Digital marketing is an essential part of any modern business strategy. However, before you go in all guns blazing it’s important to take the time to carefully craft a digital marketing strategy. Here’s how to go about it.
Step 1: Assess
First, you need to assess your current marketing strategy and consider how well it is serving you. How much are you spending? What kind of ROI are you generating? Which practices are effective in attracting new customers, and which can you do without?
Step 2: Strategise
Digital marketing is a vast category that includes:
● Website development
● Pay per click (PPC) advertising
● Search engine optimisation (SEO)
● Social media marketing
● Blog writing
● Video marketing
It’s great to have so many options out there but when you’re operating on a limited budget, you need to be careful not to stretch yourself too thin.
In order to avoid this, ask yourself where your ideal customer hangs out online and which platforms they engage with the most. If your audience prefers Instagram, for example, then it’s worth focusing on investing your marketing budget in creating great content for that platform. However, if your audience prefers LinkedIn, then PPC LinkedIn ads may generate a better ROI.
For example, research by Statista found that:
● 56% of Facebook users are male
● 57.7% of UK LinkedIn users are aged between 25-34
● People over 65 are least likely to use Instagram
Consider, also, how you can repurpose marketing content across platforms to save time. For example, your Instagram posts and stories can be easily uploaded to Facebook at the same time. Live streams can be recorded and uploaded to YouTube, and blogs can be broken down into digestible social media updates.
This may seem like a lot of preparation, but this is an essential step that will help you to maximise your return and grow your audience more effectively.
Step 3: A Content-Rich Website
The more content on your website, the more chances that new customers will find you on Google.
Remember that search engine users aren’t looking for businesses; they’re looking for answers. How-to blogs, explainer videos and informative content is a must. In addition to attracting new customers, it also helps to position you as an authority in your niche.
If you’re pressed for time and resources, take a little-by-little approach to creating content. You could set yourself a target of two short blog posts per week, or one 10-minute video. Over time, these efforts will add up to make a content-rich website that ranks highly in search engines and represents your business well.
Step 4: Partner with Influencers
Collaborating with industry influencers is a fantastic way of increasing your reach and building trust. Be sure to look for creators who share your brand values and audience, but don’t directly compete with your business. Remember that engagement rates count for more than followers. An influencer with a hyper-engaged audience of 10,000 could be worth much more to you than someone with 100,000 followers who don’t really engage with or trust them.
Step 5: Partner with Business Owners
On top of influencer partnerships, joining forces with fellow business owners is a great way to build your audience and deliver value to new prospects. It’s best to choose a business whose services complement yours for maximum impact so that you can create a value-packed new offering.
Summary
Digital marketing requires careful research and a precise aim. Blanket marketing is a thing of the past. To succeed in today’s online marketplace, you need to carefully create a digital marketing strategy that directly targets your ideal customer. Then, you need to work to expand your reach using content and joint venture partnerships to create a large and engaged audience who actually listen to what you have to say.
