Subscribe to Squarefish
Be updated on the latest news in
Virtual Assistance
Want to know a secret?
A solid digital marketing strategy often has a number of facets that one has to carefully consider before the implementation process even begins. Okay, this may not be that much of a secret, but it’s surprising how many businesses don’t have a strong and well-defined digital marketing plan.
In fact, based on a study conducted by Smart Insights, 46% of all brands in the market don’t even have an existing digital marketing plan put in place. Another 16% may have a strategy on the table, but it is yet to be implemented.
Here’s a question for you:
How can you expect your business to grow and develop a wider target audience if you don’t even realize the importance of a good and effective digital marketing campaign?
If you want to develop a strong consumer-base, connect with your target audience, and achieve your business marketing goals, you need a powerful and efficient digital marketing strategy.
That said, here are some of the most basic yet crucial steps you need to take if you want to start developing a strong strategy for your digital marketing campaign that you can implement with full confidence:
Crucial Steps for Creating a Strong Digital Marketing Strategy with Reliable Results
Like any other business plan or strategy, there are specific steps that you need to take in order to achieve your goals and objectives.
So what are these steps?
1. Clearly define your goals and set reasonable objectives that you can achieve.
Having a clear vision as to what you want to achieve with your digital marketing efforts is a good start to developing a strong and efficient plan.
What do you really want to achieve with your digital marketing campaign? Why are you creating this campaign, in the first place? You need to have a specific target in sight before you can pull the trigger and attempt to hit it. That is how digital marketing works, or any other form of marketing really.
Knowing what you want, what your ultimate goals are, will put you on the right path to achieving success.
There’s a popular acronym often used in marketing: SMART, which means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Sensitive.
- Specific – Be specific when identifying the goals and objectives of your campaign.
- Measurable – Your objectives have to be quantifiable or measurable so you’ll know the moment you have achieved them.
- Achievable – Be realistic when setting your goals, but don’t make them too simple either. The bottom line is that you want to set objectives that are achievable.
- Relevant – Whatever your objectives are for your digital marketing campaign, they should be relevant to your overall business goals.
- Time-Sensitive – The main objectives of your campaign should be achievable within a reasonable time frame.
2. Think about your past digital marketing campaigns and figure out the things that went well for you and those that didn’t.
Why is this step important?
Well, it’s important because, how else are going to create a stronger and more efficient digital marketing strategy if you don’t learn from your past mistakes?
There is no point in developing any kind of strategy if you just keep making the same mistakes over and over. We’ve all been there. For sure you’ve had a few marketing campaigns that didn’t work out too well for you. Figure out what you did wrong, so you don’t repeat it, and determine which aspects did well for your campaign and try to adopt them to your current plan.
3. Develop a strong content strategy and keep your target audience in mind.
Content is king when it comes to marketing strategies. There is no denying that. However, you need to keep your target audience in mind when creating your content strategy. By simply developing content and hoping that consumers will flock to your business and increase your sales, you might as well shoot an arrow across the ocean, expecting it to hit land.
You need to realize something.
Behind every successful marketing campaign, every powerful plan, is a strong content strategy. A strong content means it’s of high quality, it has substance, it’s engaging, and most importantly, it is relevant to your target audience.
There has to be a compelling reason why consumers should come to you and embrace your brand, instead of your competitors. Just because you built it doesn’t mean that they will come.
4. Implement a good search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to synergize with your content strategy.
Great content can only work if there is an equally great SEO strategy to support it. You can have the most engaging, relevant, and high-quality content, but how will your target audience find it in the vastness of the World Wide Web?
Imagine a starry night. Your content is one of those tiny twinkling stars in the night sky. The vastness of space is the Internet. How do you expect your audience to find a specific star on a clear night sky?
The solution? Top-notch SEO strategy.
Search engine optimization will transform that teeny tiny star into something as bright as the moon so that your target audience can easily find it. With great SEO strategy, your content should be ranking quite high on the search engine results page (SERP).
So what are the key essentials to a solid SEO strategy?
Comprehensive keyword research. You need to have sufficient knowledge of the search terms and phrases your target market is using when conducting a search on search engines. The keywords and phrases that you will be incorporating in your content should be relevant to your campaign, your business, or your industry.
Quality link building. Link building is a common SEO strategy. In fact, it is one of the avenues that most SEO professionals devote a significant amount of time and effort on. The goal is to get other quality websites, with content that relates to your own, to link to specific pages on your website in an effort to increase traffic and boost the ranking of your pages.
Social media marketing. This is another key aspect in a strong and effective SEO campaign. We all know that social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are the watering hole of the Internet. It’s the place where like-minded individuals gather, share experiences, and talk about the events of the day. It is also a great place to share quality content and connect with your target audience.
5. Don’t forget about website optimization and architecture.
Think of your website as the face of your brand. It represents your business in cyberspace. It’s where you ultimately want your target audience to go and visit. With that being said, it is vital that your website is well-designed, properly optimized, and has a solid architecture.
A well-designed website is user-friendly. This means it’s easy to navigate and visitors will have a great experience browsing through your pages.
A properly optimized website means it is responsive and mobile-friendly. You need to understand that there are more people nowadays who use their smartphones and tablets to surf the Internet. Website optimization is all about making sure that the pages in your website is easily accessible and responsive to the specifications of different mobile devices.
Website architecture is about the technical aspects of web design. You need to make sure that all the necessary information is available and easily accessible by the user. Your website has to be intuitive and provides the service that your target audience expects from your brand.
You should also make sure that links and portals will direct users to the intended pages and not end up on a blank or wrong page.
6. Make a careful assessment of your resources and stick to a budget you can afford.
There is no denying that marketing expenses can take up a huge chunk of your financial resources, which can be a major issue for small businesses and startups. But just because larger companies are pouring a ton of money on their digital marketing campaigns doesn’t mean you have to follow suit just to remain competitive.
This is the point of creating a digital marketing strategy. You want to implement a marketing campaign that is effective and sufficient without going over your budget. A successful digital marketing campaign doesn’t always relate to how much money you pour into it. There are a lot of effective strategies that don’t require a huge budget.
So what do you do to make sure that your campaign stays within acceptable cost?
Focus on the steps mentioned above. SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing; these practices don’t have to take over your entire budget.
There are plenty of third party service providers that can deliver high-quality work for a reasonable price. You just have to do your research and find a reputable online marketing company to partner with that knows how to work within your means.