Advertising on billboards, newspapers, and magazines have met a worthy opponent. Nowadays, in this technological age, you have to be quick to keep up with trends and deliver your company’s message. Creating a digital strategy has become a must.
Lucky for you, our marketer’s guide (and digital strategy template!) will show you how to build your very own digital strategy to grow your business online!
Our business and marketing professionals have outlined the first 5 steps on how to build your digital media strategy to grow your online business effectively. These steps include:
A digital strategy is
A digital strategy requires a sound digital marketing campaign. Digital marketing strategies are a shorter-term set of tasks and actions that help a digital strategy get off the ground.
To clarify, digital marketing strategies involve more tactical measures and performance (e.g. impressions on social channels) and digital strategy deals with more holistic objectives and outcomes (e.g. new clients from lead generation).
For example, if your end goal is to generate more leads from the internet, you may want to carry out a digital strategy that focuses on search engine optimization (SEO).
By investing more in website design and valuable content, your site could rank higher in search engines and eventually generate more leads through this channel.
Whether building a website, blog, or a full blown campaign for your company, you will need a strategy to guide your steps to success.
Be sure to download our digital strategy template so you can start building your strategy as you continue reading this article! Click on the image below to get access!
Make a copy of the google doc so you can edit the template and keep it for yourself!
Let’s jump in and see the steps needed to create a digital marketing strategy.
First off, when developing your digital marketing strategy you have to conduct an internal and external situational analysis (SWOT analysis) of the business.
SWOT analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The strengths and weaknesses are internal, relating to the company. Opportunities and threats are external, relating to the market.
To complete this step, you should be aware of internal and external factors such as competition, uniqueness, capital, etc.
Here is an example of a SWOT analysis below:
This SWOT analysis is in a digital marketing context, just like yours should be for this situation.
This detailed chart is what you want to aim for when you create your own SWOT analysis. Similarly, notice how illustrative it is with the statistics and descriptions.
Once you have an idea about the market opportunities, work on defining your digital marketing goals to understand where your actions should take you.
Everything from here on out should be about getting you to those goals!
For example, think of your business as a flying airplane. If you don’t have specific goals, the winds change or the weather worsens and sudden problems can put your business off course or even worse, crash it.
I’m sure none of us want this happening.
Now, you don’t want to miss this next part.
An easy way to define these goals is by creating a SMART goal.
Designed by Professor Peter Drucker in his management by objectives concept, SMART is an acronym for
A SMART goal includes all of these criteria to make your goals easier to understand and achieve.
For example, instead of defining your goal as “I want to start an online business where I sell bracelets.”
You could say, “By next week I will create an Etsy account to ship out the bracelets I make to my customers. In a month I’ll have made 50 bracelets to sell and I’ll aim to sell a minimum of five bracelets per week. This will build relationships and good word of mouth.”
How awesome and SMART is that?
Now that your goals are set, let’s look at the most crucial piece of the pie when building out a strategic online plan.
It’s crucial to understand your audience so you can market to them effectively!
A target audience is a specific group of people with shared characteristics who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.
Since you’ve conducted a SWOT analysis and defined your business’s goals, you can get more specific with your target audience. For example, you can find similar characteristics your target market shares like gender, age, hobbies, interests, employment, etc.
The possibilities are endless!
Once you have created a specific set of characteristics for your target audience based on your ideal consumer, you will be able to build out your digital marketing strategy more effectively.
We recommend that you walk in your target persona’s shoes.
Think like your target audience and reflect on questions like:
Understanding the answers to these questions will help you build out your digital marketing strategies
There are different types of marketing channels you can choose to improve your online presence. Some channels include email marketing, blogging, social media, and more.
Unless you have an infinite budget, it may be difficult to incorporate all these mediums into your overall digital marketing campaign.
In other words, you will have to identify which channels that will provide the most benefits to your business.
Choosing the best digital channels to promote your product or service is definitely not a randomized one.
First off, you need to understand how these specific channels will drive your business’s goals.
To do so, you will have to look back at steps one through three and pull from some digital marketing expertise to understand which mediums are best to choose.
An important thing to note is that your decisions will not always go with the most popular trends or major platforms to conduct business. The goal is to align elements of your strategy to cater to business needs and your consumer.
For instance, online retailers may avoid the Amazon Marketplace because they may have their own online store they want to drive sales to.
Another digital strategy example could be that some businesses would want to prioritize advertising on Instagram and Facebook than they would promoting their business on LinkedIn.
The best platforms to market a product or service depends on the target audience and where they are most responsive.
The best marketing strategies to implement for your business will depend on your goals, target persona, and budget. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy that anyone can recommend without knowing the in’s and out’s of a given business.
If you’re still unsure about what the right digital plan is for your business, the best thing to do is to consult online business and marketing experts.
Here’s the bottom line:
Digital marketing is an integral part of business that you would be at a BIG disadvantage without. Developing online is become more important than ever before, and finding the right tools and strategy will determine the success of your business!
If you need digital strategy consulting for your online business growth, look no further!
Our experienced team of digital marketers help businesses grow online using the latest in digital growth trends and proven strategic marketing efforts.
Message our digital strategists at hola@colibricontent.com to see how we can help sell your product or service online!
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