Why is Having a Good Digital Marketing Strategy Important - and How Do I Create One?

People ask us the same question all the time - what is digital marketing? Digital marketing is essentially a marketing that allows businesses to achieve set goals, with the help of online marketing channels. Sounds simple enough… so why is it so hard to get it right? 

Whatever your product or service may be, it goes without saying the more people who know about you the better. Digital marketing is the fastest and most efficient way to create brand awareness. With digital marketing you can specifically target people already looking for goods and services in your niche. Once you’ve got a killer digital marketing strategy in play, you can sit back and let them come to you!

The question is, how do you create a good digital marketing strategy to begin with?

Don’t worry, we’ve covered pretty much all you need to know to get things started…

Why Digital Marketing Is Important?

The truth is, businesses of all scales and sizes can benefit from digital marketing. There are no disadvantages when it comes to increasing your brand awareness and customer reach. It levels the playing field and allows the underdogs to compete with the big names.

Here’s where it gets really good… small businesses can interact with their target audiences specifically, and learn more about them globally. Unlike traditional marketing methods you’re not advertising your goods hoping someone might see them and take interest, you’re going straight to the consumer with something they were already looking for!

Here are just some of the benefits of digital marketing for small businesses:

·         Cost-effective marketing

·         Boost in conversions

·         Increased revenue

·         Allows the business to target the right audience

·         Aids with mobile marketing

·         Boosts the brand reputation

·         Influences buyers and offers measurable results

Digital Marketing Strategies

You’re probably wondering by this point, what are some digital marketing strategies I can use to grow my business? Well, here’s just a few idea to get the ball rolling…

1. Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation is at the core digital marketing. Digital marketing strategy focuses on boosting the SEO ranking of your company, generating more traffic and improving your conversion rate. A good SEO strategy gets you on the first page of SERPs for your targeted keywords. So invest time and effort in on-page SEO and off-page SEO techniques to get more visibility and engagement online.

2. Content Marketing

Content is arguably your most important ranking factor. Writing a blog allows your company to highlight that it is a market leader. By publishing a blog and posting regularly, you can engage with your target audience and keep them in the loop. Content quality matters a lot. Focus on producing high-quality content that resonates with your target audience. Offer them valuable information, and become an authority within your niche!

3. Visual Content

In a 2018 HubSpot survey, 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from a brand or business they support.  (HubSpot)

Visual content includes images, videos, infographics, etc. Marketers use visual content for social media and search engine marketing strategies all the time and most major brands invest large portions of their marketing budget in creating visual content. Why?… because visual content works! Creating infographics about your brand message, or general information regarding your brand, and sharing it on social media as well as partnerships with influencers helps to put your brand on the map. 

4. Advertise On Social Media Platforms Like Instagram Or Facebook.

The majority of the global population spends a large chunk of their time online on social media platforms. By that logic, if you want to target their desired audience, chances are you need to advertise on social media. The best thing about social media marketing is that you can narrow down your target audience - you can choose exactly who you want to reach and even where you want to reach them. Saving you time, money and effort!

5. Create An Email Campaign. 

Email campaigns are no brainer. They have one of the highest ROIs. So, it makes sense to develop a good quality strategy for creating an email campaign. If you’ve created a new blog post, send it out to your email list to get more reach. Send your discount offers, new launch information, and more. Email campaigning is a great way to keep your customers in the loop, up to date and most importantly - excited about your brand.

6. Organise a Webinar.

Webinars are gaining a lot of popularity. A webinar provides the perfect opportunity to connect with customers on a human level. Its purpose is to promote new products or services and to update your consumers about anything new you have to offer. You can use these webinar platforms to get started.

7. Create A Contest Or A Giveaway 

Contests and giveaways help boost customer loyalty, they’re a fun and exciting way to share your brand with the world. Successful businesses tend to host contests and giveaways regularly to actively engage with customers and give them something extra to get excited about. You could also leverage the giveaway to get people to sign up to your email list, follow you on social media channels, share your content with friends, tag their friends in your posts, and more. Everyone loves free products and great promotions, and everyone loves to win - which means you should have no problem getting people to share your brand with their friends and family.

8. Test Different Campaigns To Find Out Which Works Best For Your Target Audience

Since new products and services require significant investment, testing different campaigns to find out which campaign attracts your specific target audience is a great way to figure out where you should be spending your cash long-term. A/B testing is a popular way to test which marketing strategy and adapting it for future long-term use.

9. Produce A Podcast.

Podcasts have been pretty popular for a while now, and for good reason. In todays fast paced world people are always on the go! Podcasts are a super useful tool for people who want information without the hassle of having to stop and search for it themselves. Creating a podcast series your customers can listen to regularly is one way to keep them informed, engaged and wanting more! You could also sponsor a podcast popular among your target audience - reaching people likely to already be interested in what you’ve got to offer.

How to Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Now you’ve got a few ideas about what might work for you, time to get planning. Here are some helpful steps to follow when creating a digital marketing strategy from scratch.

1.      Develop your buyer personas: The first thing that you need to do is create a detailed buyer persona to organise your audience. This allows you to identify who your customer is. Having a target consumer is crucial in creating a good marketing strategy so don’t skip this step!

2.      Set your marketing goals and identify which marketing tools will prove helpful. Only once you’ve set yourself some goals, will you be able to start forming a plan of how to achieve them. Setting goals at the start is essential when it comes to measuring your progress.

3.      Evaluate the existing digital assets and channels: It will help you to incorporate the right digital assets and channels to achieve your defined objectives. Take a closer look at your owned media, earned media, and paid media. You need to consider the big picture before you decide to target your customers. Understand which platforms your target customer interacts with, and process to build the presence of your brand on those platforms.

4.      Plan and audit owned media campaigns: Owned media lies at the heart of it all. That means, it has to be audited from time to time so that you can plan the owned media campaigns. Audit the existing content to get an idea about where you stand and plan where you want to go.  Identify gaps in the content and fill them up. Regularly post on all your social channels, while ensuring that the brand message remains consistent. Otherwise, you run the risk of confusing your customers.

5.      Plan and audit earned media campaigns: Earned media campaigns need to be evaluated against the established goals and new information needs to be included based on your requirements. It will help you find out which social media platform or digital marketing technique is working for you and which one is not. Then, you make changes accordingly. Engage with customers who are getting involved with your marketing campaign, and leverage it to attract more audience towards your brand.

6.      Plan and audit paid media campaigns: Paid media campaigns include Twitter, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Google Adwords. You need to audit them and make plans based on your current goals. Use analytics to analyse which elements of the campaign have been effective and make changes. Once you understand which platform is bringing you a major portion of your business, you can optimise your marketing strategy around it, and use your marketing budget more efficiently.

7.      Evaluate, Keep, and Discard: Keep a close look at the analytics of your marketing campaigns. Evaluate the performance regularly. Keep what the data suggests is working. Discard what’s not working as per the data. Data is everything! Make it your friend.

Digital marketing is crucial for a successful online business. But as you can probably tell by now, its pretty tricky to perfect. This is where a digital marketing company can help you out. Why go through the hassle having to familiarise yourself with a heap of new programmes and platforms? Why deal with the stress of having to set up multiple different marketing tools when a digital marketing agency can do it all for you?

Haych Digital is a leading marketing firm based in London. We work closely with you to help you achieve your online marketing goals. Not only do we offer original in -house content creation, thanks to our trusted team of professional photographers and videographers. But we offer SEO marketing strategies to make sure all the content we create for you ranks as well as it possibly can, so you can the people you want.

So, stop hiring 5 different marketing companies to work on one project. Choose Haych Digital as a complete marketing solution for your brand.

Contact us today for a free consultation session.