A How to guide of a well-thought-out digital marketing strategy to help you achieve your goals. Includes analysis, social media, SEO, positioning and metrics.
Create your digital marketing strategy in just 5 steps:
1. Situational analysis
One of the first things to do when developing a digital marketing plan is to conduct an internal and external analysis (SWOT analysis) of the business. A useful framework is a SWOT analysis, which allows you to view the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your business and the overall market. This in turn will help to determine the best area to focus your marketing efforts.
It is important to be familiar with the ecosystems in which we operate, what the customers’ needs are and where they are being address. This analysis is both qualitative and quantitative because it takes into account factors such as digital habits, mediators, and influencers and more.
Implementing benchmarking techniques is a very common practice for companies to identify best practices and success stories and extract examples for your digital marketing plan
Once you have a place in the market and keep your strengths in mind, set some goals to get a clear idea of where you should act. Everything you plan must work towards achieving those goals
2. Digital Marketing Goals
Your digital marketing goals should use SMART objectives, but what are SMART objectives?
SMART objectives should be:
Specific – Objective should be clear and precise
Measurable – Include a measure that allows a business to track the progress and determine when a goal has been achieved, in terms of quantity or quality
Attainable – Is the objective realistically achievable. Objectives should be challenging but possible. Data from previous campaigns/objectives can be used to inform future goal objectives.
Relevant – Is the objective relevant to what the business needs/wants to achieve
Time-bound – A specific date should be agreed upon by which the outcome must be achieved. This also contributes towards making the objectives measurable.
3. Marketing Strategy should include:
Audience segmentation
Audience segmentation is a strategic marketing exercise that is used to develop subgroups within your client profiles based on different characteristics such as:
Demographic – location, gender, age, ethnicity, education, income, etc.
Behaviours – online shopping habits, social media sites, devices they use, etc.
Psychographic – beliefs, values, and attitudes
Geographic – Where your target market is
Positioning
A positioning statement describes how a certain item, service or brand meets a specific consumer need in a way that differentiates it from competitors. Positioning is the process of finding a suitable market niche for a product with the aim of becoming well established in that area.
Content strategy
Content strategy is important to attract, engage and retain customers. This can be done by creating relevant blogs, videos, podcasts, and other media. A successful content strategy will attract your target audience at every stage of the funnel and keep them engaged even after a purchase.
When creating a content strategy, key things to consider include keyword research a content calendar and social media posting.
Keyword research can tell you what terms people are actively searching for, the competitiveness of those keywords, and help guide your content marketing plan to increase organic search visibility, rankings, and traffic.
A content calendar is key for ensuring your strategy makes sense. Your content should be planned and made with intent in order to provide value and optimise your resources. If your social media posts and other content are made in advance, it can be automated to publish at the optimal times over different platforms to gain the best engagement and conversion rates possible.
Read about social media strategy here
4. Digital Strategies and Tactics
What strategies and tactics are you going to use in order to achieve your goals? Tactics include:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
- Influencer Marketing
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Click here for guide to popular digital marketing tools to help implement and achieve your goals
5. Measuring Results & KPIs
The final step after planning and implementing a market strategy is to measure the results. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are quantifiable measures used to evaluate marketing campaign performance. Data analytics help to measure the success of a campaign and to inform of what could have been better. All of this information is useful and can help correct what didn’t work in future campaigns. There are plenty of tools to help with analysis and data visualisation. Data Studio is a great tool for data visualisation and report building
Implement all of the steps into your content strategy and you will be well on your way to achieving your goals
