Probably you might have heard, in digital marketing, if you don’t have strategy, you are not getting anywhere.
A digital strategy is essential before starting any digital marketing activities to achieve your goals.
So you may ask, what is digital marketing strategy?
Digital strategy is a high level plan for how digital technology and channels can be used to achieve the goals of an organisation or business and the role of it is to establish which digital channel or platform can do this and how. It is the integration of website, mobile marketing and digital communication channels for customer acquisition and retention
….ie generating more business!!!
There are compelling statistics as to why your business needs a digital marketing strategy?
A report from Smartinsights.com shows that over 50% of digital marketers have active online marketing programs, but no defined digital strategy at all.
This has increased by 4% from 46% in 2014.
Out of 50%, many digital marketers that do not have well written digital strategy might be using digital channels effectively and might well be generating the results from their SEO, Paid search marketing, email and social media marketing.
Perhaps they might not have good reasons to create a digital strategy.
I believe that without a digital strategy you have no direction and you run the risk of spending your budget without the means of showing any returns on your investment.
I have highlighted five reasons why your business needs a digital marketing strategy for your business.
1. Digital Strategy give you focus & direction so you can stay in control
Businesses that don’t have written digital strategy may have general sense of what they want to do online and what their approach is, but are unlikely to have properly defined KPI and target market and hence they could end up spending more with very little return on investment.
I have met many business owners and digital marketers who would say that I would like to rank for these keywords and get these many social likes.
It is all good to rank for more keywords and get more social followers but not having an end goal is like wasting clean water in drainage and paying bills without making proper use of it.
You need to have a smart and measurable end goals to your campaign that you must be able to track once your campaign starts.
Few ideas of goals could be as below.
- Generate 300 online enquiries in next six months
- Increase social followers in China from 3000 to 7000 in next 8 months.
- Conduct five seminars with 150 people capacity and generate online registrations from these seminars by advertising on internet.
- Increase my ecommerce revenues from $3 million to $5 million by in next 12 months.
Creating well written digital strategies forces companies to tackle these crucial KPIs as well as formulate powerful online value proposition.
A strategy puts you in charge of your digital project. From the first scoping session you’ll have the tools to make sure that your agency is working with your goals in mind.
2. Digital strategy ensures that everyone including your digital marketing agency is on the same page
Many digital Marketers allow themselves to become swept up in putting up fire instead of executing their plan.
They are bombarded with questions like, why you are spending so much money on this marketing, why can’t we generate results etc.
It is very difficult to get everyone on the same page within an organisation or business.
If you have a well written digital strategy, you can communicated effectively, clearly highlight what is going to be done and what results a business or organisation could expect within given timeframe.
It also helps you to define company’s marketing priorities and gives you a way for measuring your success or failure.
A well written digital strategy also puts your agency on notice that they must achieve the results within given timeframe and they must show that what contribution that have made in each chosen channel.
3. Digital Marketing Strategy will help you to target relevant audience
If you have a clear digital strategy,you will have clear audience personas developed.
It is important for your business to know who your real value customers are? Digital marketing strategy will help your business evaluate your audience personas
Once you have identified your customer profiles, a clear digital strategy will help you reach them efficiently, depending on their online behaviour and habits.
Certain customer groups are more likely to search on Google, while others are going to be using social media channels, blogs etc. to find what they are looking for.
With digital strategy plan, you will be able to reach these people who are genuinely interested in your product or service offerings.
4. The Fact: Integrated Digital Marketing campaigns deliver higher ROI.
Many companies are still hesitant to invest huge amounts in newer digital channels.
It’s all about the ROI and traditional means of marketing and advertising have worked in the past. Digital marketing isn’t all about websites. Nor is it focused solely on social networking, or SEO.
By taking the time to make a strategy, you will come to understand the bigger picture, which involves various elements; properties, channels, content and tactics.
Your website, social media profiles and mobile apps are examples of your digital properties, while tactics may include the use of email marketing, PPC advertising, SEO, affiliates or content and bloggers to reach your goals.
A clearly defined digital strategy will help you understand how you can make use of each channel and what message needs to be communicated on these channels.
5. It Allows you to measure success:
The digital marketing landscape is continually evolving and more and more companies are embracing digital channels.
In order to differentiate your company from the competition, data should be at the heart of your digital marketing decisions.
All marketing activities need to be measured for ROI-and digital is no different.
Armed with a strategy, you will have the mechanisms in place to understand your efforts, so you can make tweaks or wholesale changes as required.
Every aspect of your digital activities can be monitored and managed to ensure time and costs are not wasted, but if you fail to strategically make checks on statistics such as bounce rates, landing and exit pages, rankings on Google, you will struggle to meet your goals. Once you have the information in place-and the means to interpret it-you will be able to ensure your online marketing is working to your advantage.
Now it’s your turn.
Writing a strategy does not need to be complicated. Start off with one or two pages describing your goals, tactics and KPIs: That alone will make an enormous difference to your online performance, and you can build a more comprehensive document later down the line.
Start generating more revenue for your business by writing proper digital marketing strategy for your business.
Request a Free Digital Marketing Strategy Workshop
Need help figuring out how to write effective digital marketing strategy for your business? You will leave this workshop with clear, actionable next steps to create your own effective digital marketing strategy.
Please get in touch with an outline of what you’re looking for and we will get back to you to arrange a call to discuss the best workshop options.
