Establishing an online presence and connection with customers has never been more important, especially if you’re planning to expand your brand.
As people spend more time online, investing in and optimising your digital marketing strategy is one of the best ways to ensure you reach your customers effectively, whether you’re a brick-and-mortar business or an established global organisation.
From emails and social channels, to search engines and PPC (pay per click) ads, there’s a multitude of methods to create valuable content that resonates with your audience.
So, if you’re just getting started, you might be asking, what are the fundamental components needed to develop an effective digital marketing strategy?
1. Focus on the right metrics with clear objectives
Depending on the objectives you’ve set for your business, focusing on the right metrics is key to developing an effective strategy.
Whatever your objective is, choosing your KPIs (key performance indicators) carefully is a crucial step in establishing an effective digital marketing strategy, as it will determine the metrics you choose to focus on growing and improving.
For some, a KPI will be to build brand awareness and identity. In this instance, you may choose to focus on building your engagement numbers across social media.
For others, the focus could be to bring more traffic to a website to increase conversions and sales. In this instance you might choose to focus on optimising your website content and SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy to bring more customers to your site.
2. Understand who your target market is
Identifying the correct target audience is crucial to the success of your marketing efforts, as it ensures your content is being seen by the people who are most interested in your product or service.
Identifying key demographics such as age, gender and occupation will help you to narrow down their online behaviours, platform preferences and purchasing habits. Creating customer personas is a great way to get inside the head of your target customer and learn about their buying motivations.
This will then help you decide which online channels to focus your marketing efforts on and what your key messages should be.
3. Make data driven decisions
Utilising data to make informed decisions allows you to create effective campaigns that bring real results to your marketing efforts.
Whether it’s information about the demographic of your audience, website analytics that show you the best and worst performing pages of your site, or competitor insights detailing their most successful campaign tips, all this data will help you discover where your opportunities for improvement are.
4. Consistency is key
Your brand is considered to be the most important element of your digital marketing strategy. The way your business looks, sounds, and acts online impacts how current and potential customers perceive your business and affects the likelihood of them purchasing from you.
Establishing a brand that is recognisable, memorable, and consistent in the way it communicates is key to staying at the forefront of the customers mind and increasing customer engagement.
5. Quality content is at the heart of digital marketing
Creating content that addresses concerns and pain points, resonates with the audience, and has a valuable purpose is at the centre of successful digital marketing.
Quality content can take many forms, from blog posts and articles to videos and infographics. Key-word research can also support your content to ensure it is seen by your potential customers, based on what they’re searching for.
Any content you create and share online should have one of these three purposes: to engage, entertain or educate your target audience.
6. Integrate digital marketing with other marketing strategies
Building a brand where customers can interact with your business in a multitude of ways, whether it’s through a sponsored Instagram advert, or through a leaflet in the post, is the secret to offering a seamless online/offline experience for potential buyers through an omnichannel approach.
In a constantly changing consumer landscape, it’s important that businesses use every channel and tool at their disposal to engage and convert customers. By traditional and digital marketing tactics working hand in hand, you’ll be able to extend your reach and provide positive purchasing experiences for your customers.
7. Be ready to make changes when things aren’t working
Knowing when to make a change when things aren’t working is essential. By constantly monitoring your marketing outputs and analysing how content is performing, you’ll be able to identify where improvement is needed to optimise your marketing performance.
Utilising analytics and optimisation platforms such as Google Analytics, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platforms and automation, you can make use of meaningful data that can help you make informed decisions about how to improve your campaign results.
If executed successfully, your digital marketing strategy is the foundation that can drive your sales and customer engagement forward.
Getting it right may take some trial and error, but by incorporating these fundamentals components, you’ll position yourself ahead of your competition and set your business up for success.
If you’re looking to advance your digital marketing knowledge and capabilities, discover our new four-day short business course, Digital Marketing Essentials for Leaders.
