Developing a meaningful strategy is essential to achieving your sales goals. Your strategy should be comprehensive and include several aspects to have maximum impact on your target audience. Here are 10 steps to creating a digital marketing strategy.
Step 1: Create customer personas
A customer persona is an archetype of your perfect customer. This is the person most likely to purchase your product or service. Personas are based on people's preferences, behaviors, and pain points.
For example, let's say you sell walking canes. Your customer persona is probably an elderly person who is over 60 years old and has difficulty walking due to knee or hip problems. They are unbalanced, so using a cane is a good idea. You might further differentiate this person by saying that this person is still mobile enough not to need a walker. The more specific you make your persona, the more effective your marketing to this group will be.
Step 2: Identify all your goals
Goals should revolve around market penetration and digital click-throughs for purchase. You can track and measure your progress and success using tools like Google Analytics. Goals should be clear and measurable so that you can clearly state whether you are achieving them. Goals also support your business objectives.
An example of a digital marketing goal might be to get 100,000 impressions in a month with Facebook ads. This will increase your brand awareness and give you the number of eyes you need to get enough sales. You can monitor your results through Facebook Ad Manager to see if your ads are hitting your goals. If not, you may need to increase your advertising spend to reach more people.
Step 3: Develop the right content
Depending on your strategy, you may need to customize your content to fit your strategy objectives. Content can be ad copy, blogs, social media posts, white papers, etc., depending on your overall strategy and the campaign you employ. Create a content calendar so your audience gets a regular drip feed of your content. This will keep your brand top of mind and increase brand awareness.
For example, if your content strategy is to post helpful tips on your blog, make sure you keep your blog published. This can be done daily, weekly, or monthly depending on your goals. The key is to be consistent and meet publishing deadlines. That way, your target audience will get fresh content and come to expect it on a particular day.
Step 4: Review existing digital marketing channels
Evaluate what you're currently doing and assess whether you're having the success you expected. Now is the time to improve your existing campaigns or delete them and move your budget resources to other areas with more potential for success. You can also explore new and interesting ways to innovate in underperforming areas where you feel there is still benefit. For example, you may notice that your ads aren't performing as well as you expected. Rather than walking away from advertising, we recommend working with another advertising team that has a better track record of success.
Step 5: Deploy automation to streamline your work
Review your campaigns and the process your target audience must go through to purchase or contact you. If possible, automate things so you don't have to spend extra time and energy. An example of automation is content generation. Some platforms have social media content calendars and automatically publish content to relevant social media platforms on a schedule. This frees up your time and energy so you can focus on other tasks.
Step 6: Make sure it's mobile-optimized
Many people consume digital content on their smartphones. This means your digital campaigns need to be optimized for mobile usage. Otherwise, people will leave your website. Your website should load quickly, be tailored for mobile viewing, and be user-friendly. Make it easy for people to buy, sign up for your email list, and ask questions from their phone. Google prioritizes mobile friendly sites, so you should prioritize this from the beginning. You want to give Google every reason to search for and rank your site. Showing up at the top of search results (SERPs) is a digital marketing strategy in itself, and mobile responsiveness is one tactic to improve your rankings.
Step 7: Become more connected
Your target market may have questions, but if those questions are answered quickly, they'll buy right away. This means being responsive on social media and taking the time to answer people's questions about your ads and social media posts. The more engagement, the better for your brand.
Also check the landing pages you own. Evaluate the calls to action (CTAs) that are present on the page and make sure they are clearly and concisely asking for a sale. Many digital marketing experts recommend split testing your CTAs to see which performs best, then switching to the one that performs best. This is a tactic you can employ to get the best response from your audience.
Step 8: Choose the right technology
The goal is to provide your target audience with the right message and human touch when needed, without imposing extra work. Use a CRM system to manage your contacts, invest in automation software, and leverage AI technology where possible. Technology is here to support your digital marketing efforts, and when used correctly, it can reduce your workload and allow you to focus on the tasks that matter most to drive new business. For example, your CRM can automatically send reminder emails on your behalf, so you don't have to spend time making phone calls or following up on hot leads.
Step 9: Reassess what makes you unique
Every company needs a unique selling proposition (USP). This is what makes you different and is the number one priority you should emphasize when marketing. If you haven’t already done so, identify your USP and write it down. Incorporating this into your marketing strategy will help you understand why your target audience would choose you over your competitors. Your USP should always be clearly articulated to your audience. If your current marketing campaign doesn't emphasize this, you should rework your campaign to do so.
Step 10: Track your progress
Establishing a system to track progress should be part of your campaign process. After all, you want to know if your campaign was successful and if you need to duplicate and repeat it. Dedicate more resources to campaigns that are getting the desired results, and fewer resources to campaigns that aren't getting the results you want. Everyone should understand the goals of the campaign and be prepared to adjust the campaign as needed to deliver better results that align with the goals. This is part of being an agile company that can adapt as needed to information in real time.
