Crafting a Digital Marketing Strategy

Nowadays, digital marketing strategy has been one of the effective approaches to promote your product or services.

Think about it, every activity with an end goal in life with an end goal always starts with a plan. Whether it’s playing a game of chess, building your professional career, selling a product, building a city, or even larger battles like winning a war, there is always a blueprint in place for every person in the organization to follow. In a war, soldiers follow the orders given to them. 

However, when it comes to digital marketing, there is no single definitive approach. Sure, there are blueprints, but not every journey is the same for every company. To be efficient, every company must build its own roadmap.

Fortunately, there are still questions businesses can use as a guide in the whole process. In this article, we will share with you these questions and how it can help you craft a digital marketing strategy.

A sound digital marketing strategy needs to cover several questions such as who you or your company are, what you are offering, to whom are you offering it to, and lastly, why and how are doing so. 

Below are the measures and questions that address what a company should be informed of when a plan is being formulated and implemented. Such steps and questions will help you develop a good plan for digital marketing that meets the strategic goals of your company and tackles its challenges.

Context of your Plan for Advertising

The first step towards an effective digital marketing strategy is to analyze the organization’s context and specific stakeholders. In this step, you should start asking yourself the following questions:

• Who are you?
• Why does it matter to your brand? What makes your product useful to your audience and valuable?
• What’s the background you’re working on? How will this change in the future?
• Who is your targetted customer? What are their needs, desires, and desires? Can you fulfill your needs, your desires, and your expectations?
• Who are your rivals? In this question, you should look beyond the organizations that compete with you on the basis of price and product. You should also consider the competitors in the form of abstracts such as time and mindshare.

If you are still unsure of the answers to some of these questions, we highly suggest doing thorough market research. The answers to these important questions will be published.

Give value to your Marketing Strategy?

Now that you have the answers to the above questions and the market situation has been fully examined, the next logical step is to examine the value proposition or promise. Look closely at your organization’s particular market value.

It is really important to identify the supporting value that adds to your brand promise that makes it unique to the digital landscape. Ask yourself another question – what other extras are you offering your customers aside from the basic product or service?

Today, the internet can provide you with several ways to create value. However, it is your target audience who will truly define what is ‘valuable’ to them. In able to know the answer to this question, you need to do your research on your targeted customer base and gather insights as to what they want and need. 

One great way to do this is through content marketing. This is the process of conceptualizing and creating content. You can create a values-based content based on your niche. For instance, a DIY gardening video content is ideal for hardware brands, a fun infographic could be a great way to reel your audience in if you are a marketing company, and so on. 

Objectives

The third step on the list is determining your objectives. There are four main aspects to consider when setting the digital marketing target. One of them is objectives, the others are tactics: key performance indicators or KPIs and lastly, targets. 

The targets are important for any marketing effort. Without objectives, there is no direction or end goal, or win conditions to your marketing strategy. Now, take your time, step back and ask yourself, “why do we do any of these things?”, it is also important to ask yourself what your goal is, what purpose or outcome are you looking for? Here are some more questions to ask:

• What are you trying to achieve?
• How do you know when you succeed?

Your company objectives need to be SMART, check out what this means below:

• Specific – your objective must be clear, concise and detailed. A vague and general objective rarely produces a great result. 
• Tangible – the target must also be tangible. it helps you to determine whether you are producing the desired results.
• Attainable – though dreaming big, and aiming for the moon is highly desirable your target must always be something that your company can accomplish based on the resources available to you.
• Realistic – exaggerating and overestimating what can be achieved is not always ideal, there are times when your objective must be sensible and based on the data and trends. Do not push unrealistic goals.
• Time-bound – ultimately, the target has to be connected to a specific timeline.

Tactics and Evaluation

Once you have definite digital marketing objectives, you can find plenty of digital tools and tactics that are available. Each strategy has its own strength. For example, search ads can be the best way to acquire and gain new customers, while email is one of the most effective tool to sell more goods to your existing customer base.

There are different online tactics such as SEO strategy, search advertising, online advertising, affiliate marketing, video marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. Each one plays a different role for your company, and each one should be utilized to its full potential. 

Once you have set your goals and strategies, you must review and re-evaluate them against your organization’s requirements and resources to ensure that your digital marketing plan is on the right track. Keep in mind that no opportunities should be overlooked. 

Continuous Optimisation

It is extremely important for brands to be versatile, flexible and agile when it comes to online marketing. Thanks to the ever-growing technology, there are new tactics and platforms that emerge every week. Additionally, you will also find that customer behaviors change over time, and that people’s needs and wants from a brand evolve as their relationship grows.

So, what does this mean for you? This means that you need to challenge yourself to break through the online clutter and connect with your customers in an original and meaningful way.

As you start your strategy formulation, your digital marketing strategy will undergo constant change. This will help you change and refine your tactics and strategies as you go. You need to be open-minded and the approach for digital marketing should be creative and evolutionary.

Now, do you feel ready to move forward and craft your digital marketing strategy? Keep going back to these questions and guidelines until you have mastered and developed your own digital marketing strategy perfectly. 

© Image credits to Steve Johnson