7 steps to creating a comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy

Have you already created a Digital Marketing Strategy for your business in 2020? Well if you haven’t , let’s do it now.

Yes, we will be doing it together and this is how it will work; I will give you 7 steps you can follow to create a comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy and since you obviously understand your business better, you will customize those steps to fit your business.Simple, right? Let’s dive straight into it.

Step #1 SWOT Analysis

The first step you need to take when creating your Digital Marketing Strategy is to analyze your marketing assets, environment, challenges or limiting factors. I recommend that you use the SWOT analysis framework to guide you on this exercise.

It allows you to look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your business and market.

Step #2 Set Goals

Establish digital marketing goals that resonate and complement your overall business goals, for example, if your goal as a business is to increase sales by 20% for the year, your marketing goal might be to generate 50 leads per month.

The SMART goals framework is a very effective tool in setting goals that are ; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. An example of a SMART objective is: ‘To attract 5000 visitors to my website per month within 3 months’, instead of just saying : ‘To increase traffic to my website.’

Step #3 Define your Target Market

For the implementation of your Digital Marketing Strategy to be successful, it has to be well crafted with right information for the right audience.

Create buyer personas of your target audience by their demographics : age, gender, type of employment etc, psychographics ; buying behavior etc ;interests,hobbies. Having a clearly defined audience to target makes it easy to create relevant content for them and increase their chances of converting into followers, subscribers, leads, ultimately into customers.

Step #4 Channels

Now that you have your goals and a clearly defined Target audience, it is time to choose the platforms where you can reach them. Will you reach them via social media platforms, a blog or website?

Audit your existing channels, improve them, create strategies and tactics that are relevant to your Target Audience, keeping your goals in mind.

*TIP:Identify distribution channels that are best to reach your target audience and the best times to post.

• Facebook : Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 12-4pm
• Instagram: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 11 am – 1pm
• Twitter : Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday around 12pm
• LinkedIn : Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 5pm -6pm

See also Best times to post on Social Media

Step #5 Content Strategy

Write content that your target audience will find educational and useful. Maintain consistency of the type of content you post and tone across all your channels.

Research key words for search engine optimization and create a content calendar, organize your posts and schedule posting.

*TIP Publish content as a blog on your website and share URL link to this new blog on social media.

Step # 6 Campaigns Strategy

The Digital Marketing Strategy is not complete unless it has campaigns. These can be email marketing campaigns, Social media marketing , Google Ads campaigns etc, depending with your goals and target audience.

Make sure your campaigns are well planned and optimized for conversions. You may have a number of channels to manage or combine to achieve certain results, use marketing automation tools to enhance efficiency of your activities.

*TIP Personalize messages based on buyer personas.

Step #7 Monitor and Analyze

This is the last and most important part of creating an effective Digital Marketing Strategy; Monitoring and Analyzing your progress and outcome.

Measuring your performance across all your channels and of your campaigns will enable you to detect what is working and what is not in time to make necessary changes.

Measure your Key Performance Indicators by using tools like Google Analytics, Insights built in some Social Media platforms like Facebook.

Conclusion

Every business that plans to utilize Digital Marketing must invest in the creation of a comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy. This strategy must include; a SWOT analysis of the company and market, establishment of SMART goals, a Target Audience, selected Channels by relevance, Content Strategy, campaigns strategy and ways to monitor and analyze progress and outcome.

Good luck on creating your Digital Marketing Strategy!! Alternatively , contact us, our Digital Marketing experts will assist you with one customized to your business, based on an extensive research of your industry, market and competitors.