With the advent of the internet into our daily life, a significant change has happened in global business strategies. According to a study published by Forbes, a major part of the world population has internet access. It leads to the integration of technology advancements into all areas of business. Marketing is not an exception to this, as the digital transformation has compelled companies to integrate their marketing with most modern technologies. If you are not tech-savvy, digital marketing can be overwhelming. Therefore, we have simplified the digital marketing process for you. Here are some steps to make an effective digital marketing plan:
Analyze the online presence of your business
If you already have some digital presence, the first logical step is to look at your online presence through the lens of a consumer. In other words, you should Google your industry buzzwords and answer questions like:
- How quickly can your consumers find you when they search for products or services you offer?
- Will they see the same thing – get the same information and message – about your business across all digital platforms?
- Where do you rank among your competitors?
- What are your consumers saying about your brand or business?
- Does your audience find your content useful?
Once you have answered these questions, you know where you stand. The next step is knowing where you want to be.
Establish digital marketing goals and objectives
While establishing digital marketing goals and objectives, you need to keep in mind the acronym framework S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely).
It may help you identify any disconnect between your marketing strategies and your goals. You can break up your end goal into smaller objectives that are easier to track.
Create a digital marketing strategy
Having determined what you have and what you wish to achieve helps you choose effective digital marketing strategies. Here’s a list of digital marketing tools that can help you create a result-driven digital marketing strategy:
1- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you want your business to grow, you can be found by consumers searching for your products or services. For that, you should let Google know what your business is about and how you can help your consumers. SEO is all about using the most relevant words and phrases that users frequently search for. Google crawls all content in cyberspace and keeps changing the way it searches, indexes, and ranks content day by day. You can apply SEO not only to your website content or blog, but you can apply it to all the content you put out there.
2- Content marketing
Your content marketing strategy, like everything else, should be geared to meet your goals. The various types of content include video, images, and written content. Here’s what you should be looking out for in your content marketing strategy:
- Is your content relevant to your audience?
- Does it solve a problem for them?
- Is your content or solution unique and different from that offered by the competitors?
- Are you placing your content where your consumers are?
- Are you offering the type of content your consumers want?
Answers to these questions help you bridge gaps between you and your customers. You also need to make decisions regarding the content you want, where you should post it, and whether you modify your existing content to match your new goals and strategy.
3- Social media marketing
You need to handle social media platforms cautiously as most of your consumers are on social media, and they share both positive and negative experiences. There are many ways to use social media for marketing. From engaging consumers and encouraging them to talk about your brand to channeling the discussions and putting a positive spin on any negative comments – you need to watch all these steps closely. Once again, setting a clear goal and working towards it is the way to go. Here are some of the social media platforms that you need to focus on:
- Clubhouse
4- E-mail marketing
Email marketing is mainly used to provide customized and personalized offers to existing customers, but you can also use it as a tool for cold calling and to generate awareness. For instance, once you get a lead through your lead-generation mail, you can follow it up with a first-time discount offer to drive conversion. Even though you can customize and automate most email marketing platforms, it could backfire as automated emails detract from the humanized personalization. This type of personalization is possible with the following email marketing tools:
5- Video marketing
YouTube is not new nor is it the only place where you can use video. Facebook and Instagram and even LinkedIn now sport video content. It means you can reach out to your targeted consumers right where they are. However, it requires some strategic planning and careful content creation. For instance, you can place a longer video on Facebook than you could on Instagram, and your Facebook video should be more entertaining than the professional one on LinkedIn. Above all, your video content should be relatable and useful for the viewer. You should also optimize video content for SEO to improve your ranking.
6- Voice marketing
Today, most people use voice search to search for products and services. Integrating voice marketing into your overall marketing strategy is therefore extremely important. Even with a voice search, Google and other search engines still search for written content and read it out to the visitor. When you create written content, you can format it in a way that is appealing to readers but still gives Google a good excerpt in response to voice search.
How to effectively plan your digital marketing budget?
Creating a marketing campaign is complex and it can be hard to stay within budget. So, having created your campaign, list all the collaterals you need, estimate costs, and then allocate specific budgets for each. Keep a small percentage aside for contingencies and adjustments. Staying within a digital marketing budget is important as the goal of any business activity including digital marketing is to improve profits – and cutting costs is one way to do this.
How to measure the results of your digital marketing strategy?
If you want to know the ROI of your campaign, you should monitor important KPI (Key Performance indicators) like:
- How familiar are they with your brand?
- How many inquiries do you get per dollar spent?
- How many people visit your website and where do they come from?
- How many repeat visits do you get?
- How often does a visitor make a purchase?
- How many inquiries convert to sales?
As one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Vancouver, we at Smart Strategy ensure our clients across the world with result-driven digital marketing services. Our digital marketing services encompass SEO, PPC management, social media marketing, email marketing, data analytics, and more. If your business requires digital marketing services, we can help you.
