How to Start a Digital Marketing Strategy

Hate to break it to you, but if you haven’t implemented a digital marketing strategy for your business you are a bit behind the curve.

In this article, I’ll show you how to create a digital marketing strategy that works!

With over 3 billion people online, it’s only natural that the current marketing landscape is digital, which is why you need a digital marketing plan to survive in today’s world.

In 2014, a study by Sales force found that 67% of marketers attributed an increase in sales due to their digital marketing strategy, while 64% reported higher engagement rates and 61% experienced increased ROI.

However, only 34% of marketers have a documented strategy in place. For the remaining 66 %, they are essentially walking around in the dark with no clear path to follow to generate successful results.

So, what is a digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy provides the framework your company needs to make the best decisions for strategic development and implementation. Here is how to start online marketing by building a digital marketing strategy framework for your business.

Determine Your Customer Base

When you ask yourself, ‘What is digital marketing strategy,’ you should automatically think about your customers.

The very foundation of your digital marketing strategy relies on a firm understanding of your customer base to generate leads and produce conversions. 

The more you’re able to narrow down your target audience, the better results you’ll generate by eliminating irrelevant prospects.

Your target audience is the main key when trying to figure out how to do digital marketing. 

In fact, according to a study by Juniper Research, a targeted approach has the potential to improve conversions rates by as much as 355% from email marketing alone, potentially increasing profits by 781%. 

To begin defining your customer base, you should do the following:

• Analyze customer profiles.
• Evaluate current and future customer cycles.
• Observe and predict customer response and purchase behaviour.
• Define customer channel preference.

To elaborate on that last point, channel choice is incredibly important. Where are your customers? 

After you find that out, make sure you are marking in those areas. This is the most crucial step when creating an online marketing campaign.

Understand Customer Pain Points

Your digital marketing strategy needs a unique approach that offers customers what your competitors are lacking. This is key to understanding how to do digital marketing properly.

To better understand your customers’ needs, walk a mile in their shoes to discover their pain points and how you’re able to resolve their issues. 

Craft a Value Proposition

When it comes down to it, a company’s value proposition can be one of the biggest deciding factors in just how many conversions it gets. 

Your business’s value proposition outlines what makes your business unique. It’s the reason people should choose your company over any other. It’s the phrase that tells your target audience the value you can offer them.

Your value proposition needs to be specific, and it needs to address the problems that you can help your customers solve.

With a unique proposition, you’ll show customers why you deserve their time, trust, and money. 

Your value proposition should:

• Address customer pain points, and clearly express the benefit your product or service brings to your target audience
• Be clear and concise. Anything too long will lose your readers
• Be prominently displayed on your website, above the fold.

With your value proposition developed, you can then: 

• Develop a unique, tightly focused approach that’s appealing to your customer.
• Build a strong personality within the industry with statements that add value.
• Strategically craft your online marketing campaigns with tailored marketing tactics.
• Leverage industry personalities and influencers to strengthen your message.

Determine How Much Business You Want to Generate

The growth goals behind your digital marketing strategy will move your company forward by giving you something to work towards. 

By determining how much business you want to generate, you’ll have achievable goals to keep you focused. 

You should aim to increase your planned growth by at least 70% each quarter. 

To accomplish this, determine the number and frequency of your goals by:

• Evaluating your current position.
• Setting 1-2 core goals and 3-5 supporting goals.
• Choosing a growth path that’s specific and realistic.
• Determining a means to reach the goals.
• Creating a long term path to follow for future growth opportunities.
• Quick note: do not forget to account for attrition in your business model.

Align Your Internal Growth Strategy with Your Lead Strategy

With your projected business growth in place, establish how you’ll generate enough leads to achieve your goals. 

Without the support of a lead generation strategy, your growth will become stagnant. 

Using the goals you’ve created, you can:

• Audit your current marketing funnels.
• Narrow your target to include a relevant customer base.
• Leverage existing databases.
• Appeal to customers to understand their needs.
• Work to build referrals and repeat business.
• Offer incentives to capture leads.
• Give customers what they want.

Evaluate SEO, Email, Affiliate Marketing, Inbound Marketing, and Online Advertising

You can’t rely on social media or SEO alone, or you’ll be missing a huge chunk of opportunities.

All digital marketing channels must be implemented and work together by creating:

• A targeted SEO strategy that’s supported by a content marketing campaign for searchability and engagement.
• Utilize email marketing to generate leads and conversions and to re-market.
• Benefit from affiliate marketing (make sure you have a variety of pipelines).
• Implement inbound marketing to attract more leads.
• Use online advertising channels, including social media ads to produce visibility and engagement.

Set Your Budget

When setting your budget, don’t think of it as a cost but an investment that will pay for itself as your business grows due to your well-rounded digital marketing projects.

Here’s a sample strategy I recommend: Spend 70% of your budget on avenues that you already know are effective, with the remaining 20% focusing on safe new options and 10% on experimental channels. Forty-seven percent of your budget should focus on SEO and SEM, with 10 percent targeting mobile marketing and 34% dedicated to display advertising. Use your remaining budget to target email marketing and content marketing.

Give It Your All

When considering how to start digital marketing, you can’t be afraid to fail. 

Jump in with both feet, but don’t become discouraged if you don’t see results immediately.

Often, it takes trial and error to find the perfect approach to generate the results you expect. 

Through this process, you are creating your own lead generation machine. Building it is the hard part. Once it is in place, all it takes is a little maintenance.

Digital Marketing Strategy Tactics

There are a great number of ways to implement a digital marketing strategy in your business. 

Here are a few tactics that can help boost your online presence and conversion rate:

• SEO
• PPC
• Content Marketing
• Email Campaigns
• Social Media Campaigns
• Video Ads
• Landing Pages
• Intriguing Calls-To-Action
• Backlinks
• Digital Marketing Automation

By incorporating any of these digital marketing tactics into your strategy, you will increase your website traffic and boost your sales.

Sometimes you don’t have time to work on DIY digital marketing, and you don’t have nuts and bolts set-up a digital marketing strategy. Unicc InnovationFX helps accelerate online presence and drive new business.