Digital strategy allows companies to take advantage of newer technologies to improve the ways they can compete in their markets and serve their customers. The implementation occurs across all media and it includes the following steps:
1.Develop your Buyer Persona
For any marketing strategy (whether online or offline), you must know who you are targeting. The best digital marketing strategies are configured from a specific buyer persona and, therefore, creating these profiles is the first step any company must follow.
“Represent your ideal customers and can be created through research, surveys and interviews with your company’s target audience. It is important to note that, wherever possible, this information should be based on actual data and not speculation.” – Duro.
What kind of information should you include in your own buyer persona to plan your digital marketing strategy? That depends on your business and will vary if you have a B2B or B2C company, or if your product is high or low cost. Below, we suggest some starting points, but you can modify them according to the needs of your company.
Source: BGH
2. Identify the Digital Marketing Goals and Tools you Will Need
Your marketing objectives should always be related to the objectives of your company. For example, if your company’s goal is to increase online revenue by 20%, your goal as a marketing professional will be to increase the number of leads through the website by 50%, compared to the previous year.
If you have questions about writing SMART goals, go back to Chapter 1 where we cover this topic in depth. No matter what your main objective is, you need to know how to measure it, that is, have the right digital marketing tools.
3. Evaluate your Existing Digital Marketing Channels and Materials
- Own Resources
This category refers to the digital materials that belong to you or your company. They can be your website, your social media profiles, the content of your blog or your images. Your own channels are the ones that your company controls completely.
- Obtained Media
The means obtained refer to the exposure you get through word of mouth recommendations. Whether it’s the content you distribute on other websites (eg, guest posts), the public relations work you do, or the customer experience you deliver, the obtained media is the recognition you receive as a result of those Actions. You can get media with mentions in the press and positive comments, when other people share your content on social networks, etc.
- Paid Media
This category is quite clear and refers to any medium or channel in which you invest money to capture the attention of your buyers. This includes Google AdWords ads, paid posts on social media, native ads (such as sponsored posts on other websites), and any other means you pay directly for visibility.
Gather everything you have and classify each media or material in a spreadsheet so you can have a clear view of all your company’s media.
4. Do an Audit and Plan your Own Resources
At the center of digital marketing are your own media, which is almost always presented in the form of content. Content is everything your brand transmits, be it your “our company” page, your product descriptions, blog posts, ebooks, infographics or social media posts.
To create your digital marketing strategy you must decide what content will help you achieve your goals. If your goal is to generate 50% more leads through your website compared to the previous year, it is very likely that an ebook hidden in a form on your website will attract a large number of leads and, as a result, this it’s the type of content you should take advantage of.
Here are some simple steps to determine which of your own content you need to meet your digital marketing goals.
- Audit your Existing Content
Set up a list of your own existing content and rank each item based on past performance against your current goals.
- Identify Deficiencies in your Existing Content
Based on your buyer persona, identify any deficiencies in your current content. For example, if your company specializes in online classes and, during your audience research, you discovered that your ideal consumer’s main problem is finding interesting ways to study. If you have nothing related to this topic, that is the deficiency of your content.
- Create a Content Creation Plan
Based on your findings, draw up a content creation plan that details the content you need to achieve your goals.
Source: BGH
This can be a simple spreadsheet and should also include budget information, if you plan to outsource content creation, or an estimated time, if you will create content yourself.
5. Do an Audit and Plan your Obtained Media
Evaluating your previous obtained media versus your current goals can help you figure out where it’s best to focus your time. You can obtain this information through tools such as Google Analytics. You may find that a specific article you contributed to the industry press attracted a large volume of qualified traffic to your website. Or you may find that LinkedIn is the site where the most people share your content.
6. Do an Audit and Plan your Paid Media
This process is practically the same. You should evaluate your existing paid media across all platforms (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter, etc.) to determine what is most likely to help you achieve your current goals.
If you have invested a lot of money in AdWords, but have not obtained the desired results, it may be time to adjust your approach, or even eliminate that expense and allocate your investment to another platform that you think will generate better results.
After carrying out the planning and research processes, you will get a good overview of the elements that will be part of your digital marketing strategy. Now is the time to unify all this to form a solid strategic document.
The strategy document should establish the series of actions you will take to achieve your goals based on the research you have done up to this point. An Excel sheet is usually the best format for this document.
In addition, you will need to design your strategy for an extended period (usually 12 months or more, depending on how your company is established), so it is useful to indicate when you will carry out each action.
Source: BGH
With this approach, you should also develop a structured timeline for your activities, which will help you communicate your plans to other members of your company.