DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY – A FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESS

Gone are the days when a sales man would arrive at your door with a free give away sample for you to enjoy and leave you craving to buy the product. The conventional marketing tactic has now evolved and so has the buyers. No matter what service or product you are selling the technology has made everyone aware of their needs and smart enough to choose what they want.     

With the changing trends of consumers and their buying behaviour, the marketing techniques have also shifted towards non-conventional methods, of which the major part is Digital Marketing. Consumers and companies alike are almost always online and on-the-go and it can seem as though this ever-changing digital world can quickly become a daunting one when you are growing a company.

The fact that an average person spends at least 5 hours per day online, stresses enough on the importance of an effective digital marketing strategy.

Amidst this chaos of effectively developing, fine-tuning and managing an agile digital marketing strategy framework with a variety of other roles and activities is what needs to be done to hit the market and grow your business. However, to do so rightly you have to ensure that your digital marketing strategy hits the right goals and targets and is well thought and planned.

Let’s walk through the framework that makes a digital marketing strategy effective:

STEP 1: DEFINE

To build an effective marketing strategy framework, you need to set the goals, know your audience and find out what will trigger their interest to buy your product or service.

a)     Define your audience: Nothing will work if your digital marketing strategy is not tailored to your audience. You need to research and build a profile of your targeted customers based on their interests, demographics, gender, pain points and other such characteristics.

In order to research about your audience

1)     Evaluate your current customers: Review the traits of your existing potential clients such as their interests and likes, age, location, gender etc. As you dig deeper, you will find the patterns and possibly several other characteristics that your clients have in common.

2)     Learn from your competitors: The best source to find out about the consumer preference in your industry is by analyzing your competitors. If your business has an industry leader, strive to learn as much as you can and take advantage of what you read. There are other sources to find out consumer preferences e.g. 

• Industry Reports: Bureau of Economic Analysis provides the relevant statistics and data. You can search other such reports which are relevant to your requirements
• Use Google Surveys: You can create your own surveys to find out about your customers, from your customers.
• Use Facebook Audience Insights: it is one of the powerful tools that gives you the best insights about your customers and helps you create a targeted set of your audience. Furthermore, you can tweak your audience set according to your goals and targets. 

a)     Define your Goals & KPIs:

Every digital marketing strategy has specific goals to achieve, however you need to set the right metrics to measure the achievement of those goals. This helps you to stay focused and on track.

For Example: Your target could be to generate online revenue. This should be tied up with a measurable KPI say generate 50% leads via online conversion or if your goal is to increase the online presence of your brand then a better way to set a target would be Increase 500 followers every month.

Whatever the ultimate digital marketing purpose is, you must be able to assess the effectiveness of your strategy along the way and improve it for the future.

STEP 2  : IMPLEMENT

With the above details you are now ready to sail the boat. Based on your data insights and the targets you have set, you can now bring your digital marketing strategy plan into play. Choose the most appropriate digital marketing channels to engage with your target audience.

The broad categories which you should incorporate in your digital branding strategy includes:            

• Search Engine Marketing/ SEM
• Search Engine Optimization/ SEO
• Pay Per Click Advertising PPC
• Social Media Marketing/ SMM
• Content Marketing
• Conversion Rate Optimization/ CRO
• Email Marketing
• Display Advertising
• Influencer Marketing
• Online PR
• Mobile Marketing
• Website UI/UX Design

To avoid getting lost into the chaos of what to implement and what not to implement in your digital media marketing plan, enlist and analyze the existing channels and categorize the digital assets which you think are a good fit for your strategy.

You can choose the right plan for your business after evaluating and sharing your objective with an experienced Digital Marketing Strategist - Consult our experts at Digital Cloud Hub for a free consultation on this!

STEP 3: EVALUATE

“You cannot manage what you cannot measure”

This phrase is the heart of any marketing campaign you are running i.e., to find out how effective is your digital marketing strategy? Is it actually working and achieving the results required? In order to analyze and track the data after you have executed a well-crafted plan for your business, there are ton of metrics you can use to calculate how well your digital strategy is performing. These statistics will help you find the deeper insights such as, which channels produce more ROI and how you can further refine to improve your ROI or audience insights about which viewers are likely to purchase more.

a) DATA DRIVEN ANALYTICS

Google analytics is one of the most fundamental tools you can use for the tracking purpose. The important thing is to set SMART goals which are data driven such as Web traffic sources, Cost per lead, website traffic leads, returning visitors, online conversion rates, lead conversion rates, click thru rate, customer lifetime value etc. To analyze the audience insights in Google Analytics report; simply navigate to Audience -> Overview and you can view the details and segment the audience according to different traits like demographics, interests, age, location and more

Let’s review a brief example to give you a quick overview on how the analysis works and how you can set SMART goals and select the relevant KPIs:

For example, your business is an E-Commerce site and your objective is to decrease marketing expenses and increase the customer order reservations. According to the broad objective your set goal will be to make a reservation online or to be more specific achieve X number of online reservations per month. Now your digital branding strategy will revolve around the set goals. Once executed you will track your relevant KPIs which can be Conversion rate, Cost per visitor, Average order value. You can add more KPIs like Average time spent on website, Percentage of returning visitors etc. KPIs will help you look at the variables you can control in the process of conversion and ultimately increase the revenue. This will further help you improvise your strategy and find which areas need to be focused

b) TREND AND BEHAVIOURIAL ANAYTICS:

The statistical data will be mere numbers unless interpreted. In other words, instead of looking at raw figures, learn the art of reading hidden tales behind the numbers. You need to have a keen eye for the micro events indicating the slightest change in the trends over time to understand the performance of your digital marketing campaign. This will help you elucidate that how the users are interacting with your brand and unravel opportunities of capitalizing profit and improvising the strategy.

Behavioural analysis can indicate a lot about the user’s search intent. For example, referral URLs and search words used to navigate to the website will tell you a great deal about what issues visitors wants your site to solve. Similarly, you can use data to infer the user experience through which we can look upon the patterns of user behaviour and find out if the audience is pulling off the goals by taking the actions that we want them to and how can they be influenced to achieve those objectives.

For example, analyzing the time spent on the website or number of pages viewed can comprehend interesting insights about how engaging and valuable your website is. Exploring about what your audience is actually interested in by looking at the frequency of the most viewed pages and which pages the users leave can help you improve your content strategy and make it more engaging.

Data analytics does not explicitly determine as to why individuals behave in a certain manner or what triggers their interest but it does provide excellent leads. It is upon us to bring the pieces together, solve the puzzle and complete the picture.

STEP 4: OPTIMIZE

To have a strong final year closing, optimization in all aspects of the organization is the key. Your digital marketing plan is one unique area of your organization to optimize quickly-and with strong emphasis.

In contrast to traditional marketing the digital marketing efforts are not only easier to optimize, they also cost 62% less than traditional, and produce 3X as many leads.

As we mentioned earlier, chaos can have a significant effect on your digital marketing plan. However, with the correct tools and a little bit of know-how, you can calculate the efficacy of your digital marketing efforts and prevent pandemonium. Here are few ways to have an effective digital marketing strategy and enhance the favorable outcome for your brand:

1.      Images and Videos Significantly Improve Engagement

Videos have been a significant part of digital marketing strategy for years, so have been creative images! In the recent years they have not only become more prominent but have notably contributed in increased engagement and leads.

Companies like Teekay are the great example of it, they have developed an impressive video strategy to tell their story through 360o video, allowing viewers to immerse in their experiences, take a look inside pilot’s cabin and some other adventurous experiences. Through this are attracting potential investors without having to travel.

2.      Integrating Social Media in your Digital Strategy

The use of social media with companies and International PR has been there as one of the most effective digital marketing strategy for long! Many big companies have already tested and successfully built strong online presence with the use of platforms like Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram and others while some have only started to test waters after seeing competition performing successfully. Each platform has its unique significance and strategy for customers engagement and leads generation.

Consult our experts to find the best fit strategy for your business.

3.      Website Performance Test

Your website being the number one driver for your clients’ online engagement with your brand and your digital card 24/7 need to be performing well all the time! Your website speed and performance is the first parameter a visitor build your brand’s image on in his mind. Website optimization can be done through a strategically planned SEO which not only improves its performance and user experience but also helps in ranking it in top google searches!

Get a Free Audit for your Website!

Think of your digital marketing strategy as an ongoing process requiring continuous attention and optimization. Your initial strategy might produce promising numbers, it is still crucial to have a quarterly calendar in place for continuous evaluation and improvement of your digital marketing strategy. As online marketing trends change almost daily and changes demand early adoption for ensuring success!

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