Digital Marketing 101

There are three goals that I like to align with from a high-level business perspective that ties into Digital Marketing.

1)???Brand Awareness. We are creating awareness, letting people know that we exist.?The 1980s movie, “field of dreams” Has the iconic line, “If you build it, they will come.”?Well guess what, this does not actually work in the real world. That's just the movies. That's just cinema. You have to tell people that you exist. They won’t come until they know that you exist.?Digital Marketing helps you to create awareness that you have an offering.

2)???Lead Generation. ?A vital component of any business is who’s going to buy from you next.?Digital Marketing allows you to attract new opportunities to your business.

3)???Nurture Opportunities.?Even more important is the nurturing that happens once someone is aware that you exist, digital marketing is a fantastic asset in reminding your audience that you are there, you are a resource that provides value and you have a solution to their problem.

There are a lot of ways and tactics that you can implement to really leverage digital marketing to build brand awareness, generate leads, and nurture those opportunities.

How do you get started?

At the end of the day, getting started requires you to think about the end goal. First, you have to really understand what is it that you're trying to achieve. I'm a big believer in the Book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. My favorite habit is #2 - start with the end of mind. Before you build any plan, any strategy in any part of your business, not just marketing, you really need to get clear on what is it that you're trying to achieve. We're a big fan of SMART goals Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Sensitive.

I always like to align it with the like of a GPS device, you know where you're going, you plug it into your phone, and then the technology is detecting where you are right now. It's identifying any potential detours or roadblocks that could impact how you're going to get there. The GPS is building that path with a couple of options to help you get to your destination. We all know how that GPS device works; it is the same thing when it comes to building out your digital marketing strategy. You know where you want to go, the next step is to evaluate where are you today.

Evaluating where you are today.

This task is completed by looking at the data that you have in front of you, looking at your website analytics, looking at your social media activity. If you're at zero, that's okay. If you're just getting started, there's nothing wrong with that. But at least you know where your current state is.

Once you've evaluated where you are today, it's a good idea to take a look at some of your competition. I'm not saying you should always be monitoring your competition, rather, it's a good idea to keep a spot-check pulse on them. Select 3 -4 competitors and gather the same benchmarks as to where they are today. Areas you'll want to consider evaluating include:

• Where are they showing up online? What social channels? Media outlets? Forums?
• What are they saying? What's the core messaging strategy? Do they talk services? Products? Culture? Provide education?
• What type of content are they publishing that people are engaging with? Do they get a lot of likes on their social media posts? Is their follower list high?
• How do they show up in the search engines? What keywords are they targeting? Are they focused more on their brand than the offering?
• What kinds of paid ads are they investing in? Are they buying keywords? Paying for Facebook ads?

Understanding where and how your competitors are positioning themselves will allow you to tackle a couple of initiatives on the strategic side of your digital marketing plan. 1) You'll be able to better identify your unique positioning statement. 2) You'll be able to identify the holes or weaknesses in your competitor's strategy, which quickly become major opportunities for marketing your business.

Know your customer

I can't shout this loud enough from the mountain tops for you to hear.

The better you understand your ideal customer, your perfect client, as some say, your soul mate, the better that you can craft messaging that is going to connect and resonate with them.

You need to get inside the head of your ideal customer, and one of the best ways to do that is to start with a conversation with someone you are already working with that you deem to be that perfect customer. You want to attract more of that type of customer to you. Here's a post on our website that talks about these three items: The Big 3 of Marketing Research: Yourself, Your Customer, and Your Competition

Research using digital tools

The internet is a beautiful thing. It allows us to collect data (more on this evolving topic in a future article) and use this information for our own benefit. A number of powerful resources exist that can create efficiencies in our research process. A few of our favorite tools (some you need to pay for, others freemium) to collect data and insights that best help us gather information on behalf of our clients, and will give you a starting point if you decide to tackle this on your own.

• Answerthepublic.com - type in your offering and see what questions are asked online related to your phrase
• SEMrush.com - evaluate how your website is positioned in the search engines and what words they show up for
• Quora.com - see what questions are being asked related to your industry, go ahead and answer it if you are able too.
• Google Keyword Planner - see forecasts for phrases, price to pay for them, anticipated reach

Quick warning, the amount of information you collect can be overwhelming, knowing how to filter it and disseminate what is critical and what isn't takes a strategic perspective. Keystone Click is happy to assist as our digital strategists perform this research and analysis for our clients.

Build your digital marketing plan

Sure, this sounds so easy to do. There are a number of factors that you need to consider when building your digital marketing plan, the most important is going back to understanding your customer. Map out your customer journey from the perspective of understanding the types of content you need to create and where you need to distribute that content. Look at the various stages of their buying journey and support the path to help them make the correct buying decision (buying from you!).

Types of content to create

What type of content will you be creating? You can easily create a number of different types of content pieces, based on your research, you should be able to identify how your target customer prefers to digest new information.

Digital content can be broken up into a couple of buckets. Your digital marketing strategy should include a mix of

• Owned Media - This is exactly as it reads, the information that you own. Think about your website, your blog, your videos, your infographics, your research, your podcasts, your email list. You'll want to focus more of your efforts on owned media than the other two media types as they typically cost less than earned and paid media. Owned media tends to have a longer time to convert, but also lasts a lot longer than earned and paid media.
• Earned Media - The opportunity to have someone else rave about your business and expertise is huge. Interviews on podcasts or videocasts, reviews, and awards are all earned media. This is definitely a component that can happen organically but having a plan on how to obtain earned media should be an element of your marketing strategy.
• Paid Media - Paying for exposure can be extremely beneficial to expedite the results of your A/B testing and convert to a full-fledged campaign. Once you've obtained the target conversion rate with your paid initiatives, then it's time to scale. Paid media includes social media advertising, pay-per-click advertising, retargeting, and a number of varieties where you pay for exposure on another channel.
• Social Media - Actually falls into all three of the buckets above. You create and publish content on social media channels (owned media). You can obtain exposure from others talking about you and your brand on their social media channels (earned media) and you can pay for exposure on the various social media channels (paid media).

Build a content calendar

Now that you know the types of content to create and after you've done the research on the topics that you should focus on and where to place that information, the next logical step is to build out a calendar that tells you what you plan to post and where and when. Often, having a weekly plan that simply says what you will post per day is helpful. Then look at potentially having a theme to your content on a monthly or quarterly basis. For example, we decided that the 4th quarter is all about marketing automation. So, social posts, webinars, email newsletters will all relate to that topic to some degree. We still post other content, but the bulk is related to the theme of that time period.

When you are creating your content, don't fester too much about always creating something fresh, shiny, and new. We've got a great strategy that teaches you How to Repurpose Your Content to Maximize Your Reach.

About Keystone Click.

Keystone Click is a strategic digital marketing agency. We help our clients build brand awareness, generate leads, and nurture those opportunities by conducting research and building and implementing a plan that is focused on helping our clients achieve their business goals. Connect with one of our brilliant team members today. www.keystoneclick.com