Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy to Optimize Your Business

Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy to Optimize Your Business

In today’s connected environment, every company needs a solid digital marketing strategy. Marketing goes beyond websites and newsletters, and it can be complex to construct a strategy. When companies need to construct a workable digital strategy, they frequently need professional help to do so. This article will help your company construct a marketing strategy that will make you stand out both online and in person.

Create a Marketing Strategy

Take the time to sit down with the major players in your company and talk about the goals that you want to reach. You will need to have a plan to reach each of these goals in a focused, achievable way. Marketing plans take into consideration what your business is doing well and what you’re missing.

There are three steps you will need to follow to create your digital strategy:

• A Diagnosis of Your Challenge
• A Guiding Policy for Meeting the Challenge
• Targeted Actions to Accomplish the Policy

Targeted actions are marketing tactics that will help you achieve your end goal. The strategy is your destination; the tactic is how you get there.

Here are several marketing tactics that will help you create your strategy:

• Create a blog
• Advertise on social media
• Include free educational materials on your website
• Use SEO (search engine optimization) to drive traffic to your website
• Produce a podcast
• Create an email campaign and newsletter

Creating a Digital Strategy

Marketing strategies are the actions you will plan to take to achieve your overall goal. Digital campaigns are the actions within your marketing plan that will help you move toward your specific end goal.

For example, if you want to generate more leads on social media, you may want to run a campaign on Facebook or Twitter. You may want to give away premium information to subscribers as a means of enticing them to see your website and become engaged with your company.

Steps Toward Creating a Digital Strategy

The first thing that you should do when you are planning your strategy is to consider your customers. This is often called building a “buyer persona.” You should draw up a complete profile of the demographics of the targeted customers you would most like to do business with. Having a buyer persona in mind means that you will be able to sort out which tactics are most likely to pay off.

It is best to base your buyer personas on actual data, rather than making guesses about your customer base. If you make false assumptions about your audience, this can distract you from the proper marketing strategy.

When you research your persona, include a mix of prospects, current customers, and people who are not in your customer list to best match up with your target audience.

It is helpful to know the location, income, and age of your targeted personas. If you are a B2B (business-to-business) company, it is a good idea to find out the prospects’ job titles and company name.

Tie Your Digital Goals to Overall Marketing Goals

You should always tie your digital goals to your fundamental marketing goals. For example, if you want to increase your business’s online revenue by 20 percent, your marketing team may make it their goal to generate 75 percent more leads via the website than the year before to help reach that goal.

Check on Existing Digital Assets

Before you can move forward with new tactics, you will want to see what you already have to offer. Round all of your existing digital assets up in a spreadsheet.

You will want to look at your owned, earned, and paid media framework. You owned framework consists of every asset that you have total control over. This includes your website and marketing materials. Your earned media is what you achieve through word-of-mouth. This can include guests posts, your customer experience, or PR activities. Being recognized for these activities is the core of your earned media.

Having a good handle on your paid marketing is also a good idea. This includes Google AdWords, paid social media advertising, and banner ads on other sites.

Optimize Your Owned Media

Owned media generally comes in the form of content. Each message broadcasted by your brand can be regarded as content. This information helps to convert your visitors into customers and leads.

You will want to make sure that your website is fully SEO-capable. This will help your business achieve a prominent listing on popular search engines like Google. Often, a search engine result is the first contact that a customer has with your company, so it is important to make sure that you are the first search result for crucial keywords. Create “digital snippets” to make sure that the most pertinent information from your website is prominently displayed on the search engine pages.

Content Creation Plans

Based on your research, you should make a plan to create content that will help you meet your goals. Decide what you need to include on your website and digital channels. For example, if the e-commerce portion of your website is highly important to your success, make sure that it is fully updated and working perfectly.

Analyze Your Traffic

For earned media, it is a good idea to decide where to focus your energies in a way that meets your goals. You should analyze your paid media campaigns in the same way.

Bringing it All Together

When you compile your buyer persona, digital-specific goals, an inventory of your existing media, and a plan to create more content, you will have a digital strategy at your fingertips. Creating this strategy will help your company compete in a difficult economy and will optimize your spending based on increased leads and sales.