Creating an effective digital marketing strategy is an essential step for the success of your business. It gives you a clear picture of your goals and the right approach to accomplish them.
If you are thinking about getting started with digital marketing, here is a short guide on how to do it. You may find out it is a time-consuming task, but nonetheless extremely rewarding when done right.
Let’s get started.
Step 1: Get to know your target persona
The target persona is a profile of your audience that goes beyond generic characteristics, into specific details. And the more specific the better.
Think about it as a real life person who really, really needs your product or service. What are their main pain points? What does a normal day look like for them? What are they excited about and what are they most fearful about? How old are they? Are they single, married, young, old, employed or not…?
Having a clear picture of your target persona will help you improve your strategies for engaging your target audience.
There are a few free online tools that can help you create your target persona, such as MakeMyPersona and Persona Creator.
Step 2: Analyse your performance
You can’t move on to setting your goals before having a clear picture of your past performance. Make sure you analyse your past performance as thoroughly as you can. The goal here is to figure out what worked for your business and what didn’t.
You can also take a look at what your competitors are doing in terms of strategies and approach. This might give you a couple of great ideas for your own strategy.
Once you know exactly what to take forward and what to change, you can move on to setting your goals.
Tip: If you need help working out what key performance indicators to look at and understand how you can improve on your performance, Shuriken Digital can assist you in coming up with a strategy for all your digital marketing campaigns.
Step 3: Set your goals
Goals are the foundation of your strategy.
You need to make sure your goals are specific, achievable, realistic and most importantly, measurable. If you can’t measure your goals, you can’t keep track of your progress, which makes it hard to analyse your performance.
You can find out more about how to set SMART goals for your business here.
Step 4: Find the right tools
Being able to easily keep track of your performance will make your life easier. Here’s where tools can be extremely helpful.
You need to make sure the platforms you choose have the same measurements as your KPIs. Otherwise, instead of useful performance reports, you will end up with overwhelming charts and countless numbers that don’t mean anything to you.
Finding the right tools is important. The principle to guide you here is the fewer, the better. For example, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and the reporting tools from the social media accounts you are currently using should be enough to get you started.
Step 5: Identify the right channels
The right channels of communication vary from business to business and are the ones that support and help you accomplish your business goals. It’s best to have fewer but effective channels that will make your strategy applicable. You can choose between social media channels (it is recommended to start with up to three social platforms at first), email marketing, paid advertising or media buy.
These questions will help you narrow down the right channels for your digital marketing strategy:
- What should each channel help accomplish?
- What role will each channel play in moving prospects through the buying cycle?
- Which channels are responsible for bringing leads/customers?
- Which channels will move leads down the funnel?
- Which approaches would be engaged?
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Step 6: Start a blog
Blogging can be a useful tool in helping users and clients reach you faster and easier. It can also be a useful opportunity for your business to establish and increase your social media presence.
Make sure you write about topics that are relevant for your users, you will easily be found through search engines.
Tip: Keep your blog up to date. Consistent and relevant content will boost traffic on your website. Here is an easy way to ensure you post fresh content on your website on a regular basis.
Step 7: Optimise your pages
The truth is, no matter how well your business is doing, there’s always room for improvement. As long as you have a desire for your business to be the best, you will always be on the lookout for ways to improve your online presence.
One avenue you can always optimise are your website pages – and your landing pages specifically. Make sure you consistently optimise landing pages, as this practice will have a positive impact on your SEO ranking and conversion rate.
Tip: A/B testing of landing pages is always a great idea if you are looking for optimisation solutions.
Bonus Tip: SEO optimisation should always consider your business goals. They are the fundamentals of your digital strategy.
Step 8: Identify your points of difference
Ask yourself, what makes you different from your competitors? After you’ve identified your differentiators, own them and find ways to display them online. They will help you build a stable brand for your business.
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Make sure your clients know exactly what sets you apart from your competitors because this is probably the thing that drew them to your business in the first place.
Keep in mind that your digital media strategy should be a framework for your goals. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new tools, adjust your approach and adapt your ideas.
There are a lot of similarities between creating a strategy for your marketing approach and for your business plan. As long as you have the right experts to guide you and the suitable tools to facilitate your goals, you’re on the right track.
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The digital marketing specialists at Shuriken Digital are ready to assist you with your marketing and business strategies. Get in touch today:
