Having a solid digital marketing strategy makes all the difference when it comes to growing your business and driving sales.
Using digital marketing, you can increase your website’s rank in google, track customer trends, enable communication with your audience, and so much more.
If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy yet, no problem. We can change that and create your killer digital marketing strategy now.
**This post contains affiliate links, which means that I may make a commission, at absolutely no cost to you, if purchase using my link**
What is Digital Marketing?
You have probably heard terms like SEO, content marketing, and social media management.
Did you know that these are all aspects of digital marketing?
At the highest level, digital marketing uses media, like the internet and social media, to market business.
That’s it, not too complicated, right?
If You Have a Business, You Need a Strategy
The biggest challenge businesses have when it comes to a digital marketing strategy is not having one.
You don’t need a website with thousands of daily clicks (though it doesn’t hurt) or a 6-figure business to have a strategy. In fact, if you don’t have a digital marketing strategy, it won’t be easy to maintain thousands of daily visitors.
A digital marketing strategy defines your goals, and gets all the excellent ideas you have for your business out of your head and into a usable format.
Since there are so many ways to promote your business and brand online, it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with options and decide which are best suited to help you achieve your business goals, but more on that later.
Are you ready to create a Killer Digital Marketing Strategy right now? Let’s go!
Build Your Digital Marketing Strategy.
1. Define your Digital Marketing Goals
What are your goals for digital marketing?
*Hint: Your digital marketing goals should be directly correlated to your business goals
Here are a couple of high-level examples:
- Create a space to engage in dialogue with customers
- Help potential leads to find your business online
- Increase your website traffic and boost sales
You can, and should, have multiple goals. I would suggest starting with no more than three. You can always add more later.
2. Make the Goals More Specific
Many people initially write high-level goals like the ones above, but to achieve a goal, you need to know precisely what you want and ensure you can measure it. So be very specific!
For instance,
- Why do you want to engage with customers online?
- How many more visitors do you want per month?
- You want to boost your sales, but by how much? Is it monthly or annually?
Your goals for digital marketing should also be realistic. If you have 100 unique monthly visitors, it would (likely) be unrealistic to say that you will get a million unique visitors the following month.
Along the same line, you also don’t want to wait to get new users ten years from now. These goals should be attainable within a 6 to 12 month period.
There is no reason not to have a 3-5 year plan, go ahead and define overarching digital goals if you want, but then break them down into smaller 6 to12 month goals that support and enable your long term digital marketing strategy.
Depending on how specific you can get, you may find that you have a completely different goal than you initially thought.
At the end of this step, you should have specific goals and a way to measure if you have achieved them.
3. Define Your Audience and Value Proposition
To successfully achieve your digital marketing strategy goals, you need to understand your target audience and your value proposition (sometimes known as your unique selling point, USP).
You need to define who your customer is, where they are located (digitally, e.g., Facebook or Instagram), and why they should buy your product or service instead of someone else’s.
Because social media and digital platforms are so different when it comes to who “lives” on each one, it’s essential to be clear on where your audience is.
You wouldn’t use TikTok to target a baby boomer, right?
4. Strategy Time
Now that you are super clear on your digital marketing goals, your audience, and your value proposition (way to go!), it’s time to strategizeB you are going to reach your goals.
You need to determine what digital channels you need to use and how you will use them, e.g., launch a new email marketing campaigns, leverage social media, buy ads, a combination of these, etc.
At the end of this step, you should be clear on the tools you will use to reach your goals and how you will communicate your brilliant value to all of your soon-to-be customers, readers, etc.Â
5. Determine Marketing Scope and Budget
The good news is that a lot of digital marketing is free, but not all of it. Determine what your budget is and then decide the scope of that budget.
Suppose you don’t have a professional website, but you run an online business coaching service. You may be successful initially starting with a Facebook page, but your business will need a professional website in the long run.
Website hosting isn’t as expensive as you think. You can get a free domain name, free SSL, and WordPress installed for $4 a month with Bluehost.
If you want to leverage email marketing, then you will need a list builder. Some great ones like ConvertKit, are easy to set up, and your first 1,000 subscribers are free.
If you want to drive traffic to your existing website to boost sales, consider revamping the SEO on your site, and promote Pinterest Pins.
*Bonus tip! Now that you have tons of new website traffic, thanks to your genius marketing tactics, make your product or service easy to find. People on the internet are not known for patience. If your site is challenging to navigate, they will leave. Fast.
6. Write it Down and Check-in
If you haven’t already, take the time to document your strategy in one place, not on 17 post-it notes. Then check in on your digital marketing strategy monthly or quarterly.
By getting all of the information into a cohesive and organized document, you can review (and celebrate!) your progress.
If you build a digital strategy but never review it, then you wasted a lot of your valuable time putting it together in the first place.
7. Put Your Digital Marketing Strategy in Action
This sounds obvious, but now is the time to implement your digital marketing strategy.
Put together the content calendar and then put in the work. Map out your email sales funnel for your existing email list, then update it and implement it. If you don’t do the work, you’re not going anywhere.
Once you begin to put your plan in action, you will be able to see how it may need to be tweaked to reach your goals.
Use Your Digital Marketing Strategy to Achieve your Dreams
In the digital world we live in, change is the constant, and your digital marketing strategy will change as your business changes. You can expand on goals, or set brand new ones, as you learn more about your audience and what drives them to action.
By having a digital marketing strategy, you are more likely to achieve your dreams by reaching your short-term and long-term online business goals.
If you have any additional questions, I’m just an email away.
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