With so many people doing their shopping entirely online these days, businesses of all kind need a successful digital marketing strategy more than ever before. Of course, with so many people having the exact same idea as yourself, your strategy needs to stand head and shoulders above the rest.
The first thing that you should so is read more about International SEO and digital marketing. After all, you are always going to be in the strongest position once you have done ample research. Essentially, your strategy will encompass various different components, and it is something that you will be able to turn to as your business grows and developments.
Here, we are going to be discussing just a few of the parts of creating a digital marketing strategy that will stand the test of time.
Define the Message You Want to Communicate.
The very first thing that you need to do is to clearly define the message that you are trying to communicate through your digital marketing activity. This should be short, snappy and simple. Everyone at your organisation should be clear on what you are trying to get across. If not, you can’t possibly hope that other people will be. Even though you will be engaging in a number of different activities, you need to provide a sense of clarity and consistency throughout everything. Ultimately, you are looking to get across exactly what your business does and what makes you stand out from the crowd. People are very pushed for time these days, so they are unlikely to spend a great deal of time doing your work for you. They want everything to be presented to them in the clearest way possible so they can evaluate whether or not yours is the business for them.
Create a Clear Brand Story.
Consumers encounter hundreds, if not thousands of brands on a daily basis. Therefore, you need to have a clear story that helps cut across the noise. It is unlikely that you will reach a customer the first time they encounter your brand, which is why you need to be continually reinforcing your brand story in their minds through all your various activities. Everything should be able to be summed up within a short strapline or logo. Once you have the customer’s attention, you can start filling in the gaps with any extra information that you would like to convey to them.
Define Your Goals.
Next up, you need to define your goals and exactly what you are trying to achieve. People and organisations tend to work a lot better when they have clear targets that they are trying to hit. However, there is no point just giving yourself pie-in-the-sky goals that you have no chance of hitting in a million years. They need to be both measurable and achievable. Otherwise, you will find yourself disappointed. Perhaps you want to increase your online sales by a certain percentage. You may want to get a certain number of followers on your Twitter account or capture a particular number of emails for your mailing list. Once your goal has been achieved, don’t rest on your laurels for too long as you will need to be ready to set and hit the next one. This is how the most successful businesses operate.
Find Out About Your Audience.
You may think that you have a clear idea in your mind about exactly who your customers are, but it is highly likely that you know less than you think. That is why it is so important to engage in market research and speak to your customers on a regular basis. Otherwise, what you are doing is essentially guesswork. When you are trying to target a particular audience, you are best off going for a small and niche group first before expanding your aim. If you try to be too broad, you may not actually get anyone at all. Once you know more about your audience, you will be better able to create personas to speak to them.
Map Out Your Journey.
Once you have found out as much information as you can get about your customers, the time has come to create a journey map. This will help you to understand the ways in which your customer are already interacting with you online. Ultimately, you need to be asking how your customer have discovered your business, what motivates their decisions, what makes them leave and what makes them want to come back again. It may take a bit of time until you are clear about some of these factors, but this is all information that is worth finding out in more detail. The more detailed the map, the better you will be able to cater for your target audience.
Outline the Key Channels.
The points that we have made previously were mainly preliminal, and now is the time to start putting your strategy into motion. The number of digital and social channels out there is vast, so you need to be choosing ones which actually work for your business. Don’t try to set up too many unless you are properly able to control and monitor them. After all, when it comes to social media, being social is the whole point! So, if they are not on Snapchat, then your business can leave this one alone. The most popular channels are obviously Facebook and Twitter, but you may well decide that one or two more will be beneficial to you. Keep track of how well your customers are engaging with your posts. Creating a strong digital strategy is all about tweaking and adjusting what you are doing bit by bit.
Create a Content Strategy.
The creation of quality content is absolutely essential for businesses of all kind, so your content strategy needs to be strong within your overall digital marketing approach. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Customers are looking for interesting and entertaining content, or tips and advice that will help them with the living of their day to day lives. You can build up a strategy far in advance so you always have something to say. You need to be regular with your posts; nothing looks worse for a business than a website that hasn’t been updated for an extended period of time. This is also bad for search engine optimisation (SEO) – another key pillar in the overall digital marketing strategy.
Vary Up Your Content.
There is no point posting exactly the same thing day in, day out. You need to vary the type of content that you are posting. So, there is no point continually posting promotional things as customers are much more likely to switch off. As well as blog posts, you could also look into other forms of content such as photos, videos, infographics and more. Even with blog posts, you can make how to guides, interviews, top 10 posts, and news stories, to name but a few. Creating a content calendar can give you a massive helping hand, though this doesn’t have to be too strict as you can always build in alternative posts from time to time.
Prepare Your Resources.
Once your strategy is firmly in place, everyone needs to be on exactly the same page with what you are trying to achieve. So, if you have decided to outsource this particular function to an external agency, they need to be full briefed on what you are trying to achieve. If you are completing all digital marketing activities in-house, all staff members should be fully aware of their responsibilities and the goals that you are trying to hit as an organisation. As we already mentioned, you may well decide to adjust your strategy over time depending on the level of success that you enjoy in each area. Make sure that you have a clear budget of what you are spending on each individual area.
Measure and Review.
There is no point having a strategy which you are not going to review so that you can make any changes, adjustments and improvements as needed. There are plenty of tools which make measurement so much easier. You can see how many people are using a particular discount code that you email to them, how many followers you are gaining and where users are coming to your website from. All of this data could well be useful in the long run and it all contributes to you having a fuller picture of your customers and the types of things that they respond to.
Of course, this guide has just outlined the basics, but hopefully it acts as a useful starting point so you can devise a digital marketing strategy that is highly effective for your business. As we mentioned at the start, this is only likely to become more and more important in the future, so the sooner you get this right, the better.
