Your digital strategy is key to being successful in the digital marketing space. Some companies act like this is a “set it and forget it” business, but it’s not.
The online world has expanded to incorporate nearly every aspect of our lives. You need a plan, or strategy, if you will, to go from point A to point B. Without this, you’re mostly flying blind and aimlessly with little or no direction. To build the right plan, you need some foundational elements, which is what we’ve got for you today.
Who Are You and What Are Your Goals?
Your goals could change from one year to the next, but the idea is to have a solid idea of what you want to accomplish with your marketing. Whether you’re actively looking for a larger audience for your eCommerce business or you want to attract a larger portion of the local crowd, you need to define these things.
Your brand isn’t just your name and logo, it’s your identity and what your potential customers think when they see your logo. What does your brand stand for? Is your company attractive to a large audience? Have you told your story on your About page? This is the first step to figuring out how you’ll approach the online world and build your advertising campaigns.
What Audience Are You Trying to Reach?
Sometimes, our digital strategy brings us to an audience that’s a bit unexpected. As long as you’re achieving your company goals with your audience, there’s no reason to shift gears. However, if you want to attract a specific audience, you need to target that group. Your online visitors are real people, and you want to present them with something you offer that helps them in their lives.
When working on audience targeting, you need to ask a few questions, such as:
- Who influences this audience?
- What platforms are these users on the most?
- What does this audience search for?
- What devices are they using to find items they want to buy?
When you ask these questions, you’ll head in the right direction to target your next audience and build a better ad campaign for them.
Who Are Your Customers?
Do you know what your customers want from you? Why are they buying your products or services? Understanding what your online visitors are looking for can help you build the best digital strategy possible. You need to collect data using your contact forms to build the database of information.
Another things to keep in mind when understanding your customers is how they are segmented. The online community is made of people of all ages and from all walks of life. Some of your products might fit one group better than another. This is where you begin to segment using your collected data so that your ads are targeted the right way.
What is Your Marketing Budget?
“You’ve got to spend money to make money.” Have you ever heard this before? Whether it’s from a movie you watched or something a parent said to you, it’s true. Advertising isn’t free, and you must know how much you have in your marketing budget when you commit to an ad campaign.
Most likely, you won’t have a budget that rivals some of the largest companies in your industry, but that’s ok. Understand what you can spend and find some affordable ways to get your message across. PPC and email marketing are both affordable and offer you ways to keep to a budget so that you don’t end up spending more on marketing than you planned. Once your revenue increases, your company can advertise more heavily.
Understand the Purchase Stages in the Funnel
If you think of your digital strategy like a funnel, your general ads are at the top, working to get the most attention while your targeted ads go to a segmented group. As a customer moves through the purchase funnel, they need more from you.
Using the letters R-A-C-E, you’ll understand the principles involved in a purchase decision. Things you need to do to entice a customer to spend money with your include Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage. Your advertising can help with the reach and act portions of this funnel, but it’s your shopping page or your storefront that helps get customers through the convert and engage phases of their buying decisions. Figure out what your company will offer at each phase to keep consumers moving down the funnel.
Don’t Get Overwhelmed with the Marketing Channels
There are many different ways you can market your products to customers. Some will work while others won’t bring any sales to your company. When you need sales right away, paid search is a great way to bring your name to the top of search engine pages. If you need to build a community, content marketing, and email are both great ways to accomplish this goal.
Sometimes, the channel you choose has more to do with the amount you can spend than it does with the actual channel. You might find some social media marketing to be too expensive but can put some money into an effective PPC campaign. Understand which channels are available and which ones will work right for your business.
How Effective is Your Digital Strategy?
While your top line and bottom line sales should tell the tale, if you want to understand how effectively you’re reaching your customers, Google Analytics is your friend. This platform can be an invaluable tool in measuring your digital strategy. You’ll have to set up the parameters that tell you whether you’ve reached your goals or not. Check Google Analytics daily to adjust your strategy as needed. Your marketing is not a fixed product; you’ll need to act and react to stay in front of your customers.
With these foundational elements, you can build a digital strategy that works great for your business and brings more sales to your bottom line. What will you do to improve your online marketing today?
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