Do you ever feel like you’re going crazy doing everything you can to market your business, yet you’re still not reaching the right audience online? That’s probably a sign that your digital marketing plan is overdue for a serious upgrade.
Here’s the bottom line: Successfully growing your business online depends on making your digital footprint on the path where it counts.
What the hell does this mean?
You could have the best product or service in the world but if you don’t know how to properly market it to people, it won’t take off. It’s not enough just to be online. You need to be online in the right places, targeting the right customers, communicating the right message, and making sure your digital footprint is leading them straight to you.
AKA digital marketing.
We know it can be exciting AND intimidating which is why we wanted to talk about what exactly digital marketing is, how it helps build your business, and offer you a few tips on creating an effective digital marketing strategy.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is all about taking your business to where people are spending their time – online.
A perfect metaphor to use is digital marketing is like directing traffic. You use it to guide people in a certain direction. Effective digital marketing strategies show your audience exactly where to go and, when done properly, continually attracts and converts even more traffic over time.
According to Forbes, there are 5.35 billion internet users worldwide. Let that sink in for a second. That is a crazy amount of people giving their time and attention to the internet. It’s also a crazy amount of potential customers you can reach.
If you’re not actively trying to catch the attention of these people, you’re missing opportunities.
The traffic signs (in our metaphor) are the different types of digital marketing. We’re talking about SEO, paid advertising, content marketing, social media, email marketing and plenty more tools.
When you utilize a digital marketing strategy, you connect all of these areas together in a way that seamlessly turns random website visitors into lifelong, loyal members.
Benefits of a Digital Marketing Strategy
Before we go over specifics, let’s talk more about the why behind it. You need to get clear on this because it’s extremely important. The why fuels your how. It doesn’t matter how good your strategy is. Without a reason for every move you make you’ll lose focus.
So, here are some of the benefits digital marketing brings to your business:
- Expand Your Audience: A well-crafted digital marketing strategy will nurture your current audience and engage new potential customers. The great thing about your business being online is that you’re not limited by location. Use this to your advantage. Refine your message, send it to the right people (wherever they are) and get more conversions.
- Focus on Quality Leads: Here’s the thing about the traffic you draw to your business, you want all of your potential customers to be people that will actually give you money for what you’re offering. The truth is that not everybody in the world is going to want to engage or invest in your business. The cool thing about digital marketing is that you can segment your audience to find people who would truly benefit from what you offer.
- Detailed Metrics: You can track and measure everything when it comes to digital marketing. If you want to improve a certain metric, you can rely on the data to guide you to the right place.
- Easy to Adapt: Staying versatile and ready for change is perhaps the most underrated digital marketing tactic. If something isn’t performing well, you don’t have to keep it that way. You can pivot, optimize, and test new approaches! This is huge and what separates successful campaigns from stagnant ones.
8 Step to Create a Personalized Digital Marketing Plan
It’s all about INTENTION.
Everything you do in digital marketing should be done with purpose. Take your time to work through every step mindfully. Don’t rush and settle for half-baked projects. Remember your why, set a strong foundation, and intentionally execute.
1. Identify Your Buyer Personas
First things first, you MUST get clear on who you’re marketing to. It’s easy to look at that 5.35 billion users online and want all of them. Realistically, you’ll be most successful when you find the people who are actually going to use your product/service and gear all messaging towards them.
2. Set Clear Marketing Goals and Objectives
Don’t go throwing darts into the dark. You need to know what you’re aiming for before you start shooting. Whether it’s to generate leads, boosting sales, or increasing click through rates (CTR), your goals need to be specific.
3. Compare Your Brand to Competitors
Your competitors are not your enemy. If you don’t know what your competitors are doing, you’re flying blind. Take the time to see what they’re doing. What message are they sending and how are they sending it? Don’t copy them. Just see what parts of their brand resonates with the audience and use your information to make it even better.
4. Use the Right Marketing Channel
Don’t put your effort into a platform where your target audience isn’t hanging out. Similar to trying to fish in a pond where there’s no fish or maybe there is fish but you’re using the wrong bait, target reach is the same. Give your energy and attention to the platforms where your audience is most active.
5. SEO Optimization
The truth is a LOT of people are skipping this step. If you optimize your website for SEO, you will drive organic traffic to your website over your competitors. There’s a lot of tools out there that can guide you on how to optimize your content through SEO. Our team uses SEMrush for keyword research, and its extension in Google Drive for creating content.
6. Develop a Content Strategy
Content strategy… digital marketing plan…. What’s the difference? First, let’s remember that content drives engagement. It’s kind of like a transport tool for moving customers from one place to another (ex: instagram to your blog, an email to a landing page, a lead magnet to an optin page, etc.) A content strategy outlines what content you’re going to create, where you will publish it, and how often it will be posted.
7. Analyze and Optimize (Often)
Continuous improvement is what it’s all about. There are many analytics tools out there that help track performance and show you how to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns. Don’t be afraid of what’s not working. Just change it! Use the data to make informed decisions to optimize your efforts.
8. Do it all again!
Did we mention that continuous improvement is what it’s all about? It’s a love/hate relationship with reaching your goals when you’re faced with this overwhelming sense of accomplishment yet that antsy feeling to do something even better. This is growth. Feel that drive to be better and chase it with everything you’ve got. Look at these steps as more of a cycle and use them to keep improving.
Avoid the Mistake of Having Wrong Focus
When companies are desperate to grow their business, we often see them make this common mistake. The mistake of placing too much time and attention on the wrong marketing effort.
For example, a company might be desperate for sales so they believe they need more traffic. The real issue could be their website is old and the conversion rate sucks. So instead of revamping their site they spend way too much on paid advertising for traffic that never turns into sales.
It’s easy to get caught up in the wrong thing. If you’re even stuck on whether you need marketing or development support, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
You can dive deeper here, where we explore more into each. You can compare the two to the needs of your business and ideally figure out what’s holding you back.
Embrace the Learning Process
Ultimately, it’s an ongoing process, and that’s what makes it so exciting. We have the opportunity to analyze data, identify areas for improvement, and experiment with fresh ideas to see how far we can push things.
We’re all about elevating strategies to the highest level and then pushing them even further. When creating and executing a digital marketing plan, it’s crucial to remain flexible and open to change.
Don’t be afraid to try new approaches or make mistakes. Growth comes from stepping outside our comfort zones. Let’s embrace failure as part of the process, knowing that every step moves us forward.
Ready to level up your digital marketing plan but feeling a little overwhelmed of where to start? No worries, just reach out!
We’ll work with you to focus on the most impactful areas for your business, and together, we’ll build a campaign and strategy designed to drive conversion.
