As the saying goes, proper planning prevents poor performance. If you are responsible for your company’s digital marketing, you’ll understand this saying well. You know that to execute a successful marketing campaign, you need a strategy. However, knowing how to devise a successful digital marketing strategy is what sets you apart from the rest.
Here are a few tips from our digital marketing experts, to set you on the way to creating a digital strategy that works:
- Understand your goals
Before devising your strategy, you need to know your company objectives and expectations. Yes ok, it’s a pretty blatant tip, however fully understanding these and ensuring you regularly refer back to them will ensure you don’t stray from the path and lose focus.
Establish your KPIs (key performance indicators) to enable you measure how effectively you are achieving your business goals, going forward. Set the KPIs you expect to reach and when, to achieve growth towards your target.
- Plan your activity
Once you have a grasp of your expected KPIs and your growth timelines, you can begin to plan the type of activity required to stay on target with your growth.
Create campaigns for each type of digital marketing activity that’s relevant to your business and estimate the effort level required for each, based on average leads and conversion rates.
Do you have the budget to cover the required activity? If not, can you juggle around the activity to put more effort into the lower cost activities to reach the KPIs that way? Is your budget flexible? Are your KPIs adjustable?
- Define your target audience
Your strategy becomes a whole lot more meaningful if you get to grips with the needs and behaviours of your customers.
Your customer needs and behaviours might vary, for example a server migration service offered by an IT company might appeal to businesses looking directly for support, but also web hosting companies wanting to get clients quickly over to their platforms. Two completely different target markets.
This is where you need to develop personas and align your strategy to each persona. This may mean running two different campaigns via the same marketing channel, to ensure your message and call to action are personalised.
When creating personas, consider the follow:
– What do my customers want/need?
-What objections to they face?
– How can I address their needs?
– What messaging will they most identify with?
– How can I best communicate with them?
- Choose your digital channels
Whilst it is recommended to utilise a range of digital media to show a strong digital presence for your brand, you should still choose your channels carefully to ensure you are spending your budget on the most effective communication tools for your personas.
Go for the social media platforms that your target uses most, as well as the ones on which your competitors are most active on, to ensure you are competitive.
If you are running SEO and PPC campaigns, choose the keywords that your personas will most identify with.
Whatever the channel, consider how it will complement the customer journey and resonate with your personas.
Now that you have a strategy, you can begin putting your planned activity to the test. Measure your performance each month to demonstrate growth towards your KPIs. Adjust your strategy where needed, to invest more budget and effort into activities that are giving you the best results, bringing you closer to your overall goals.
Need any advice on your digital marketing strategy? Give Whitefish Marketing a call on 01303 720 288. Whitefish Marketing are an award winning Kent Web Agency.
