Marketing strategy is the long-term approach including an action plan of how your business will promote and sell its products and services. Developing your digital marketing strategy may feel like a huge task but it really is not. In fact, it is pretty simple. Start with why you want to do it, what you want to achieve, how you’re going to achieve it and what you expect the results to look like. Establish achievement dates and how you’ll measure your success.
Five steps to create your digital marketing strategy
Step one: establish a goal
Establish measurable objectives within a time limit that you really understand and your whole business buys into:
- Brand awareness: More people know about your brand or your products and service.
- Lead generation: Reach out to audience who have not brought from you before.
- Expand sales from existing customers: Encourage customers who’ve already bought from your business to buy more frequently or buy an additional product?
For example, your digital marketing goal could be for a percentage of current customers to buy an additional product within the next 6 months. To increase your social media following by a certain amount within an agreed time. Generate a number of leads from your website each month in a year. Whatever it is, it needs to stretch your business and be achievable.
Step two: Know your target audience
It is crucial that you know all about your target audience. This will enable you to develop relevant messages which your audience will engage with. The most effective way to do this is to develop customer personas or descriptions for you key audiences. If you have more than one customer type then try to group customers in 3 or 4 segments. From each segment develop a character, give them a name and personality. Describe who they are, where they live, age, hobbies, touch points and their problems.
Step 3: Understand your brand
Your brand is how your customers recognize you and why they choose you instead of your competition. It’s your business’s personality, it’s values and what it stands for. Think about how this converts into your online presence via images and the language you use for your digital marketing. The most effective way to get this right is to spend some time talking to your customers. That way you assume nothing and understand exactly how your customers perceive your message.
Step 4: Monitor your competitors
Your competitors include your direct competitors, indirect competitors and replacement competitors.
- Direct competitors: Those business’s that offer the same products and service
- Indirect competitors – These businesses may offer different products or service however they compete in the same space and budget as you. For example, tea and mineral water although the products are not the same, they compete in the same space.
- Replacement competitors. These are brands that offer a different type of product or service to your business. However, your customer could spend their money on this instead. For example, buying a car instead of going on holiday.
Step 5 Establish your metrics
Make sure you set up metrics so you can measure all your activity. Its fine to have amazing ideas about how you will market your business. So, you need to know what works and was does not. This will help you to feed into your future strategies and activities and allocate your budget efficiently. Metric or key performance indicators (KPIs) should be setup before your strategy is implemented and regularly reviewed. KPIs include; clicks on your blog, traffic to your website, engagement with your social media and leads generated. There are several options but they need to be relevant to your activity.
I hope this is useful and if you are planning to develop a digital marketing strategy for your business and have any questions or would like some support. Please get in touch for a no obligation chat. Either call 07753941231, email or complete my online form.
