A Low Down On Building A Digital Marketing Strategy

Chances are your day starts and ends with some form of technology. Be it your phone, Smart TVs or the way you shop today. These consumption patterns have led to marketers and brands in finding unique ways to market their products and services through multiple digital touchpoints. Digital marketing is such a tool used by marketers to enable their communication reach their audiences. As more brands are using digital marketing strategies to reach out to their audiences in a meaningful way, it is imperative to decode the know-hows for this segment for any marketer or brand that is just starting out in digital marketing.

With these valuable tips on building a digital marketing strategy, you can establish a strong foundation that leaves a lasting impression in your audiences’ minds.

What does it mean?

It is a set of actions that helps you reach your business goals through handpicked channels of online marketing. It can be anything from paid, earned, or owned media, all of which can support a common drive around a specific business. It emphasizes on defining what you are aiming to achieve and the reason behind it. For instance, you want to ask yourself the following questions when evaluating your digital marketing strategy:

1. What are my goals?
2. Who is my audience target?
3. What are my KPIs?
4. What’s my timeframe?

Look at the breakdown of the step-by-step every digital marketer should plan to build a good digital marketing strategy.

Structure of a digital marketing plan step-by-step

1.Know your ultimate goals

1. Identity the overall objective/agenda of your company–your digital marketing goal has to match in with your masterplan.
2. Ask yourself: what is the overarching target you want to achieve in your digital marketing activities?

Then set your KPIs and measure it by following the given points:

• Get your KPIs precise by defining the statistics for which you will be held accountable.
• Looking at past digital marketing activities will help you to focus on growing your current results and avoid boosting your expectations while doing so.
• To evaluate your conversions and track engagement, you should focus on using analytics or use other apps and software to evaluate the development of your content marketing. 

2. Analysis of the situation

A company’s internal and external assessment (SWOT analysis) is the second step you need to do when developing a digital marketing strategy. It helps you to look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your company. Analysing the past victories and defeats of your digital marketing campaign will help you focus on creating the right KPIs for your company.

3. Know who you are talking to

While preparing the plan, KPIs, budgets, don’t forget about your target audience. You must put your audience at the core of your digital marketing strategy to meet their deepest expectations. And that happens by producing well-fleshed and well-thought-out personas.

4. Check your resources and don’t overstep your budget

Until deciding what else you might need for the next cycle, it is crucial to take stock of all your assets. For instance, now is the ideal time to create an analysis of your current digital platforms and determine whether to delegate specific areas of your digital marketing and whether to set aside a budget for something new. Here is the breakdown of how to identify your means:

• Determine your overall digital marketing budget and check if any specific channel has worked really well for you before.
• Choose whether you will use paid promotion to advertise your product. It can be done by using tools like Adwords.
• For paid promotions, designate a precise part of the budget for each digital platform you want to use.
• Use your allocated budget into a platform that brings you the expected result if the previous one doesn’t work.
• Check if your team is capable of working or not. 
• Determine if you can or need to hire new people or not.
• Determine if the digital marketing work can be done in your company or you need another agency to handle it. 

5. Make sure to stick to your plan till the end

The key to a well thought about marketing strategy is continually evaluate and review it as it is live on different platforms.

• Use Google Calendars to note down everything you have done and share it with your team.
• Point out the main initiatives that you will be producing and supporting throughout the year and assign a timeline for each.
• Record the digital platforms needed for each initiative to be successful 

Bottomline

Creating a digital marketing strategy takes time and hard work, with a close analysis of factors like brand objectives, target audience and the ways in which you intend to review it for performance analysis. When done right, a digital marketing strategy can catapult brands straight into the audiences’ minds with the apt positioning required. Look towards showcasing your uniqueness in the market and different ways to be relatable with audiences. That’s the way to a successful digital persona that also translates offline.