Developing a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy

To stay ahead of the competition, companies need to step up their marketing efforts and develop an integrated digital marketing strategy that puts the customer at the center of every business decision, integrating marketing channels and technologies to deliver a personalized experience to every customer.

What are the benefits of digital marketing?

• Personalization: Customization is a reality. Data analytics empowers businesses to better understand consumer habits, interests, and behavior. A clear digital marketing strategy helps in delivering personalized experiences, which adds value to consumers and increases trust, engagement, traffic, and conversions.
• engagement: The proliferation of technology usage such as mobile phones has changed the way brands interact with their customers. It has become fundamental and common to deliver relevant content that keeps customers physically engaged with their brand experience through shares, comments, likes, etc. This creates a kind of relationship between the customer and the brand, which is extremely important especially in building long-term relationships and ultimately gaining loyal customers.
• analysis: Data analytics helps organizations learn more about their customers, their habits and behaviors, allowing them to deliver the right message at the right time in the customer journey.
• communication: Reviews, comments, likes, testimonials, and chatbots have changed the way customer service teams communicate and fulfill the needs and wants of their customers. Through these channels, businesses can analyze the impact and reaction of their customers and help them in the best way possible.

Interesting data and trends

• 4.18 billion internet users access the internet via mobile phones.¹
• Internet users aged 16 to 64 spend an average of 2 hours and 12 minutes on social media.²
• According to Similarweb, the most visited websites are Google, YouTube and Facebook.³
• 90% of internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 watch video content on YouTube.^Four
• 32.5% of Instagram users are between 18 and 34 years old.^Five

Channel

Website: Your website is your most important and powerful digital channel. With a new, branded, user-friendly website, your brand can provide a better, more positive experience to potential and existing customers, increasing customer retention. It's crucial that first impressions and interactions with your brand are positive. Tips:

• Make your website mobile friendly.
• Increase the speed of your website.
• Please use HTTPS.
• Avoid intrusive ads.
• Use content like videos, blog posts, infographics, case studies, etc. to drive the sales process.
• Include a call to action.

SEO: It is the process of making improvements both on and off your website to increase traffic and get more exposure in search engine results. SEO is a long-term strategy and it takes time to see results. Tips:

• Conduct keyword research.
• The keywords you choose should match the content of your page.
• Optimize your website by creating relevant and useful content.
• Use page titles, heading tags that outline important content, and alt tags for images.
• Use interlinks and backlinks.
• Sign up for Webmaster Tools to monitor your search engine visibility.
• Use local business SEO.

Paid Search Ads: Pay for ads that appear at the top of search engine organic results. This is a short-term strategy, but it can really get you ranked on the first page of search engines quickly. Tips:

• Set your business goals, find the right keywords and tailor them.
• Use negative keywords in your campaigns. Essentially, this will prevent your ads from being triggered by certain phrases like “free,” “cheap,” etc.
• When writing your copy, focus on the benefits of your company.
• Implement extensions and connect to data analysis tools.
• Target the right audience and country or city.

Display Advertising: These are paid ads such as video and display that drive awareness through a combination of audio/video and creative visual formats. Tips:

• Use a tool called Display Planner to select the right keywords and target audience.
• Use clear, simple creative that matches the look and feel of your brand.
• Use a compelling call to action
• Strengthen it with remarketing.

Social media: Social media helps businesses increase awareness of their brand and products, humanize and protect their brand reputation, increase sales, and build relationships with customers. There are two types of social media marketing. organic: This is free to use and allows you to reach your followers and their friends through your posts. Paid: Reach anyone by paying for impressions, actions and clicks and targeting specific audiences based on demographics, occupation, income, interests and behavior. Tips:

• Choose the right social media platform for your business.
• Engage by posting regular content like blog posts, videos, infographic news, images, etc.
• Use a social media management tool like Hootsuite.

Email Marketing: Email helps businesses retain customers and deliver useful, relevant content. Tips:

• Build an organized email list. This is very important.
• Choose an email marketing platform. For example, Mailchimp is free and easy to implement.
• Personalize and segment your emails accordingly.
• Use email marketing automation.
• Use A/B testing.

strategy

Identify your business goals: The first step in any digital marketing strategy is to understand your business goals, such as increasing leads and ecommerce sales, driving traffic to your website, or increasing brand awareness through social media (likes and followers).

• Identify your target audience. You need to create a buyer persona profile. Include demographic data, income, job position, interests, wants, and needs.
• Creating a customer journey: You need to identify the different stages your users go through from awareness to retention. Think about the product information and questions you need to capture their attention, generate purchase intent, and retain them.
• Identify the channel: For each action in the customer journey, you need to think about a specific channel: for example, if you want to attract new customers, you can use paid search ads or blog posts (don’t forget the importance of SEO).
• Plan your content: You can plan your content based on the customer journey and assign content during the journey.
• Analysis and optimization: At this point, measure the impact of your strategy and optimize it if necessary. You should set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. For example, if one of your business goals is to increase brand awareness, set a SMART goal like this: “I want to increase my Facebook followers by 30% in the next three months.”

Conclusion

Overall, having a digital marketing strategy is crucial as it gives direction to an organization and creates a competitive advantage. A strategy helps organize the flow of work, track campaign progress in real time, and achieve business goals. It also allows you to gather market intelligence about your customers, potential customers, and competitors. In other words, it empowers marketers to adapt quickly to changes, especially in the ever-changing digital world.

Digital Marketing at Deloitte Digital

Deloitte Digital's Digital Marketing and UX team offers a comprehensive range of services aimed at putting the customer at the centre of every digital journey, delivering an intuitive, hassle-free experience.