Why and how to create a digital marketing strategy?
With the advent of the Internet in our modern world, it has become essential for a company to incorporate a Digital marketing strategy.
Companies that take the turning point of the digital transformation are encouraged to reconsider their internet strategy formally and substantially. They’re also fortifying to change their marketing communication and their choice of tools.
However, having a website and multiple accounts on social networks is not enough, as it can’t define a complete digital strategy for concrete results. You can lead a well-crafted strategy by harnessing the full potential of your brand identity and highlighting the key elements.
Beyond your presence on the web, make the most of the digital trend to make your Digital marketing strategy effective. It allows you to attract, engage, and convince your future customers. This article tells you what actions are put in place to build your digital strategy and radiate your brand on the web.
What is a digital marketing strategy?
Digital marketing is also known as e-marketing or online marketing. It plays a vital role in promoting a product or service online. It relies on various media like a computer, tablet, mobile, etc., to entice the targeted audience, using tools, methods, and strategies.
Digital marketing distinguishes:
Outbound marketing aims to achieve one or more targets through outgoing marketing campaigns: online advertisements, banners, emailing, buying contact databases, etc.
Inbound Marketing naturally attracts your target through inbound marketing campaigns. For example, content marketing, SEO and SEA, video content, public relations, marketing influence, etc.
Digital Marketing Strategy VS Digital Marketing Campaign
Digital strategy: definition and objectives
The digital approach is nothing more than a series of actions. It aims to achieve one or more goals defined in an action plan, such as:
- Enhance the traffic on your website compared to the previous year.
- Increase the number of conversions on your website and generate quality leads for your business.
- Improve your online visibility and brand awareness.
To build a successful digital strategy, you must improve your online marketing. But that’s not all. A complete digital plan also includes a digital communication strategy. This happens, for example, by:
- The definition of an editorial line.
- A social media strategy with rigorous community management.
- Simple and clear messages on your website.
Implementing marketing automation actions helps your salesman generate and qualify leads. Additionally, it also helps to conclude deals faster.
The Digital Marketing Campaign
A digital marketing campaign corresponds to the constituent elements and actions that make up this strategy. These will allow you to reach the defined objective. For example, you can launch a campaign by sharing some of your most interesting or popular content on social media. Such as Twitter or LinkedIn, to generate more leads (which can be a crucial part of your strategy).
The goals of a digital marketing campaign
By implementing successful digital marketing campaigns, you will be able to:
- Increase the visibility of your brand on the internet.
- Generate traffic on your website.
- Improve the user experience.
- Decrease your bounce rate.
- Acquire leads.
- Improve the customer relationship.
- Develop your content marketing to attract and interest your targets.
- Convert your visitors.
The 8 Steps of a successful digital marketing strategy
Step 1: Analyze your situation in the market
This step comes before implementing a digital strategy before any decision-making. Knowing the current state of the market allows you to understand your target. It also allows you to understand your expectations better while evaluating the competition.
You can analyze the following:
- Competitors and their practices.
- Consumer behavior.
- Market trends.
- The geographical areas where your brand is present.
Evaluating the competitive environment lets you know how to position yourself against competitors. Moreover, it refines the target of your audience. It’ll see your digital project from a marketing and communication point of view.
SWOT Analysis: Making the Right Strategic Choices
Conducting a SWOT analysis to help you clearly define your strategic options is vital. This method depends on four pillars. It will allow you to identify your strengths (S) and weaknesses (W). It also helps detect market opportunities (O) and external threats (T).
Examples of questions you might ask yourself to complete this analysis:
- How does your company position itself in terms of sales?
- What is its position with the competition (considering its market shares, differentiating advantages, positioning, etc.)?
- How do you define the image you are returning or want to return to your target?
- Does your offer meet a public need? Does it meet its expectations?
- The more comprehensive your analysis, the more accurate your market overview. It’ll also make it easier for you to develop a relevant and effective digital marketing strategy.
Step 2: Set your goals
To prepare your strategy, gather the teams and company leaders to set a course in unison; it’s about discussing goals over a while.
You can predict various objectives depending on the needs you formulate at the analysis stage. Among which:
- Visibility: development of your reputation by branding and your online presence.
- Traffic: traffic generation.
- Lead: generation, conversion.
- Customer Experience: Improving the experience for consumers.
Also, define your expectations for the strategy you are going to develop. Is it a single product or a product catalog? A range of the company or the entirety of its offer?
Step 3: Define key performance indicators
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) will help you measure performance effectively. This is, for example:
- SEO ranking,
- The traffic rate generated on your website,
- The conversion rate,
- Time spent on your site,
- ROI (return on investment).
Step 4: Set your budget
As for the budget, this will determine the means you will use to reach your objectives. There is a wide variety of possibilities on the web, including advantages and disadvantages and their costs. It’s up to you to evaluate which financial investment will best meet your needs.
Step 5: Identify your buyer personas
“Buyer personas” help you to identify your target audience. It involves identifying the research-based profiles of your ideal clients to orientate their communication according to them. Ultimately, it helps to understand their purchase decision by knowing their expectations. As well as it also helps to comprehend their habits, practices, and characteristics.
Which strategy and which support (s) to use to identify them? Social analytics tools are a great starting point instead of a complex study of your customers and their profiles. Thus, you can study the characteristics of your audience on Twitter analytics, Instagram analytics, or Facebook Insights.
Other actions are conceivable, such as writing questionnaires to send to customers from software such as SurveyMonkey.
Step 6: Reflection on the Company on your website
Your website is the showcase of your brand. So its design must be attractive because it is the first point of contact with your future customers, partners, suppliers, and employees.
Ponder over the domain name, as it is a gateway into your brand’s world.
Finally, depending on your objectives, it is essential to think about the format of your online presence: website, merchant site, marketplace, blog, etc.
Step 7: Design your action plan
The action plan must align with the customer’s journey according to its progression in the conversion funnel. It questions defining which levers to activate for each phase (acquisition> conversion> retention).
Acquisition phase
The questions to ask yourself:
Is my target on Google? I bet on SEO / SEA if it is profitable in my business model;
Are my patrons on social networks? I rely on the development of content on these platforms;
Does my target have questions and needs information? I bet on inbound marketing actions.
Conversion phase
The questions to ask yourself:
Do I want to create a purchase? I bet on the UX (user experience), affiliation, comparator, marketplace, etc.
Do I want to win leads? I bet on a form to fill out following the gains of the inbound or a white paper to broadcast in advertising on social networks, for example.
Retention phase
I want to retain my audience:
By newsletters? I bet on email;
By a service rendered? I bet on application development;
By the feeling of belonging to the brand? I depend on social networks.
Which media?
Besides, formulate an action plan by taking into account three bases. Assess those best suited to your strategy built so far:
- Paid media: Paid marketing levers include Google Adwords advertising, paid influencers, click pay, social media ads like Facebook ads, affiliation, etc.
- Owned media: It means your property on the web, such as your website, blog, content offering, social media accounts, etc.
- Earned media refers to publicity and allows you to reach your target organically at no cost. For instance, Social networks mention your content or offer on external sites.
Your strategy should articulate these different media according to your needs and budget.
Step 8: choose digital marketing tactics
Choose what actions to put in place to achieve your goals. Your action plan should fulfill the specific needs of your business. Google Adwords, inbound marketing, Email automation, and social media advertising are valuable and prestigious digital marketing tactics.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO aims to optimize the pages of your website to be read by users and seen by Google. The search engine will choose to position your web on the first page of the results or not. The ultimate goal is to increase the traffic on your website.
Which criteria to take into account?
The SEO strategy must increasingly integrate the parameter of mobility to be successful. Especially since Google holds more than 90% of the market share, it considers this parameter in its ranking. The responsive design (optimized display on mobile and tablets) is imperative. However, the loading time of home and landing pages is crucial to boost your online traffic. Everything will depend on the behaviors and habits of your target group.
Regarding the content of your pages, select the precise semantics with priority keywords, optimized Meta tags, play with links, etc.
Search Engine Advertising, or SEA
The SEA, or paid search, is a marketing channel based on targeted advertising in search engines. Each ad is a keyword (use the Google Keyword Planner and Google Suggest tools to choose your keywords based on search volume, competition, and minimum and maximum bids). Also, consider a previously defined target and goal of expected clicks and leads.
The goal? Give online visibility quickly to your brand.
What is the difficulty of the SEA? This leverage requires regular and accurate monitoring using KPIs defined upstream to ensure the success of SEA campaigns and return on investment. A SEA campaign that is not tracked (using Google Analytics, for example) or adjusted is useless.
Have you launched paid search campaigns and want more visibility to analyze their results? Marketing managers or digital marketing agencies will appreciate Seiso. It connects with your Google Ads account. Three clicks are enough to receive a complete analysis of your campaigns instantly and for free! Another significant positive point: Seiso does not keep your data; no security or privacy issues to be feared.
Adopt a social presence strategy
Networks and social media offer many options to promote your content and brand image. It can boost your e-reputation and provide significant benefits for your company. They will help you to fulfill various objectives:
- To develop your reputation,
- To propose after-sales service,
- To retain your customers or to make you stand out from the competition.
The effectiveness of social networks is undeniable. Thanks to their interactive and social dimension, they are the vectors of messages.
Building on these platforms is now essential to a digital marketing strategy. They’re crucial to increase the number of users. In addition to strengthening your presence on the web, they also help to find new customers. Finally, they allow you to know your prospects and their attitudes better.
Managing your presence and visibility on multiple channels can be time-consuming. To simplify your task, social networking tools such as Hootsuite, Agorapulse, or Buffer offer a whole range of features, such as:
- The day before.
- Interaction.
- The management of publications.
- Measures, reporting, etc.
Develop a Content Strategy
Quality content can bring long-term results. Set up a suitable editorial strategy to provide relevant and quality content to your targeted audience.
The inbound marketing technique will allow you to entice prospects to your website. It is beneficial for both the reputation and the generation of qualified leads.
The principle of inbound marketing is to bring future customers to oneself. Indeed, the key idea is to fascinate your target to generate qualified leads rather than reach an audience too broad. 69% of marketers using Inbound Marketing believe it’s an effective strategy.
For that, put the consumer at the center of your strategy. In your editorial planning, define the subjects to treat, when to publish, and which channel. Adapt the quality and form of the message, and make it attractive by promoting interaction. Encourage your audience to respond to your posts and leave comments.
Depending on your goals, you can collect contacts via forms to complete, for example, hosted on a landing page. It will entice your visitor to go to the page in question through call-to-action devices.
Latest tips: measuring your performance
Evaluate the impact or result…!
To verify that your actions will bear fruit, follow the customer journey. Artificial intelligence can be an excellent choice to monitor the behavior of visitors to your site. It is also an ace way to measure in real-time the ROI of your campaigns.
You will analyze the placid data using your previously defined KPIs. Organizations use KPIs to measure and analyze the actions of users and prospects. For example, by reviewing the most viewed pages, you’ll discover the content that most interests your prospects. You have monitoring tools like Google Analytics (for the website) or Hootsuite (for social networks).
By carefully following all your indicators, you will be better able to test and check the impact of an action, etc., as data from the most powerful tools can be used immediately or quickly. It will facilitate and fluidize your optimization. The ultimate goal is continuously improving the customer experience, always following the same thread: attract, interest, and convince.
Choose the best Digital Marketing Strategy
First and foremost, performing an audit and defining your needs are the essential steps to take before you get started. The most relevant approach remains the one that will be in line with your specific needs. Moreover, it should also be consistent with your business strategy. What digital marketing strategy have you put in place? Share your success stories!
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