Digital Strategy & Positioning
Properly structuring a digital marketing strategy can feel overwhelming as there are so many different directions you can go in.
That’s why we’ve created these helpful references that will educate you on digital strategy and allow you to leverage your knowledge of your business with our insights to come up with a plan of your own.
Digital marketing is an essential advertising tool and a must-have for modern business owners and brand managers.
Digital marketing is an essential advertising tool and a must-have for modern business owners and brand managers. Your competitors are surely developing a thorough, cross-platform digital marketing strategy, so why aren’t you?
First, you need to have a basic understanding of digital strategy and how it can be best leveraged to benefit your organization.
Structuring a Digital Marketing Plan
The key to any effective digital marketing plan is first to outline the marketing activities that will be relevant to your growth. Here are some basic principles to understand as you proceed:
Digital marketing is about increasing your online exposure
Digital marketing is the techniques associated with growing your presence on the internet..
This might mean you want to increase your followers and engagements on Instagram, or you want your product or service to appear on the first page of Google.
There are different strategic methods to accomplish each digital task.
Your plan will be based on variant factors
Developing a digital strategy doesn’t mean you just list an overall campaign goal that you hope to accomplish – that’s easy.
A real digital marketing strategy will outline your current digital marketing effectiveness along with new ideas in the pipeline and tools you’ll use to turn them into reality.
You must understand your target market
Without a primary audience in mind, your digital marketing strategy isn’t set up to be successful. You need to hone in on some specific niche markets who actively engage with your content already.
It’s vital to know who your audience is so you can provide them with messaging that they actually want to see. We have tools at our disposal that can analyze your top audiences as well as identify new opportunities to target.
The right approach to audience engagement
Make sure your online marketing strategy includes a section for interacting and engaging your audience. Who will be doing this engagement? How should we be responding to certain inquiries? What can’t we say?
These are just a few questions to consider for your own digital strategy. It’s key to show users that your page is active, and if they have questions or concerns they’ll be appropriately addressed in a timely manner.
Converting leads into sales
As a business owner, you should always be thinking about how you can convert the digital leads you’ve been generating into actual sales.
You need to ensure all your digital assets offer a user-friendly experience and have incentives to bring in new customers and keep your old ones coming back for more.
Digital Strategy – Step By Step
Now that we know about what goes into a digital marketing strategy, let’s break down these concepts into measurable steps:
Step 1: Define your customer
The first step to take is identifying your target customer. Some important demographics to consider are age, gender, occupation, interests and customer type.
As described above, you may have existing customer descriptions, whether they are data-driven or opinion based. You may think you have a strong customer persona, but that might be completely off base.
Through analytical tools and research, we’ll hone on who the audience that truly engages with your content is, and who would be best to target with new ads.
Step 2: Identifying targets
Once you have your customer targets defined, it’s time to think about who you want to hit with new advertising messages, what the messages will actually be, and what associated goals you have in mind.
Identify which markets and goals are easiest and hardest to go after, and also which might offer the most return on time and investment.
Avoid setting the bar too high, but also don’t set it too low. Whether the goal is follower growth or to make sales, our strategists will assist you in developing a digital strategy for your needs.
Step 3: Evaluating marketing channels
Don’t feel the pressure to be on every digital marketing channel. Research your options and narrow them down to a few that might be the most effective in accomplishing your goals.
Consider where your audience might be the most active, and what assets you already have established that are followed. If you’re focusing on too many channels you’ll end of spreading yourself too thin and be less effective overall.
Step 4: Choosing the right tools
Finding the right tools to plan and execute your digital marketing strategy can be frustrating as there are so many options in the market.
Our digital strategy consultants stay abreast on the latest trending platforms, tools and features to optimize your campaigns and allow you to make informed marketing decisions.
Step 5: Hiring the right help
As a business owner, your resources might already be limited, and you don’t have anyone assigned specifically to do your digital marketing.
Consider investing in talent, whether it be a full-time, part-time, intern, contractual employee, consultant, or agency to assist you. Our unique consulting approach allows us to help you with the creative strategy along with the execution from start to finish and beyond.
Step 6: Optimizing your initial strategy
Now it’s time to optimize as your initial strategy may have flaws that became apparent only after testing. Ensure all aspects of your current and refreshed plans make sense before simply throwing more money at something that isn’t working and expecting different results.
Keep in mind how the tools might be helping or hurting your campaigns, and what demographics are actually converting from your content.
Step 7: Converting leads to sales
Leads are great, but if they don’t ultimately turn into converted sales then they’re not doing much for you. It’s important to always be coming up with new strategies to target old and new leads.
For example, if you’re struggling with e-commerce product sales and you find that people are adding products to their cart but not purchasing, there has to be a problem. Is the site not working right? Is it not user-friendly or easy to navigate?
You can dive deep into the data to find out what the problem is, and come up with a strategy to retarget these users and turn them into customers.
Think outside the box and come up with unique ways to leverage your assets and push potential customers to buy.
Step 8: Future-proofing your marketing strategy
You should always be looking into future-proofing your media strategy. What does that mean? What works today might not work in a year, a month or even two week’s time.
Refine your strategies for what’s ahead by removing anything that has become redundant or outdated, while incorporating new ideas and trends.
Final Words
A strong digital marketing strategy is the foundation of any good business. Review the steps and see how you can apply them to your own business.
If you’re overwhelmed with your digital strategy and want to speak with a Glenmont consultant for guidance and coaching through the process, contact us today.