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Simply put, a Digital Marketing Strategy refers to planning a course of action in order to achieve the set marketing goals. Goals are determined in order of priority and objectives of the business. Once the goals are set, the business develops their digital marketing campaigns in order to achieve and execute those goals.
Every business has their own unique strategy which fits their list of needs and approaches.
Usually, the marketing strategy details out the following types of goals-
- Long Term Goals
- Medium Term Goals
- Short Term Goals
Some people might consider Digital Marketing Campaigns the same as Digital Marketing Strategies, but they are not!
While Digital Campaigns is a broader term which includes the process of achieving the goals of Digital Strategy, on the other hand, Digital Strategy focuses on building successful and strategic internet campaigns.
A successful strategy and campaign will help the business in earning valuable leads and revenue from the market.
Process of Creating an effective Digital Marketing Strategy
Follow these basic and easy steps to learn how to create a Digital Marketing Strategy.
Here is the list of foundational work one needs to do in order to make their digital strategy successful with the use of right tools and software.
Step 1: Creating Buyer Persona
In order to make a digital campaign, earlier digital marketers collected qualitative and quantitative information of the target audience such as their age, gender, occupation, interests and location.
On the other hand, now Customer Personas, that is, describing the ideal buyer is taking over, it is important for digital marketers to survey and contact their pre-defined target audience before defining their business goals.
Step 2: Identifying Business Goals and Tools
Defining goals is a priority for every business to make their campaigns successful and effective. The goals defined should be suitable and measurable.
An example of a digital marketer’s goal could be to increase the conversion rate on the website by the end of first quarter and creating various promotional offers to attract customers.
After the goal is accomplished, the progress is evaluated.
Step 3: Blogging
Blogging, which is one of the most effective ways to create content for a website and for expanding the content marketing strategy, it performs critical functions.
Blogging not only brings in traffic to the website, but also reinforces social media presence, gives an edge over competitors and ranks long-tail keywords and queries.
An updated blog will have regular visitors and a good ranking in SEO. It is easier to find such websites on search engines and can be used as a platform for the company’s marketing campaign.
Step 4: Evaluation of Digital Marketing Channels
Analyze the effectiveness of the digital assets and channels you are currently using such as website, blog content, social media, word-of-mouth, advertising, Google Adwords, etc and ask yourself how they can be used next year?
If any of these elements were useful in generating leads, modify and use those assets and channels again.
Step 5: Marketing Automation
These platforms only get better with new technologies and software. Using the marketing automation platforms, the digital marketing strategy becomes easier to automate such as content and email marketing, lead generation and more.
To improve the sales process of the business, these platforms integrate company’s sales CRM. If your business is not using such platforms, make sure to add this step to the digital strategy this year.
Step 6: Optimizing for Mobile Search
In this world of mobile-tech, tailor making your business website for a perfect mobile experience is most important. Mobile optimization includes elements such as page seed, site design and other search engine optimization practices in order to make sure that the visitors of the website are having a good time on mobile.
Make sure to use latest mobile responsive designs, email templates and relevant data.
Step 7: Making Customer Reach Easier
The main goal of any online business is to attract buyers and potential customers which can only happen through high traffic on website. Therefore, to make sure that your visitors are happy, the strategy should ensure that the customers are not wasting any efforts to connect with you and your products. Customer engagement is very valuable in this business.
In order to eliminate the unnecessary effort, make sure the landing pages do not ask for unrequired data and clearly place the call-to-actions on every page on the website.
Step 8: Using Appropriate Technology
It is a waste of marketing effort if the right technology doesn’t support the goals of the business.
From using tools such as marketing automation to industry tools and tools which can help accomplish the digital marketing goals and which can help you track where the visitors on the website are coming from, is the best use of right technology.
Step 9: Edge Over Competitors
If you feel there is very little difference between yours and your rival companies, you should not expect high profits. It is important to analyze the differences and similarities in order to understand the consumer perspective.
With a unique selling proposition, you can differentiate yourself from the competitors. Further, fix your differentiators and incorporate this message into your company’s content marketing campaigns and strategies.
Step 10: Tracking the Process
The final step is to constantly monitor and make sure that the strategy works efficiently and effectively. This can be done by assigning members to teams and delivering them certain tasks to ensure that everything is on track.
Final Thoughts
Remember to evaluate your previous mistakes and to learn from them and improve.
With so much hard work involved in just designing a business’s digital marketing strategy, it is important to have an effective and a well-thought-out plan to make these steps easier to achieve.
