For almost 10 years, you wouldn’t believe the amount of times we’ve heard the phrase “Digital Marketing Strategy”.
Everyone wants one. And, everyone needs one.
We’ve probably consulted hundreds of businesses over the years on their own digital marketing strategy.
Some of them resulted in over $100,000 in revenue.
And some resulted in close to $300,000 in revenue.
Either way, marketing without any digital marketing strategy won’t generate any revenue. But, it’ll probably generate some expenses on your financial statements.
Obviously, that’s not what you want and that’s why you’re reading this post. So buckle up, today we’re going to give you the 7 steps to create a successful digital marketing strategy for your business.
Alright, now let’s start building your digital marketing strategy.
What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
If 3 people asked us for a digital marketing strategy, chances are, all 3 of them would be expecting different things in return.
One person may need direction – in other words, they need to determine the best approach to position their business on the Internet.
The 2nd person might need execution – meaning they have identified their approach, and wildly ambitious goals to take over the WHOLE internet, they just don’t know how exactly they are going to accomplish it.
And lastly, the 3rd person might need tactics – they might have direction and execution down, but maybe it’s not working so well so they go back to the drawing board to find new tactics and tricks to accomplish their objectives.
Ok, so then what exactly is a digital marketing strategy?
It’s all of this.
A digital marketing strategy is an outline that describes how you will accomplish your marketing goals through the Internet.
It should include your marketing objectives, who you will be marketing to, in what manner, and a clear depiction of how you will accomplish said marketing objectives.
Having a clear understanding of your digital marketing strategy will help you make the most out of your investment and maintain consistency across your marketing efforts.
How Do You Build A Digital Marketing Strategy?
Here are the 7 steps to building your digital marketing strategy.
Step 1: Determine your objectives
Is your marketing objective right now to increase awareness, leads, or sales?
Naturally, most people we talk to will say sales.
But wait a minute.
How many sales can you actually make if no one knows you exist?
A good digital marketing strategy should be carefully crafted based on facts. Like, how many people are actually aware that your business exists?
You should start your digital marketing strategy by looking in the mirror. Do a careful analysis of your prior marketing efforts, determine what worked best and what didn’t, and consider what your business needs to be successful.
To do this, just take a peek into your Google Analytics account.
And if you don’t know how to view your website analytics, then consider using free tools available on the Internet, like Alexa for example.
Anyway, really think about your business marketing and set SMART goals.
Not just “SMART” but you know the acronym, SMART?
Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timely – SMART goals.
Just set realistic goals are attainable.
A lot of business owners call us and say, “Hey LYFE, I need to reach 1,000,000 within the next 30-days. I have a $500 budget and I want to know if your firm is good enough to do that or not.”
Meanwhile, we’re kind of like…“You do know that’s going to cost way more than $500 right..?”
Ok, we know you get it, so anyway folks when you’re building your digital marketing strategy, make sure you look in the mirror first, analyze your prior efforts and where you sit in the market, and set realistic marketing objectives.
Step 2: Build Your Marketing Funnel
When we’re building a digital marketing strategy for someone, we always ask, “What does your marketing funnel look like?”
Most times, people look at us like…
“I don’t know…”
So let us explain.
Remember those sales we talked about in Step 1? And how you’re not going to get them unless people actually know you exist?
Well a marketing funnel helps you lay out the steps to generating awareness to ultimately converting people into a sale.
Now there are 4 basic steps inside of any marketing funnel – Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, and Advocacy.
We won’t fully explain this now because we’ve already published another post on this topic, so be sure to check it out in this link.
But when building your marketing strategy, your marketing funnel will help you answer questions like:
You can literally take the entire marketing funnel, piece out each stage, and use that to explain every single component of your digital marketing strategy.
Alright, let’s move on to the next point.
Step 3: Define Your Audience
Who exactly will you be picking up and dropping into your digital marketing funnel?
You need to be very specific here.
You need to build your Buyer Persona.
A Buyer Persona is an outline of the characteristics that you identify as someone who might buy your products.
Having this is incredibly important because for you to be successful at digital marketing, you are going to have to talk to people who are likely to buy from you.
And if you don’t know who that person is, or even worse, you do and are unable to relate to them – it doesn’t matter how good your marketing strategy is, it won’t work.
You must be able to speak directly to your audience’s specific goals and challenges, and help them obtain success.
So here’s what you need to do.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
Ask yourself:
Why would I buy this? List out every reason.
Then, figure out:
And then ask yourself:
Write out every single answer you possibly can to all of these questions.
Pretty soon, you’ll have a ton of information and most importantly, you’ll understand your buyer persona.
And boy, once you understand your customers, like REALLY understand what goes in their mind, then you can really start marketing.
Which brings us to our next point.
Step 4: Outline Your Messaging
This is going to be so much easier now that you fully understand who you’re talking to. You just need to figure out what you’re going to say.
But what exactly will you say?
Here’s what we’d say.
“Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?
Ever feel like you’re moving but not actually going anywhere?
Well, here’s the cure that helped over 35,000 people and that was just featured in Fortune’s Magazine.
Improve your situation today by visiting contact.lyfemarketing.com.”
While that was just made up on the spot as an example, here are the specific things you need to have in your messaging.
a. A Hook
If your customer is standing right in front of you, aka on Facebook, you need something that is going to make them stop scrolling and look at your business.
Use your buyer persona outline and use one of their primary goals or biggest challenges, then create a hook talking directly to the person you’re targeting.
Don’t overthink this. But do know who you’re talking to.
Forget about the wittiest hook, and think more about what your audience will respond to. They will only respond to triggers that pull at their unique life circumstance.
b. Interest
A hook will make them stop and look at you. But if you’re not interesting, they are going to scroll on to the next thing.
So you need to make the next few seconds count. In our example, we listed a statistic that we helped over 35,000 people, just like THEM, and that we were featured in a major publication.
This might peak someone’s curiosity a little more. Now, you’ve got their attention.
c. Action
Once you have their attention, you need them to act. You need a call-to-action and you need it NOW.
But don’t be basic and just tell people to go buy your stuff.
Think about your funnel.
If you’re trying to generate awareness, then don’t turn them off on the first date by asking them for their money.
Invite them to learn more about you. This might be checking out a video, blog post, eBook, etc.
Anyway, let us be very clear about messaging for a second.
Your messaging should be directly related to challenges listed in your buyer’s persona.
Your messaging will be different based on your marketing objectives.
And your messaging needs to be consistent.
Messaging to generate awareness will be different from messaging to increase your sales. Messaging to a stranger should be different from messaging to a hot lead.
There are many different messaging techniques out there, so be sure to subscribe to our email list so you don’t miss out on future content that breaks this down.
But regardless of the techniques you use, your messaging should be consistent – whether it’s on your website, social media, or in your email newsletters.
Imagine dating someone who presents themselves as one way, but is completely different on the 2nd date.
You’d probably not trust that person’s intention. So be consistent in your messaging.
Alright, let’s move on.
Step 5: Select Your Marketing Channels
Here’s an easy one that many people overcomplicate – marketing channels.
People call us every day, asking us what marketing channels they should be on.
The answer is very simple.
The marketing channels your customers are on.
One of our business mentors once told us that there are a “thousand ways to market your business, and you need to be good at all of them.”
Basically, in a perfect world, you need to be marketing to your customers wherever they might be.
If they are searching companies like yours on Google, then add Google to your strategy.
If they are on Instagram, then add Instagram to your strategy.
Or if they’re watching videos on YouTube, then maybe you’ll need to start a YouTube channel.
Regardless, pick the channels where your audience is located and incorporate it into your strategy.
Though, there is one problem with this.
Budget.
If you don’t have an endless budget, then chances are, you probably can’t choose an endless amount of marketing channels.
Each marketing channel will require a certain amount of effort (and money) to use it effectively.
So once you have listed out all of the marketing channels that your customers use, start prioritizing them in order of effectiveness.
Now, this will look different for different businesses. For example, if you’re a plumber, then you’ll probably have a better shot at landing clients on Google than you would on Facebook.
Meanwhile, if you’re selling lotion, you might be able to reach more consumers at lower prices on Facebook than you would on Google.
So here are the rules you need to follow:
a. Only choose marketing channels that contain your audience
b. Prioritize your marketing channels based on effectiveness
c. To figure out what is most effective, consider your business services and most importantly, your buyer persona.
Step 6: Define Your Content
Alright, now we’re getting into the nitty gritty.
By now, you’ve defined your messaging and digital marketing channels.
Now you need to bring people into your marketing funnel and pull them down until they convert.
There’s only one way you can do this – by offering value.
You need to offer some type of value to your customers in order to make them aware of your business, engaged, and eventually buy something from you.
If there is no value you can offer them, then you shouldn’t expect them to exchange their hard-earned money with your business.
With that said, content is one of the most effective ways to exchange value to your audience.
But content comes in many different forms. We mean, there’s:
…and so much more.
But like we stated in the last step, you can simplify this by better understanding your audience.
Once you do, you can use content types that they prefer to engage with.
Or content that that you have the means to produce.
Either way, unless you’re balling on a fortune, you’re going to need to pick a few types of content and prioritize them.
A quick way to fail, is to try to do everything while doing nothing in particular very well.
So decide on your content strategy and put all of your efforts into generating that content.
Step 7: Execute and Analyze
The final step is to stop thinking and start doing.
You’ve defined your objectives, funnel, audience, messaging, channels, and content. Now it’s time to launch your marketing campaign on the channels you selected, with the messaging approach you’ve defined, using the content you’ve created.
But let us warn you.
The work doesn’t stop once you’ve built your marketing strategy and launched your campaign.
No no no, we’re just getting started.
If you turn your back on your marketing strategy now, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
In our world, agencies call this “set it and forget it.”
Your digital marketing strategy is not something you set-up once.
It’s continually evolving.
You launch a campaign, measure the results, and tweak it.
Then you launch a better campaign, measure the results, and tweak it.
THEN maybe you’ll launch a worse campaign, measure the results, and learn from it.
Bottom-line, you HAVE to stay on top of your digital marketing strategy.
If you get started now, you’ll already be doing more than 70% of everyone else.
Then, you get into the top 10% by being disciplined and consistently optimizing your strategy, campaign after campaign.
If you do this, you will have the best shot at success with your digital marketing strategy.
With all of this said, let’s quickly recap today’s post.
Final Takeaways
Today, we discussed “How to Build Your 2021 Digital Marketing Strategy.”
Those steps were very simple:
Alright folks, that’s it for today’s post.
And, if you need more help with your digital marketing strategy that is specific for your business, we have consultants and specialists who can work with you. Get in touch with us today to get started!
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