketing campaigns.
Another big reason for creating a great digital marketing campaign is that the online marketing environment constantly changes. If businesses don’t try to adapt and apply continuous improvements, they will stay behind.
As a growing business with a big future ahead, you certainly don’t want that. So instead, let’s focus on how you can improve performance and market your business better.
If you’re on our A to Z guide, you may not be familiar with specific terms, phrases, labels, and expressions used in the digital marketing world. So, let us quickly walk you through it.
How to build a successful digital marketing strategy?
Now that you know why you need a defined digital marketing strategy and have learned the basic terms, it’s time to build your own!
A practically powerful digital marketing strategy should not last you a year or two, especially in the marketing automation era. Instead, it should be flexible and adaptive enough to provide success in the long term.
So, what makes a digital marketing strategy of that kind?
Let’s dive into it!
Research and learn about your audience
Ask directly
A straightforward Q&A came to rescue innovative businesses after their customers’ needs back in the day. While the times have changed (a lot), and we’re living in the digital era, the idea remains the same. But the tools and techniques have changed a little.
Here’s what you can do:
- Organize face-to-face meetings to meet with your audience personally.
- Conduct surveys through email with the help of tools like Google Forms for delivering the questionnaire.
- Use your website and social media polls to get a quick opinion or an answer.
Another way is to organize a video conference where you can discuss different industry-related topics and understand your customers’ opinions.
Put yourself into your customer’s shoes
Shall we?
This is another “traditional” method for understanding your target audience and defining their needs and wants.
Set clear goals and KPIs
Remember when we discussed that your digital marketing strategy needs to be so flexible that you won’t have to change but modify it in the future.
We’re here to do that!
Clearly defining your business objectives, metrics, and mission will help determine current and future actions for success. Yet, according to Inc, 80% of small companies don’t keep track of business goals. On the other hand, especially if you want to enter the digital world, analytics, data, performance metrics will be nothing without clear goals and KPIs.
Measure success
Yes, creating a proper and effective digital marketing strategy is an essential piece of the puzzle, but only measuring results will give you an accurate picture. According to a Deloitte survey, 49% of respondents say that data analytics helps make better decisions.
So, why miss out?
Google Analytics is the best and most convenient platform for measuring your website traffic. Moreover, it gives you insights into other important metrics like which traffic the traffic came from and makes custom reports. Additional tools include HubSpot, Crazy Egg, and others. The variety of choices is wide.
The website traffic metric includes other KPIs such as visitors’ average time on site, the device used, and page sessions. All of this helps understand whether your website efforts are working out or whether you still need improvements. Moreover, if you’re using a specific CMS such as WordPress, make sure to get a good web hosting for WordPress to ensure a great user experience on your website.
- Bounce rate. This KPI is essential as it directly shows whether your marketing strategy is on the right path or not. A high bounce rate, for example, might warn you about content irrelevancy, terrible user experience, or other reasons why people leave your website so fast.
While Google Analytics remains your number one choice, you can also use Bounce Rate calculators to measure how fast visitors leave your website.
- Conversion rate. This is one of the most important digital marketing metrics simply because all your efforts serve one goal-conversion optimization. Whether you want more Sign-ups for your SaaS service or plan on acquiring new customers on your eCommerce store, the idea remains the same. You want your website visitors to convert into a lead, a buyer, a user.
Primary tools include Google Analytics (once more), but social media platforms like Facebook also let you track the conversion rate from your Ads.
Depending on the platforms, channels, and tools you choose, you need to track different KPIs and measure your digital marketing success from various angles.
Final words
When you take a first look at creating a digital marketing strategy it seems like a complex task, a riddle that’s almost impossible to solve. Which social media channels to use? How to build and find the perfect customers? Were my efforts worth it?
Hopefully, we’ve answered these and similar questions you have about the digital marketing world.
To wrap up, we explored the basic digital marketing glossary and determined why you need to be strategic in the first place. For our main purpose of building your successful strategy we went over audience research, the importance of clear goals and KPIs, covered the digital marketing mix, defined your business capabilities and success metrics.
By giving you the last three (spicy) elements, you are now all prepared to create a rockstar digital marketing strategy and scale your business.
