THE FUTURE IS HERE … The Importance of Digital Marketing – Part 2
Over the past couple of months, I was asked about the importance of digital marketing by my clients and students. Most business owners are aware of the benefit of digital marketing but not everybody fully understands the power it has to grow a business. To help fill in the gaps, I have created a 4 Part mini-series on the Importance of Digital Marketing. Today we will look into Part 2 – What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
Your digital marketing strategy is a series of actions that help you achieve your company goals through carefully selected online marketing channels. Their channels can include paid, earned, and owned media, and can all support a common campaign around a particular line of business. In simple terms, a strategy is just a plan of actions to achieve the desired goal or multiple goals.
A digital marketing plan is a document sharing the details for all the planning for your digital marketing campaigns or actions. It details, among other things: short, medium, and long-term business goals, the strategies to achieve the goals at the digital level, the channels to use, actions and development plans, investment and budget or the timing and roadmap. I have put 5 vital steps together to help you create a successful digital marketing strategy.
Step 1: Situation Analysis! The first thing you will need to do when developing your digital marketing plan is to carry out an internal and external SWOT analysis of your business. It is paramount that we are familiar with the ecosystem we operate in, what our customers’ needs are, and where they get addresses. This analysis is equally qualitative as it is quantitative through looking at factors such a digital habit, intermediaries, influencers, and more.
Step 2: Establish digital marketing goals! Once you have your place in the market and your strong point in mind, work on establishing some goals to have a clear idea of where your actions should take you. Everything you plan has to work towards meeting those goals. You can work on developing this part of your digital marketing plan with the SMART goals framework in mind: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals.
Step 3: Define the marketing strategy! Once you have defined your business objectives, what are you going to do to achieve them? Personalisation is becoming increasingly important in digital marketing. Therefore, when it comes to defining your strategy for carrying out your plan, keep these factors I mind:
Segmenting your target audience! Know who you want to address, what their tastes, needs, or preferences are.
Positioning: To achieve proper positioning, it’s crucial that you are very clear about what your value proposition is and what it entails. In short, it’s why the consumer should choose you and not the competition.
Content strategy: This is important for creating distribution and managing original content that attracts users and positions the brand as referential in the user’s top of mind.
Step 4: Digital Strategies and Tactics! Based on your objectives (attraction, conversion, and loyalty), you can start to carry out different strategies. For example email marketing campaigns, social media, CRM, web optimisation, SEO strategies and paid media advertising, etc.
Step 5: Measuring Results and KPIs!The work doesn’t stop after you’ve designed and implemented your digital marketing strategy. The next step is one of the most important one: ANALYSING THE RESULTS! Analytics has turned into a critical pillar for successful optimising digital marketing performance and spending. We have to measure every action using KPIs to figure out if we earned the ROI we expected. Measuring the effectiveness of strategies and activities we implanted in our digital marketing will help us correct what doesn’t work to achieve the goals we set.
I hope this article will give you some general business growth inspiration but if you need assistance, just give us a call.
Synergy Consulting Australia provides a large range of business consulting services which includes 4IR, Legal, Accounting, Marketing, Project Management, Migration services and many more tailored business solutions. This also includes full market research and feasibility report before investing. www.synergyaustralia.com.au
Synergy Consulting Australia is led by Ilona Solinska. Ilona has over 19 years of international business consulting experience. She is a successful Business Growth Strategist, Educator, Keynote speaker, and Writer. Ilona has coached hundreds of businesses in the area of Marketing, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Operation, Change & Project Management and is a highly sought-after presenter on a wide variety of business topics.