By now we all know that if you are running any form of business and you do not have an online presence, you are literally committing business suicide. Every business, regardless of sector should be reachable online otherwise you risk losing out on potential clients or fail to manage disgruntled customers/clients who are looking for a away to reach out to you.
Digital Marketing has literally transformed some companies from loss making to profit making companies just simply by understanding the right way to go about it. Now, I know that it seems like another skill you have to learn and probably do not have much time to learn, but the Digital Marketing space is an ever growing and changing one and so not jumping on the band wagon now will only delay further.
With that said, how does one go about this ‘Digital Marketing’ thing? … Well, I’m glad you asked!
I am going to share with you five great ways to come up with a Digital Marketing Strategy that have proven to work for not only me but many other businesses too. Let’s dig in!
1. What do you want to achieve
Not everybody gets into Digital Marketing for the same reasons. There are many reasons that one would consider having an online presence such as easy accessibility, target marketing, easy communication with clients and prospects and many other reasons.
Which is why it is important to know what you want to achieve from digital marketing. Thus your digital marketing mission must fit into your business/company’s grand plan. Ask yourself, ‘What is the main objective for our strategy?’
In line with this, what are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? How are you measuring your success? What method will you use to measure your success? Is there a target number of followers that you are trying to reach in a given period of time? Are you trying to work on your customer support turn around times?
2. Learn from your mistakes
Look at what has worked in the past for you and what hasn’t. What type of content gets the reactions and what type of content doesn’t. You can also use this opportunity to look at what your competitors are doing right and what they are doing wrong and then create your own strategy.
Also keep asking yourself questions such as, ‘Is there anything that I haven’t yet considered that could be important, like times I Post or types of images I put?’
3. Who is your audience?
It is very easy to forget about the people that you are targeting when you are mostly concerned about the nitty gritties. Remember at the end of the day, you need to put what your followers engage with and not what is interesting to you. Put your audience at the heart of your digital marketing strategy, cater to their emotional needs and satisfy their deepest desires. Find out your buyer persona, who your ideal client is and what it is they like to see, watch, read, etc and hit them in the right spots.
4. Develop your budget
Yes digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing but it is not free! You will need to spend on adverts, graphics, content and you may even need to hire somebody else to do it so that you can concentrate on your business. You can hire freelancers to help you out from, or or get students looking to improve their marketing experience from Acadium. Therefore, you need to work on your overall digital marketing budget.
Work your budget on which channel works best for you and spend on the channel that hits your KPIs the most. Also, look at your team and see if any of your staff can handle the digital marketing aspect of the business. You can have them trained in person (I offer digital marketing training classes) or have them take an online certification to cut on costs.
5. Create your digital marketing calendar
It may get overwhelming trying to think about what to put on which channel/platform and also remembering when to put out posts, adverts and do your analytics. It is therefore very essential for you to use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite and a Content Management System like Hubspot. Also leverage the use of Google Calendar so that you can share your schedule and any changes with your team.
Now remember that not all things go according to plan and so if something doesn’t seem to work, do not be afraid to pivot. Digital Marketing is all about trying and seeing what works and when you do find the thing that does work, stick to it!
Now get started on your Digital Marketing Strategy and share with us in the comments section on how it is working for you!