Digital marketing strategy is the key to increase the online presence of a business or entity. In 2018, the best way to acquire new audience and subscribers is through building credibility in the internet.
So many ways exist to better one’s presence and credibility that it is nearly impossible to do them all. In this article, we will cover getting online recognition for a business through digital marketing strategy, which is defined as marketing services, e-commerce, or any function the business performs through using digital means, mainly on the internet. This marketing is visible on mobile phones, desktop, and other computers that are connected to internet.
Creating a goal
Marketing without a goal is like a ship that does not know where it is sailing; it can end up anywhere from the north pole to the south pole. That is why a goal is needed. It gives direction to the ship, i.e. the work being done by marketing team of company, and goals to know what is being expected of them. Having a great goal for digital marketing and accomplishing it is a great way for a business to gain more customers. The goal must be specific and use metrics so it can be easily measured and evaluated. “Grow the audience” is very broad whereas “Increase the organic traffic from Google by 10% in two months” is more specific and easy to test/prove. This article written by Chris Soames explains how to set good goals for digital marketing campaigns.
During the execution of goals/plan, adjustments often have to be made. Many people believe that is wrong and the team must stick to the plan, but adjusting the plan if there are parts of it that can be improved is acceptable and likely has positive results.
Determining intended audience
Tightly related to the point above, the marketing team needs to have an intended audience in mind for the online marketing to perform successfully. Research helps in determining where your audience spends their time in, which in turn reveals where the marketing strategy needs to be centered. Forbes has a great article on determining the intended audience for marketing purposes. There are many characteristics that need to be looked and prioritized. The key ones are:
· Age
· Location
· Sex
· Income
· Job
The audience should be carefully determined based on characteristics such as the ones listed above and the digital marketing strategy should be altered to fit this audience.
Consider paid online advertising services
AdWords is the best and most used paid online advertising service. It is recommended to use it moderately, not extensively, because it costs significantly. It can empty a budget very fast if not set properly. There are many settings and options that allow you to set the keywords, audience, and goals for the campaign to better the results. It is an easy way for small businesses to start getting traffic while they are still writing SEO content and performing SEO optimization because these usually take month before organic traffic starts to appear. Afterwards, the paid marketing services can be reduced, or even stopped altogether when organic traffic takes over.
Social media marketing
Nearly everyone on the developed world in 2018 has social media presence, be that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. The users of social media provide much information about themselves, including the characteristics of the intended audience such as the ones previously (age, location, sex, income, job). Thus, one can easily find ways to target their audience through implementing social media marketing techniques. The users will like, comment, and share the things they like on the social media, and that draws even more similar customers to the business.
Evaluate and redesign digital marketing strategy
After several months have passed, the marketing team can evaluate the online presence of the business to determine how the online marketing strategy has performed. Goals are tested using the metrics provided in the goal such as organic traffic amount. This helps determining which part of the marketing has performed poorly and which part is exceling. Changes then are made and the marketing strategy is redesigned to fix the weak links of the chain. Learning from one’s mistakes is one of the greatest steps in growth, but learning from other’s mistakes is even better. There are thousands of other businesses who have implemented similar digital marketing strategies and have written blog posts and articles about them. Reviewing them helps evaluating current strategy without having to wait months for results. Google Analytics is a great tool to analyze how effective marketing is.
Creating a digital marketing strategy that gives great results is a hard thing to do. By setting specific goals, making a plan, and having a team that works towards achieving the expectations, businesses will build and grow their online presence to gain customers.
