This ever-changing digital landscape can become overwhelming when you are growing a business. There are many other tasks and responsibilities that you must perform, so how do you efficiently develop, refine, and maintain an agile digital marketing strategy?
What Is A Marketing Strategy?
Marketing strategies are a strategy that outlines a method for achieving a particular marketing goal or set of goals in a targeted and manageable manner. This strategy will assess what your company is doing well and what is missing to achieve your goal.
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This Digital Marketing Strategy template is for small businesses unsure of how to start their strategy. This template includes useful tips and templates that will help you succeed. Do you still have questions about the differences between marketing strategies and tactics? This is what we will cover.
Strategy vs Tactic
Your strategy is your goal the achievable and focused plan that will get you there. Your strategy will help you achieve your goal by using tactics. Marketing or not, any strategy has three components:
- Your challenge has been diagnosed.
- This is a guideline for how to deal with the challenge.
- A collection of actions targeted to achieve the policy.
Your marketing strategy could include many moving parts depending on your business size. Each part may have different goals. It can be overwhelming to work on your strategy. These three steps will help you stay focused on your goals if you feel overwhelmed by your marketing strategy. Now, let's look at digital marketing strategy.
What Is Digital Marketing Strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is an online plan that establishes a web presence via online channels like social media, organic search, paid ads, or other web-based media such as your website. Digital marketing strategies are designed to raise awareness and bring new customers to your company.
Your business can achieve specific digital goals by having a strong digital marketing strategy. This is achieved through carefully chosen mediums. Digital marketing campaigns and strategies are often interchangeable, just like marketing tactics and strategies. How do they differ? This is what we will discuss in the next sections.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Your Digital Marketing Campaign is the foundation and action to help you reach a specific goal. Suppose your overarching goal is to increase leads through social media platforms. In that case, you might consider running a Twitter-based digital marketing campaign. To generate more leads, you might share your best-performing content on Twitter.
How To Create A Digital Marketing Strategy
- Develop your buyer personas.
- Identify your goals, and decide on the digital marketing tools you need.
- Assess your digital assets and channels.
- Plan and audit your own media campaigns.
- Identify your goals, and decide on the digital marketing tools you need.
- Keep an eye on the situation and make a report.
1. Develop Your Buyer Personas
You must know your target audience before creating any marketing strategy, digital or otherwise. You can build the best digital marketing strategies by creating buyer personas. Buyer personas are your ideal customers. They can be created by researching, surveying, and interviewing your target audience. Important to remember that this information should always be based on real data. Assuming your audience's preferences can lead to a misguided marketing strategy.
Your research pool should include customers, prospects, and people from outside your contact database that align with your target audience to get a complete picture of your persona. What information can you collect to build your buyer persona?
It all depends on the business you run. Your chances of success will vary depending on whether your business is B2B or C2C or whether you sell high-cost or low-cost products. These are just a few starting points you can tweak and tailor to fit your business.
Demographic and Quantitative Information
- Location: Use web analytics tools to identify where your website traffic is coming in from quickly.
- Age: Depending on the business, this information may be irrelevant. If it is, you can gather it by looking at trends in your contact and prospect databases.
- Income: Sensitive information such as income can be gathered through interviews with people. People might not want to share this information via online forms.
- Job Title: This is something you can get an idea of from existing customers and is most relevant to B2B businesses.
Qualitative and Psychographic Information
- Goals: Depending on the problem your product or service solves, you might already know your buyer persona's goals. Contact customers, customer service representatives, and other employees to confirm your assumptions.
- Challenges: Talk to customers, customer service representatives, and other employees who deal with customers to understand your audience's common problems.
- Hobbies/Interests: Ask customers and others who are aligned with your target audience what their hobbies and interests are. For example, if you are a fashion brand, it is helpful to find out if large sections of your target audience are interested in fitness and health to inform future content and partnership opportunities.
- Priorities: Talk to customers and target audience members to discover what is most important to them regarding your business. Suppose you are a B2B software business. In that case, knowing what your customers value more than a competitive price is important.
You can create buyer personas by combining all these details.
2. Identify Your Goals, And Decide On The Digital Marketing Tools You Need.
Your business's fundamental goals should be the focus of your marketing goals. If your goal is to increase your online revenue by 20%, then your marketing team might aim to generate 50% more leads through the website than last year. This will help you achieve your overall goal. With the right digital tools, you can measure the success of your digital marketing strategy no matter what your overall goal.
3. Assess Your Digital Assets And Channels
It's important to look at the bigger picture when evaluating your digital marketing assets and channels to decide what to include in your strategy. This will help to avoid feeling overwhelmed or confused.
Take stock of what you own and create a spreadsheet to categorize each asset or vehicle. This will give you a clear picture of your owned, earned, and paid media.
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Earned, Owned, Paid Media Framework
This can be done effectively using the owned, earned, and paid media framework. It allows you to classify the digital assets and channels you already use and determine which ones best suit your strategy.
- Owned Media
There are digital assets that your company or brand owns, whether they are your website, social media profiles, or blog content. Your business is in complete control of the channels it owns. You can also add off-site content you don't have on your site, e.g. A Medium blog.
- Earned Media
Earned media is the exposure you get through word-of-mouth marketing. It could be content that you have shared on other websites (e.g. Guest posts, PR work, or customer service you've provided. Earned media refers to the recognition you get for your efforts.
Earn media by getting positive reviews, press mentions, and people sharing your content through their networks (e.g. social media channels).
- Paid Media
Paid media is any channel or vehicle you use to attract the attention of your buyer personas. This includes paid social media posts, native ads, and Google AdWords. Sponsored posts on other websites or any other medium by which you can get more visibility in return for a fee. Let's take a look at an example to help you get a better understanding of the framework.
Let's say you have a piece of content you own on your website's landing page. It was created to generate leads. You want to use other parts of the framework, not just owned, earned, or paid media.
You can increase the leads generated by your content by making it shareable. This will allow your audience to spread it via their social media accounts. This will result in increased traffic to your landing pages. This is earned media. You might consider posting your content on Facebook and paying to have it seen by more people in your target market.
This is how the framework's components can work together, although it is not essential for success. If your earned and owned media are both already successful, then you may not need to invest money in paid. Consider the best way to achieve your goals and integrate the best channels into your digital marketing strategy. Once you have a list of what is being used, it's time to start thinking about what you should keep and cut.
4. Plan And Audit Your Media Campaigns
Owned media is at the core of digital marketing. It almost always takes the form of content. This is because almost every message your brand broadcasts can easily be classified as content. It could include product descriptions, blog posts, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, or social media posts.
Content can convert website visitors into customers and leads while improving your brand's online visibility. This content can increase your organic and search traffic if it is SEO optimized. Regardless of your digital marketing goal, you want to include owned content. Start by deciding what content will most likely help you achieve your goals.
Your goal to generate 50% more leads through the website this year than last year is unlikely to include your About Us page unless it has been a lead-generation tool in the past. This is a quick guide to help you determine what content you need to achieve your digital marketing strategy goals.
Check Your Content
You can make a list of all your owned content and rank them according to how they have performed about your current goals. If you want to generate leads, rank your content based on which pieces (ebook, blog, site page) generated the most leads in the past year. This is how you can determine what is working and what isn't so your content planning efforts are successful.
Identify Any Gaps In Your Content
Based on your buyer personas, identify any gaps in your content. If you are a math tutoring business and have found that one of the major challenges for your customers is studying effectively, then create some. If you look at your content audit, you might find that ebooks hosted on certain landing pages convert better than webinars. You might add an ebook on "how to make studying easier" to your content creation plans in the case of the math tutoring company.
Create A Content Creation Plan
Based on your findings and the gaps that you have identified, create a content creation strategy outlining the content you need to reach your goals.
These should be included:
- A title
- Format
- A goal
- Promotional channels
- Why are you creating content?
- The content's priority level.
You can create a simple spreadsheet. It should include information about your budget if you plan to outsource content creation or an estimate of the time it will take.
5. Plan And Audit Your Earned Media Campaigns
You can compare your earned media with your goals to better understand where you should focus your efforts. If that is your goal, look at where your traffic and leads come from and rank each earned media source in order of effectiveness. This information can be accessed using tools like the Sources reports in Traffic Analytics tool.
One example of this is a piece you wrote for the industry press. This article may have driven more qualified traffic to your site, which could increase conversions. You might also find that LinkedIn is the most popular place for people to share content. This increases traffic.
Based on historical data, the idea is to create a picture of which earned media will help you achieve your goals. If you find something that interests you, don't be afraid to try it.
6. Plan And Audit Your Paid Media Campaigns
The process is similar: You must evaluate your paid media across all platforms (e.g. Google AdWords and Facebook, Twitter, and others. To determine which is most likely to help meet your goals,
You might consider changing your AdWords strategy if you have not seen the results you hoped for. You should be able to identify which paid media platforms you wish to keep using and which you would like to discontinue.
7. Your Digital Marketing Campaign Can Be Brought Together
Now that you have done all the research and planning, you can see the key elements of your digital marketing strategy. Here's a summary of what you should have done so far.
- A clear profile of your buyer personas.
- A few goals are digitally related.
- A list of all your owned, earned, and paid media.
- An audit of all your owned, earned, and paid media.
- A wish list or plan for creating content owned by you.
The following list contains basic strategies used by marketing teams in various industries to help you understand digital strategies.
Digital Marketing Strategies
1. Create a Blog
Blogs are one of the best ways to market your business online. Although some people think blogging is a waste of time, it is still an important tool for businesses looking to attract customers that are interested in their products or services.
Why? Because blog posts that are well-written and well-researched often address a customer's urgent needs. For example, selling marketing software. Our users are usually marketing professionals who create campaigns, plans, and editorial calendars on behalf of their employers. These are the topics that our blog addresses.
A blog to solve customer problems. Knowing your audience and understanding their needs is important for you to do this effectively. This will allow you to create highly targeted content that is truly helpful for your readers.
2. Advertise On Certain Platforms (E.G. Google Ads And Facebook Ads, Or Instagram Ads
Organic blogging is just one part of the story. It would help if you also implemented other non-organic strategies, such as paid advertisements. This will increase brand awareness and reach new audiences that can't be reached organically.
This is a great strategy if you are still growing your blog but not getting enough traffic. You should add a few forms of advertising to your digital strategy.
- Advertising on Social Media
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
- Google Ads
- Online advertising
Nearly all platforms offer advertising options. You can either advertise through a display network, such as Google, or the platform's built-in ads system (such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn's self-service advertising portal).
Advertising isn't dependent on SEO strategies or content. Simply write some copy and choose the imagery to launch your advertising campaigns. You will need to develop an advertising plan. This plan should outline who your campaign targets, the channels they'll use, and the budget.
3. Offer Free Resources
You can't stop digital marketing efforts once people visit your site or click on your ads. In return for their email, you must also offer additional value. The content is not paid for, but users must "pay" by providing their contact information. This is lead generation. It's vital if you want to turn potential customers into leads.
A landing page could offer one educational resource, such as an ebook, guide, template, or kit. Consider what your customers require to succeed at their jobs. You can help them achieve this by creating a resource.
Follow landing page best practices to ensure that the visitor downloads the resource free of charge. Avoid unnecessary information and navigation menus. The only way they can access the educational content is to download it.
4. Search Engines Optimize Your Digital Content
SEO is one of the most important investments in your digital strategy. Search engine optimization will allow you to rank for keywords related to your products and increase traffic to your blog content and educational offers.
SEO can be your best option to get your product pages found by people searching for your products or services. It's essential to invest in an SEO Strategy on each page. This will ensure that users engage with your content and convert them.
5. Online Giveaways And Contests
Giveaways and contests can help you increase brand awareness and improve your digital strategy. You can get thousands of leads and followers if you offer a free product in exchange.
This is especially useful if your product is a consumer product or you offer a service that includes physical deliverables. A beauty brand may choose to give away products, while a photographer might give away a portrait session for free. This strategy might not be beneficial for manufacturers or B2B companies. However, you can spin it to your advantage by including one free product for the first customer to sign up for your mailing list. This is just one example.
6. Organize a Webinar
Webinars, especially for B2B companies, are a better choice if a contest doesn't seem right for you. These webinars are essential for educating the public and giving potential leads an opportunity to learn more about your products. They can also ask questions and receive answers in real time.
Selling a complex product? Consider creating a page dedicated to webinars on your website. This page will list past and upcoming webinars. Customers will have access to educational content that is beneficial to them. Prospects will also be able to learn more about your products through interactive formats than a blog post or case study.
7. Produce a Podcast
Audio marketing is on the rise. All you need to do is see how Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse have competed to gain market share. Although platforms like Clubhouse may differ from podcasting, the concept is the same: you can educate and engage your audience while they move. They only need a device that can play audio.
Podcasts can be an integral part of your digital strategy. They allow you to reach people across platforms other than search engines or social media marketing. It's also a more natural and spontaneous medium. However, you need to plan each episode well and ensure you deliver content relevant to your audience.
8. Make An Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is one of the most potent digital strategies you can use today. You have many opportunities to nurture customers who are interested in your products. You wouldn't sign up for a newsletter from a brand you don't like, and businesses are not supposed to email customers who haven't signed up to their mailing list. It won't unless it is willing to reduce email deliverability.
Your blog, contests, and webinars are all ways to gain subscribers. You have permission to email marketing campaigns to anyone who gives you their email address. It's time to combine all this into a cohesive marketing strategy. Based on the research you have done up until now, your strategy document should outline the actions you will take to reach your goals. Let's talk about how our digital strategy template could help.
Digital Marketing Strategy Template
A spreadsheet is a great way to map your digital marketing strategy. However, it can quickly become overwhelming and messy. A reliable digital marketing strategy document is essential to plan your long-term strategy. This usually takes six to twelve months. Where do you start? Use our digital marketing plan template as a guide.
This template will help you to write your business summary and your initiatives. It will also help you to build your market and competitor information. And it will flesh out your marketing strategy, including your budget, specific channels, and metrics.
This digital strategy template will help you create your annual digital marketing strategy. These yearly plans will allow you to overlay when your team and you execute each step. Take this example:
- You'll begin a blog in January that will be updated weekly for the year.
- You'll be launching a new ebook in March with paid promotion.
- You'll be preparing for July's biggest business month. What do you hope to learn to influence the content you create to support it?
- September will focus on earned media, such as PR, to drive additional traffic in the run-up.
This will allow you to create an organized timeline for your activity. It will also help you communicate with colleagues. Here are some examples and strategies of digital marketing campaigns to inspire you.
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Conclusion
Your business will have a strategy document that is unique to it. This makes creating a Digital Marketing strategy template that fits all almost impossible. Your strategy document should outline your steps to reach your goal. As long as the document communicates this, you have mastered the basics of digital marketers' strategy creation. Check out our free content marketing templates if you want to create a strategy to help your business grow.
