What is Digital Marketing Strategy and its Process?
Your business might have adapted to the digital landscape through social media content and e-commerce channels, but are you planning and executing the most effective digital marketing strategy?
Businesses that have aspirations to take over their industry must appreciate the importance of a well-defined digital marketing plan. If you ignore this process, there’s a good chance you won’t generate the website traffic and sales needed to dominate your sector.
Here, we delve into the ins and outs of a robust digital marketing strategy for companies operating at every level. Plus, we’ll explore how to develop a campaign that reaches your audience and convinces them to take action.
What is Digital Marketing Strategy?
Once you realise the virtually endless ways businesses can advertise their products and services online, it’s easy to find yourself tangled up in a web of poorly defined goals and ineffective marketing channels.
Instead, forward-thinking companies design and implement a digital marketing strategy that addresses their precise needs. Rather than wasting your time and energy on a campaign that might be completely redundant for your audience, you should have a precise plan of attack.
Depending on your goals and budget, your digital marketing plan will involve several channels, ranging from social media marketing to search engine optimisation (SEO) and Google AdWords.
Make sure you stay ahead of the pack by creating a strategy that increases your efficiency and reduces costs.
The importance of digital marketing strategies
Digital marketing is essential for success in today’s competitive business landscape. With so many avenues available to connect with potential customers, companies don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to create a loyal base of followers and potentially increase revenue. Crafting a strong digital marketing strategy can be an effective way to achieve these objectives.
Think of it like an online roadmap – you set the destination you want your campaign to reach, then plot out all possible routes that can help you get there. Careful planning and attention to detail helps ensure that whatever message is delivered reaches the right people, in the right place, at the right time – increasing awareness, engagement and overall customer loyalty.
At the end of the day, an online presence is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Without digital marketing campaigns executed by knowledgeable professionals, businesses face the daunting prospect of being left behind in an ever-evolving landscape.
How to Create a Powerful Digital Marketing Strategy
A mind-blowing $1.26 billion NZD in digital advertising revenue was generated in 2019. As this figure is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, marketing online without a plan is bound to lead to plenty of wasted investment and frustration.
If you’re yet to formulate a digital marketing strategy, the best time is now. Below, we cover the essential steps needed to develop a plan tailored to your company’s specific products and services. Alongside an expert digital marketing agency in New Zealand, your business can skyrocket its performance.
If you’re wondering how to create digital marketing strategy, we’ve got your back!
Define Your Goal
Before creating a solid digital marketing strategy, it’s important to have goals in mind. Sometimes asking yourself the most basic questions signals the ideal way forward. This is the idea behind clearly defining what you want your digital marketing campaign to achieve. Think carefully – are you looking to grow your audience, increase sales or boost email subscribers?
After you have an unmistakable objective that equates to digital marketing perfection, you must identify the digital channels and resources required to succeed.
Remember that the specific goal must also be measurable and realistic to positively affect your bottom line, for example, ‘increase traffic by 10% in 3 months.’
Backed by a clear target, your business will find a path forward that grows your operation and ensures you reach the next level.
Research Your Audience
You can’t execute a successful strategy for digital marketing if you don’t understand your audience or what they want.
Don’t just send your messages into the ether, hoping to hit your target. Instead, accurate insight into your target market means you can determine the demand for new products or develop content ideas that resonate with your customer base.
For instance, a business marketing to customers over 60 probably won’t achieve its goals with memes shared on social media. However, thoughtful YouTube videos that explain technical concepts might achieve outstanding results.
By researching your audience and tailoring your content to their needs, you can convert website traffic and visitors to your physical stores.
Develop Precise Buyer Personas
Researching your audience is critical to success, but there’s likely more than one type of person interested in your products and services. This is where the importance of buyer personas comes in to help map out your marketing strategy.
Based on data-driven findings and questionnaires completed by your previous customers, these personas make it easy to produce messages and campaign ideas that are bound to capture attention.
Across demographics like age, income and profession, you can produce personas that outline the challenges experienced by these consumers and how your content can solve them.
Check out HubSpot’s handy persona building tool to give yourself a head start.
Choose the Right Marketing Channels
Image source: Bloomicon/ Shutterstock
With a solid idea of what audience you need to attract to achieve your goals, you must identify the marketing channels that deliver these consumers.
If you sell highly visual products like travel services or fashion, getting active on Instagram and TikTok is a smart decision. However, to be able to approach corporate decision-makers with the power to purchase your SaaS product for their organisation, you may need to advertise on LinkedIn.
Alongside proven techniques like SEO-driven blogs and email campaigns, determining the most effective channel ensures you avoid wasting vital time and money.
With a digital marketing strategy that carefully considers your company’s customer base, advertising budget and resources on hand, you can find the right way to reach your target audience.
Craft the Perfect Message
Even if your product or service is perfect for a specific person, how you deliver your message might be the difference between a sale and a lost customer. This requires you to develop a tone of voice that sounds just like the consumers you’re trying to convert.
If you know your audience consists of teenagers, a message loaded with slang and pop culture references might convince them to engage. But as no two audiences are alike, you need to remain highly vigilant about how you tailor your message and digital strategy accurately.
By carefully addressing your audience’s pain points and delivering a message that doesn’t feel forced, you can increase your conversions and put your business on the path to success.
Deliver your strategies
Now it’s time for the fun part—delivering strategies that will help reach your desired outcomes!
This may include content marketing, SEO, paid advertising campaigns, email marketing campaigns, content creation, influencer partnerships…the list goes on!
When brainstorming strategies for your digital marketing plan, think about which ones align best with your goals and objectives and will bring the most value to your brand.
Evaluate Progress
Last but not least is measuring progress and evaluating results throughout each stage of your digital marketing strategy framework.
It’s important to track key metrics of success so that you can adjust tactics as needed along the way.
This could include tracking website visits, leads generated from various search engines, or conversions from social media ads. Doing so will allow you to see what works best at each stage of execution so that further improvements can be made down the line.
Developing a successful digital marketing plan doesn’t have to be difficult–just break it down into smaller steps! By setting achievable goals and objectives; analysing your audience; developing strategies that align with those goals; and measuring & evaluating progress throughout implementation—you can create a comprehensive digital marketing plan for success!
With thoughtful planning upfront and ongoing testing & optimisation, you’ll soon find yourself on track towards achieving success with your digital marketing efforts!
Inside Tips to Make Your Digital Marketing Strategy Shine
As one of the top digital marketing agencies in the industry, we believe that sharing is caring! Read on for our insider tips to make sure your existing digital marketing knocks it out of the park!
1. Focus on Quality Content
Content is king when it comes to digital marketing. You want to provide valuable, informative content that will keep people coming back for more. This means you have to create content that is well-researched and engaging, with a clear purpose and audience in mind. You also need to ensure that all of your content is optimised for search engines so that it appears higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
2. Ramp Up Your Social Media Presence
Social media platforms are great tools for connecting with potential customers, building brand awareness, and increasing website traffic. To get the most out of them, you need to post regularly, engage with followers by responding to comments and messages quickly, and create content tailored specifically for each platform. Don’t forget about paid advertising options as well – they can be an effective way of reaching new audiences and driving traffic back to your site or landing page.
3. Make Email Marketing Work For You
Email marketing is a highly effective way of staying top-of-mind with customers and prospects alike. To maximise the effectiveness of your email campaigns, tailor them based on customer segments or interests so they feel personalised.
Be sure to use compelling visuals like images or videos; set up automated emails triggered by specific user actions; and include a clear call-to-action (CTA) at the end of each message so that readers know how to take the next step towards purchase or engagement with your brand.
4 Use Analytic Tools To Track Performance
Analytics tools are essential for tracking the success of your digital marketing efforts over time – but you need data if you want to make some meaningful insights!
That’s why it’s important that you set up analytics correctly from the beginning so you can track key performance indicators (KPIs).
Popular KPIs include website visits, clickthrough rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), bounce rate (BR), cost per lead/conversion/click (CPL/CPC/CPA), engagement rate, etc., depending on what type of campaigns you are running.
Knowing which metrics matter most will help you track performance accurately over time so you know where best to focus your efforts in future campaigns!
Digital marketing isn’t easy – it takes constant effort and dedication if you want successful campaigns that deliver results. However, there are some simple things you can do right now to get started with improving your existing strategy.
Get Your Very Own Digital Marketing Strategy From the Pros
There’s no doubt that digital marketing is hugely effective for businesses across virtually every industry. But you can’t rush into a campaign and expect it to generate growth and sales if you haven’t stopped to make even the most basic plan.
By using the benefits of digital marketing to your advantage across social media marketing, search engine optimisation, Google AdWords and many other channels, finding which approach makes sense for your business is imperative to success.
If you’re still wondering how to create a digital marketing plan that actually works, why not call on the experts?
The talented team at First Page Digital – a leading digital marketing agency in New Zealand – is ready to provide your business with a tailored strategy that delivers actual results. Get in touch to give your business the best chance of reaching and converting its ideal audience.
