Whether you are a large or a small business, just starting, or decades strong, marketing always matters. Digital marketing is especially vital for a successful business, making it absolutely necessary to have a strong and well thought out digital marketing strategy. If you are starting from scratch, or want to improve your current marketing strategy, there are lots of things you can be doing to improve your online presence.
How to Build a Great Digital Marketing Strategy
Analyze Current Marketing Results
The first step in building a strong digital marketing strategy is to look at your current analytics. See just where it is successful and where it is lacking. This will give you a better idea of just how successful your current marketing plan is, and where you will need to step it up to achieve better results. You will also find out valuable information about who is buying your products and how often they are repurchasing them.
Build Your Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is used to create the “ideal” person in your target audience. This isn’t just determining a certain demographic your company and product appeals to. You want to get as detailed as possible when creating a persona, including factors like gender, age, socioeconomic class, jobs, hobbies, and most importantly, what will relate most to them.
All this information helps you to focus your marketing towards these personas more effectively. By narrowing your focus, you can better appeal to this group and increase your success.
Set Goals
You need to sit down and set clear goals with your team to make sure everyone is moving in the same direction. Brainstorm different ideas for how to appeal to your buyer personas and make it clear what those steps need to be.
This needs to include ways to increase awareness and interest in your brand, get them to engage with your company and create a call to action that inspires them to get involved with your business.
Look at Your Competitors
While you should never blatantly copy off your competitors, it is incredibly valuable to look at how they approach digital marketing. See what they have tried and whether or not it has been successful for them. This is essentially free marketing information for you without having to spend any extra money trying them yourself. This way, you prevent your business from making the same mistakes they did.
Focus on These Five Major Aspects
To have a truly successful digital marketing strategy, it is important to cover these major aspects.
Content Marketing
Creating content is an absolute must; it is important to produce new material often. You can do this through blogging, web seminars, online forums, eBooks, and press releases. Make the content informative and engaging. Besides putting your business at the forefront of your customers’ minds, you’re also building your credibility in the industry by showing up and creating informative and helpful content.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
A crucial part of SEM is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, which revolves around the visibility of your website on search engines. Utilizing on-page and off-page SEO strategies will be able to bring a flow of organic traffic to your website.
As part of search engine marketing, you can also utilize paid search ads, paid advertising and pay per click (PPC) ads to bring traffic to your site.
Email Marketing
Email lists are a fantastic way to keep in contact with your customers. Keep them coming back by asking them to sign up to receive updates and exclusive deals. Keep your customers informed about important information, latest promotions and engage them through email newsletters.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is where a vast majority of people spend their free time. By setting up accounts on popular sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and Google+, you can find new ways to interact with your customer base and get more people to check your business out.
Mobile Marketing
It is important to remember that most people will be using smart devices like phones and tablets, rather than just a laptop or desktop. Make sure your website is mobile responsive, at the very least. Incorporating marketing features like mobile games or having an app for your business are also good ways to cover more ground.
Don’t Forget to Analyze
It is important to remember that the implementation of new marketing techniques need to be constantly analyzed and optimized. Analyzing your digital marketing is an ongoing process where you will need to constantly look out for what is successful and what is not. When something is not working, it is important to adjust and keep going.
In Summary
Don’t let a weak digital marketing strategy hurt your business. By being proactive and following the tips provided, you can reach more people, get more traffic to your site, and ultimately, increase your profits. Take some time to incorporate some of these tested strategies and see what a difference it can make to your business. Our digital marketing agency in Orlando can help you with any questions.
Stephan Boehringer is the CEO of Get The Clicks, a web marketing company. Stephan has over 20 years of experience in the field of web marketing, and has been a speaker and consultant for many years. Stephan is passionate about web marketing and helping their clients be the best they can be.
Stephan Boehringer graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services.