Let us face it. The internet holds an integral part in our social and economic lives in today's world; thus, digital marketing is essential for any business. To grow your company's digital presence and boost your revenue, you need to have a solid digital marketing strategy.
It's not a secret that companies with a well-planned digital marketing strategy are generally more organized, more productive, and thus grow more rapidly. In other words, if your company lacks that, you're missing out on many opportunities.
The question that arises is what to include in your digital marketing strategy and how to put it into action? It might be the trickiest part. Let's dive deep into individual details and uncover what digital marketing strategy and its composition are.
Digital Marketing Strategy is simply a plan which outlines your marketing initiatives, sets realistic targets, and supports your SMART goals. An excellent digital marketing strategy is the core of any successful business. Hence, make sure to invest adequate time researching and developing your digital marketing strategic plan and goals. Don't just launch the marketing campaign; sit back and hope for miracles. That's a critical mistake that many marketers, business owners, or even salespeople make.
Now let's discuss the critical components of holistic digital marketing strategy planning.
Do SWOT analysis
Let's understand what a SWOT analysis is. It is a widely used methodology in marketing and business, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This simple framework helps the companies outline their strong and week sides, see their current competitive positioning and evaluate the future potential. Below is presented a SWOT analysis chart where you can fill your business attributes.
To complete this chart, create a grid and divide it into four squares naming each one by their respective labels: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Be honest and write down as much information as you can.
Keep in mind that the "Strengths" and "Weaknesses" parts are internal and refer to your company's current situation. On the other hand, "Opportunities" and "threats" are external and define your market's overall evaluation.
Set SMART goals
Don't forget that a goal without a reasonable plan is just a wish. When setting goals, you must be specific about what you want to achieve and make sure your goals meet the five SMART goals criteria.
But what is a SMART goal? Each letter of the acronym stands for a different component: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Now let's find out what each of those means in terms of a Business Strategy.
Setting SMART goals means that you clarify your ideas and don't waste time on efforts that are not realistic to achieve.
Let's imagine that you are a Blogger, and you want to increase your throughput. Don't just say, "I want to publish more blogs," instead say, "I want to publish four blogs per month, 2000 words each, with educational sequence, and be consistent with it within a time span of 12 months because your success depends on how much value you bring to your audience."
Create your buyer persona
Moving on to the next step, before creating your first digital marketing strategy draft, you should always define your brand's buyer persona. What is a buyer persona? It is a thorough description of your ideal customer based on meticulous research and data. Keep in mind that it's just a fictional character who represents your average customer and usually every company has from two to six buyer personas. If you have never created a buyer's persona before, then no worries. There are many online tools that will help you define the demographics, behaviors, and hobbies of your buyer persona.
As a helping instrument, HubSpot offers a tool that allows you to create your buyer persona. All you have to do is fill in the required fields, complete the steps, and you're all set.
Let’s go back to the example of a blogger. For instance, the blogs are about graphic design, let us understand who can be the person that reads that blog.
One of the buyer personas is the following.
The internet is full of various social media platforms, and their number increases regularly. While diversity and tough competition give you the freedom of choice, it can be hard to pick which platforms to focus all your efforts on. To choose the proper promotion channels for your brand, you should have an overarching understanding of where your buyer persona spends their time. You should be visible to your potential customers so they can notice you. Suppose you select a social media channel that is popular but doesn't align with your business goals. In that case, you're simply wasting your time without any benefit. So monitor your clients, your target audience, see which platforms they tend to use, and try to build your digital presence there. The different communication channels include:
But don't create an account on every platform you encounter. Choose 2-3 relevant ones and see how you perform there. Experiment on new platforms, but don't waste your precious time if you realize it's not a good fit for your brand.
For example, if you own a fashion boutique, Pinterest and Instagram would be your best choice. Another scenario. Suppose you have a blog or a news website specializing in political news. In that case, Twitter and Facebook will be your best bet, while Instagram and Pinterest will be of less benefit to you.
Create your content strategy
After you carefully selected your promotional channels, it's time to create your content strategy. To begin the strategy creation, you first have to monitor your competitors, see what type of content they produce and how their users react. Next comes the selection of your mission, goals, and KPIs (key performance indicators). Decide on which content types you're going to focus on. Is it going to be a video, an image, a gif, or a blog article? What about their mixture?
It is beneficial to create a content calendar where you can plan your upcoming posts. By doing this, you can visualize how your content is distributed.
Finally, always remember the golden rule. Put yourself in your customers' shoes and think about their needs. What kind of content would they like to read. Learn about their pain points and offer solutions within your content. Don't just tell them about your brand; provide value to your customers, and your efforts will be compensated in no time.
You've come this far; congratulations! To complete your strategy creation, you have only one step left. Since you already created your buyer persona, chose your promotional channels, and even made the content strategy, you have only one point missing in your digital marketing strategic plan. The cherry on top of this beautiful composition is the budget for your digital marketing initiatives.
You might wonder what the optimum budget is. Unfortunately, there is no "one fits all" approach when it comes to budgeting. Some companies can't afford to spend $1000 monthly, while some brands spend it on just one ad. The range is quite significant. Just try to set a realistic budget and scale it gradually when you notice the results. Remember to regularly calculate your expenses and try to make the most out of your budget.
Track your results
Digital marketing always boils down to research, analytics, and data. Successful marketers always keep an eye on analytics. And the reasons are apparent. Tracking results allows you to differentiate between what works, what doesn't, what changes are necessary for preventing your ad campaigns from failure. While there is still no guarantee that you will always reach your goals, you can use the collected data to make better decisions for the future. Make reports on your results and compare the data with the previous month to see if there is any progress. There are many online tools to help you with that. You can always use Facebook Analytics, Instagram Insights, and Google Analytics to always keep track of your strategies or use third party tools such as:
As you can tell from reading the above-mentioned manual, creating a good digital marketing strategy takes a lot of time and effort. If you're a beginner, it's pretty easy to make mistakes, but we will try to make sure it does not happen.
Below we comprised a list of 4 Don'ts that you should avoid when creating your strategic plan.
Creating your brand and making it recognizable is not an overnight success but a realistic, well-planned marketing strategy. Invest your time in creating a good strategy, and you will soon start reaping the rewards of your hard work. If you still find the process of making the strategy from scratch too challenging, don't hesitate to reach out to a reputable digital marketing agency. They will help you reach your business objectives!
