Any business that wants to have a successful online presence will have little choice but to invest time and money into digital marketing. Those that do not will struggle to keep up with their competitors and stay relevant.
The issue is that there are so many marketing tools, platforms, strategies, and tactics, that it's difficult to know where to start. Well, there are 5 basic steps to digital marketing and these are:
1. Know What You Want
There is little point having a digital marketing strategy if you do not know why you are creating one.
So, before you start, your first step will be to identify:
● The overall aim of your company (For example, to become the leading gadget review site in your country).
● How the marketing strategy you are going to create will contribute towards reaching this aim.
2. Put in the Required Research
Once you have a better overall picture of what you want to achieve as a business and how you would like your marketing strategy to contribute towards this, you now have to do your homework.
● Research Your Competition
All businesses will have competitors, so knowing more about who you are will allow you to be better informed on what marketing strategies to use. How big are your competitors? What marketing strategies/methods are they using? Which marketing channels do they use the most?
● Perform a SWOT Analysis
Next up is to learn more about the current strengths and weaknesses of your own business. A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, And Threats) analysis is a great way to do this. You will learn what you are doing right, what areas you need to improve, the opportunities that your business may have, and what the threats may be in the future.
● Understand Your Customers
Every business will have a predominant target audience and you need to learn what yours is. Your core target audience may have a set age range, gender, locality, geographic, or share similar interests.
You need to understand what your target audience is interested in, where do they go online, what social media profiles they have, and anything else of value.
Related: OKR software can help your team track and measure their goals
3. Set Achievable Goals
Everybody wants to be number one in the Google rankings, but this will not be a realistic target for many of you in the beginning. For that reason, ensure that your goals are achievable. Perhaps you want to increase the traffic to your website by 20% in a set number of months? Or maybe you want to focus on increasing your followers on social media platforms?
Each marketing strategy can use these smaller targets to slowly contribute towards your overall goal set out in step 1.
4. Work Out Your Plan Within Your Budget
You will have a set budget that you will need to work within for your digital marketing campaign. You now have to decide how you plan to use that budget to reach your desired targets. You want to aim for optimal results and the best ROI for the budget you have.
This could be to trust your in-house team to deliver or to outsource some of your tasks to firms such as Stuartkerrs.com. The channels you are using will also have to be discussed. Will your budget allow you to pay for Facebook Ads or will you build your brand awareness more organically? These are all considerations you need to think about.
5. Put an Action Plan in Place
The last step is putting it all together. You need to come up with an actionable plan for your strategy. This involves organising your team and setting actionable steps for your strategy. Using collaborative tools is a great way to allow your team to work together on the project.