Steps to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy
1. Establish a Customer Profile
The first and most important step before marketing your product or service is to determine who you are going to market it to. You should know who your target audience is, what they are like, what kind of language would appeal to them and which marketing channel would be most suitable for delivering your message. There are several ways to establish a customer profile. You can evaluate your current customers and see what they are like. You can ask your current customers to fill an online survey that tries to determine their likes and dislikes, their interests, etc. Based on your findings, you can create a customer profile for your business. Once you have defined your customer in detail and determined their profile, you can move on to the next step.
2. Determine Your Marketing Objectives
Businesses market their products or services for a number of reasons. Every business has a different goal in mind while marketing themselves. What are your goals? Why are you marketing your business? Do you want more traffic on your business website? Do you want to increase your online presence or want to increase your conversion rate? Do you want to increase sales or want to build the loyalty of your current customers? You must have clearly defined objectives regarding your marketing campaign before you choose which marketing strategy will be best for your business. You should know why you are marketing your business and what results you expect after the strategy has been implemented.
3. Create Meaningful Content
This is an important step in your marketing strategy. Gone are the days when people would buy something just because the advertisement told them to do so. Today, the internet has enabled people to search and compare products and their prices online and even get first-hand reviews from customers who have already used the product. Therefore, your content needs to be such that gives potential customers a reason to trust you and existing customers a reason to become a repeat customer. Your content must be informative, engaging and valuable for your readers. You need to determine why you are creating content. Is it because you want more likes on Facebook or more visits to your web page? Is it to inform current and potential customers about the benefits of using your product or service or to spread the word about a new offering? If you have determined your objective for creating the content, then you will be able to target the right people with your powerful words.
4. Execute
Now that you have your basic goals outlined and defined, you can choose which marketing strategy would work best to reach out to your audience. You can determine which channels would be most suitable to get your message across to your potential and existing customers. You can also determine what kind of content would be needed to clearly communicate your message. Once your marketing strategy has been crafted, you can execute it.
5. Evaluate Results
After you have successfully implemented your digital marketing strategy, you need to evaluate the impact of that strategy on your business. You must gauge whether the marketing strategy was able to help you achieve your goals or not. There are a number of tools available online that can help you assess whether you were able to attain the expected results of your marketing efforts. Google Analytics offers a number of tools that can help you measure the conversion rate, bounce rate, etc. Facebook allows you to see the number of likes and views of your page, the number of shares your post received, etc. The assessment of your marketing strategy will help you improve upon your marketing campaign and will give you insight into the functionality of the strategy you implemented. These steps will allow you to create and implement a workable digital marketing strategy for your business.
