Marketing has come a long way over the years. Gone are the days of paper ads and men screaming at you from your television screens. Today, digital marketing is booming more than ever, and we are here to help you craft the winning formula to take your digital marketing to the next level. And depending on your brand goal and mission, the digital marketing strategy will differ.
Digital marketing covers a range of different marketing channels and so understanding them and seeing how they apply to your brand is a must. We have six broad types of digital marketing.
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Native advertising
- Pay-per-click (PPC) and
- Email marketing.
We will discuss them later in the article. But now, let us look at some things you can do to create a winning strategy.
Know Your Audience
A study by Smart Insight revealed 46% of brands do not have a defined digital marketing strategy. While 16% have but do not have defined goals on achieving it. In the past, you would have gotten away with your target audience being “teens under 16.” Today, you need more data like this, a middle-class family with a female child under 16 who has access to the internet, has a TicTok account, and has a flair for fashion. What you have successfully done is create a buyer persona. You don’t just want a vague blanket title. But to know your audience on a quantitative and qualitative scale.
The example given above is a simple example of these. To explore the quantitative scale is to get information like age, location, income, and job title. Information like income can be tough to get. Conducting a poll will suffice, but if the marketing budget doesn’t cover this activity, using the average income in the industry should be good enough.
The qualitative scale explores the emotions of your audience. How can you connect to them on an emotional level? What solution are you solving in their lives? Can you push the right buttons to turn them from visitors to buyers and then loyal customers?
These questions are some that you will ask and should help narrow down your audience. As the saying goes, “Knowledge is power.”
You can get some of this data using google analytics, Facebook analytics, and other analytic software applications available in the market.
Know What You Want
These tackle the question of what does your brand want to accomplish? You must understand what your marketing goal is as a brand. What do you want to achieve? These will help point out the essential elements to consider when developing the market strategy.
Avoid using vague words like ‘increase sales’ or ‘Get more lead on your website.’ These have no specifics to them and make them hard to track.
Use definite terms like, to achieve a 20% increase in sales, an increase of 50% on your engagement on Instagram. These have defined statements to them.
You should ensure that your marketing strategy is in line with the grand mission and goal of the brand. After you have put pen to paper and define what you want, the next thing is to draw up a plan to get there. Drawing up a plan will mean setting objectives so you can achieve your marketing goal.
You can use the Smart acronym to set out what you want. In case you do not know the Smart acronym, it means
- Specific: Make your goal very specific. Like I said earlier, avoid vague words. Use figures and be clear about who the target audience is and how you plan on achieving this goal.
- Measurable: When setting your goals to achieve your objects, use metrics. Metrics allow you can track the effectiveness and efficiency of your goal.
- Achievable: Do not set lofty goals. Start with reasonable goals. You can review the targets if you feel you can do more.
- Realistic: You cannot say you want to achieve a million followers within a month on Instagram if you are only on 500 when setting your marketing plan. Make it realistic.
- Time-bound: Tie your objectives to a reasonable time scale.
When planning all of this, one thing to consider is to note your available resource so that you do not go over your budget or overwork your personal.
Evaluate What You Have
Evaluating what you have is looking at the resource you currently use. These resources include your personnel and digital assets presently used by the brand. We will look at each of them and how going through them will help improve your digital marketing strategy.
- Human resources. Your team is one of the most vital parts of a successful digital campaign. The expertise on the team, experience, and the number go a long way. Consider, do you want the marketing strategy in-house, or do you want to outsource to a third-party firm? If you are outsourcing, what is your budget? Take into consideration all these kinds of questions that can help you assess your situation better. For instance, do you need to hire more people or let some go? Going through the brand’s past trends will help you navigate decision-making.
- Digital assets. They are the digital vehicles or channels you currently use to market your brand. These include what you own, have earned, and ad payments made to advertise your brand.
Examples of what you own are your website, blog content, imagery, and social media profiles. Examples of what you earned are word-of-mouth, customer sharing their positive experience, and the PR work you do. It is the positive image you receive because of your effort. Ad payment is any vehicle you paid for to get the attention of your audience.
Going through past analysis can give you an insight into what channels have done well in the past. You can also review your marketing plan by asking questions like, do you need to add more channels? What should be the proportion between paid advert and organically generated audience using SEO. Should you advertise more on all social media platforms or some? Getting your goals will help determine the best vehicles to use. You can do trial and error on some of them. Alternatively, you can also outsource this part of the process if your brand lacks the expertise or time.
Invest in the Right Channels
We stated earlier, the ‘vehicles’ by which a brand carries out its digital marketing. We also listed some of these channels at the beginning of the article. So, we will now look at them in-depth.
- Content Marketing: This is a marketing strategy that involves the creation and publication of content. It attracts, educates, engages, and keeps your audience. An example of this is a blog created to educate your audience on an industry. An example is a fashion brand running a blog that teaches trending fashion, dressing hacks, and styling your clothes.
- Social Media Marketing: This is quite a popular channel used when marketing. It entails promoting a product or service through social media platforms. You use your Instagram, Facebook, or Tictok page to draw attention to your brand. It can be a paid marketing or a free one.
- Search Engine Optimization: Popularly known as SEO for short. This practice improves website ranking on search engines when keywords concerning your brand are searched for online.
- Pay-Per-Click: The marketing channel involves ads. These ads are usually on other websites with high organic traffic or search engine pages like Google. You pay for this marketing channel on a per-click basis.
- Email Marketing: Using an email as a marketing approach. This approach sees you send regular emails to update, inform and persuade an audience to subscribe, buy or upgrade a product or service you offer.
- Native Marketing: This marketing technique is a way of blending an advert with the natural editorial flow of the website or news article. They are not always obvious and sometimes come in a partnership between two brands.
Final Thoughts
Why is understanding the channels important? This point is because when planning your marketing strategy, choosing the right channel(s) to invest in for your brand ensures you properly use your resources. Using past data is a good start, but a continuous trial and error will also serve you well.
In conclusion, coming up with a winning digital marketing strategy is not a one-off project. The team should regularly review the goals and make adjustments when necessary.