Feeling scattered with your digital marketing efforts? Is your team spread thin working across paid, organic, and social channels with no clear direction in sight? A digital marketing strategy could be the tool you need to guide your growth. There are a variety of strategy types, each focusing on different methods to boost your brand exposure and leads. Let’s dive into the main kinds of digital marketing strategies and real examples of how they can help scale your business.
What is a digital marketing strategy?
A digital marketing strategy explores your business and marketing goals, your brand vision, and industry landscape to recommend a unified path forward for your online marketing activities.
It ties measurable objectives to your planned efforts, so that you can regularly look back on your metrics to see where you’re successful and where you need to adjust course. If your revenue is stagnating or if you don’t know where to place your focus, a digital marketing strategy helps you find new ways to grow and improve your results.
What makes a good digital marketing strategy?
A good digital marketing strategy balances many factors. It needs to be specific enough to provide clear direction, but it also needs to be flexible enough to change if your plan isn’t working. Choosing the right key performance indicators (KPIs) is also important. You should tie the correct KPIs to the goals you’re setting, and then measure them at regular intervals.
Beyond focusing on data, your digital marketing campaigns should tell a story. This comes down to doing your research and getting to know what appeals to your customers. Your visuals, videos, and content need speak to your key differentiators in a way that resonates with your customers.
Ideally, a digital marketing strategy should guide your audience through all aspects of the marketing funnel. The channels you choose should move them through the awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty phases.
How do you plan your digital marketing strategy?
Successful digital marketing strategies follow these key steps:
- Define your brand: Determine the vision and purpose behind your business. Go beyond profits and think about how you can uniquely help your customers thrive.
- Research your audience: Dig into your customers’ demographics and what motivates them on a human level.
- Research your competitors: Find out what your competition is doing well with their digital marketing and how you can outperform them.
- Conduct a SWOT analysis: Lay out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your digital marketing to help guide your future decisions.
- Create your brand positioning and messaging strategy: Uncover what makes you uniquely valuable to your audience and shape key messages that will appeal to them.
- Build your digital marketing project plan: Set out the framework for which key digital marketing activities you’ll choose, your approaches on those platforms, how you’ll measure your KPIs, and the timelines you’ll follow.
- Set up your campaigns: Craft your creative assets and launch them on your determined platforms with the right targeting to reach your audience.
- Track your results and re-optimize: Monitor your efforts on monthly basis and adapt your efforts based on the insights you glean from the data.
What is a digital marketing platform?
Sometimes the terms “digital marketing platform” and “digital marketing strategy” are used interchangeably, but they’re actually different concepts. A digital marketing platform is a tool that helps you carry out your strategy and connects you with your audience. A digital marketing strategy determines what activities you’ll undertake to perform well on those platforms.
Key examples of digital marketing platforms include:
- Google Ads: World’s largest online advertising platform
- Google Analytics: Data analytics platform for understanding your website users
- WordPress: Popular website content management system (CMS)
- HubSpot: Modern customer relationship management (CRM) tool
- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok: Top social media platforms
- Hootsuite: Social media scheduling and analytics platform
- Screaming Frog: Website crawling tool for search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is a digital marketing practice that involves boosting your website’s rankings on search engines. By appearing higher in Google results, you improve your chances of users clicking on your website, engaging with you, and purchasing from you.
SEO is important for your business because it puts you in front of billions of ready buyers:
- People explore Google with the intent of researching and purchasing products and services.
- In many cases, the bulk of businesses’ organic traffic comes from search engines. Improving your SEO can directly enhance your revenue and profits.
A SEO strategy in 2022 from a professional digital marketing agency starts at $8,000. The monthly services needed to achieve that strategy start at $5,000/month.
The best SEO tools of today include:
SEO strategy example: Westcon Precast
For this concrete manufacturer, our SEO strategy involved promoting individual product pages on organic channels. Through a local SEO approach, we achieved a strong search engine presence for Edmonton and Calgary. Our efforts increased Westcon’s organic traffic by 144% and increased their leads by 207%.
Paid advertising
Paid advertising involves bidding in real-time auctions to compete for impressions, clicks, and conversions from users. The main types of online ads are search ads and display ads. Search ads show up in search engine results when users look up keywords and questions. Targeted through demographics and shopping intent, display ads are visually featured on websites or in apps.
Launching a paid media strategy is essential for any business because:
- It allows you to earn more website traffic and conversions than SEO alone.
- By serving display ads to your target demographic, you can build your brand’s reputation and influence your customers to buy from you.
- Search ads reach your customers in the right moment and time—exactly when they’re ready to buy your product or service.
A paid advertising strategy in 2022 from a professional digital marketing agency starts at $8,000. The monthly services needed to achieve that strategy start at $5,000/month.
The best paid advertising tools include:
Paid media strategy example: Westcan Bulk Transport
To reach millennials seeking a meaningful career, we created a compelling paid advertising strategy for this trucking transportation company. A diverse mix of ad buys on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram were all hyper-targeted toward young, family-oriented folks. Our approach resulted in over 1.2 million impressions and 8,100 interested job applicants.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing taps into social networks to build connections with your target audience. It involves creating engaging content, building relationships with your customers, and launching paid advertising on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
With the right social media strategy, the possibilities for growing your brand are endless:
- Showcase your values in action and demonstrate how real customers use your products or services.
- Stay plugged into conversations, respond to questions quickly, and get helpful feedback on your customer experience.
- Social media advertising is also a great way to reach billions of users where they hang out.
A social media marketing strategy in 2022 from a professional digital marketing agency starts at $8,000. The monthly services needed to achieve that strategy start at $5,000/month.
The best social media marketing tools include:
Social media strategy example: Citadel Theatre
Our social media strategy helped this well-loved theatre inspire connection during the pandemic. We harnessed user-generated content (UGC) to tell stories of the Citadel’s artists and patrons. Our team also focused on creating consistency in their feed with their iconic orange colours and playful brand voice.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
CRO is about making it as easy and simple as possible for users to interact with your website. It focuses on finding ways to motivate customers to convert and removing any barriers that cause them to leave. You can use tools like heat mapping and analytics to discover where users are interacting and where they’re dropping off.
You should always create a website with your users’ needs in mind, and a CRO strategy helps you do that. By pointing out what’s not working, you can improve the site’s experience and content, one step at a time. Ultimately, this helps you boost conversions and increase your revenue.
A CRO strategy in 2022 from a professional digital marketing agency starts at $8,000. The monthly services needed to achieve that strategy start at $5,000/month.
The best CRO tools include:
CRO strategy example: Elections Alberta
We worked with this provincial electoral body to improve their website’s navigation and mobile responsiveness. After completing a website audit, we redesigned the site with accessibility and clarity in mind. Our work helped Elections Alberta keep over 302,000 annual visitors informed and drove their bounce rate down to 45.11%.
Content marketing
Content marketing involves sharing informative and compelling content with your audience to boost awareness, engagement, and leads. From blogs and whitepapers to videos and podcasts, your content should be anchored in user research to understand what appeals to your customers and what will meet their needs. You should also post on a regular schedule at times when you’re most likely to reach your audience.
Great content marketing builds trust and loyalty with your audience. By consistently sharing helpful information, you’re forming positive relationships that can last a lifetime. Not to mention, optimized content can boost your SEO and increase your visibility on search engines. This all works toward increasing your revenue and profits.
A content marketing strategy in 2022 from a professional digital marketing agency starts at $8,000. The monthly services needed to achieve that strategy start at $5,000/month.
The best content marketing tools include:
Content marketing strategy example: Always Plumbing & Heating
For this plumbing and HVAC specialist, our content marketing strategy focused on crafting well-researched blog posts that answer common questions from their customers. Our work has positioned Always Plumbing & Heating as a thought leader in their industry, helping to increase their organic traffic by 87%.
Key advantages of a digital marketing strategy
When you add up all the benefits, there’s no question why you should invest in a digital marketing strategy:
- Improve your online brand reputation: Create personalized relationships with your customers and establish a strong position in your market.
- Increase online and offline conversions: Streamline your user experience and build more opportunities for your audience to buy from you.
- Build brand presence in larger markets: Choose strategic digital marketing activities that allow you to compete in your industry and grow beyond your competitors.
- Gain a wider customer base: Reach a large and targeted audience that will purchase your products or services and be loyal to your brand.
Additional digital marketing strategies to explore
Video marketing
Video has the power to capture your audience’s attention and inspire them to believe in your brand values.
Resource: How to Get Started With Video Marketing (Neil Patel)
SMS marketing
With text messaging, you can reach your customers at important moments with appointment reminders and promotions.
Resource: Automated SMS/Text Messaging in Campaigns (ActiveDEMAND)
AR/VR marketing
Create virtual universes where your audience can interact with your brand and products in a realistic experience.
Resource: 9 VR Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2022 (Hubspot)
Email marketing
Promote products, send discounts, and share updates about your company to a list of subscribers that already love your brand.
Resource: Email Marketing Strategy & Tips for Successful Campaigns (Mailchimp)
Are you ready to get started on your digital marketing strategy and make an unforgettable impact on your audience? Contact us today to book a free consultation.
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