Digital Marketing Strategy: The Complete Guide

“Internet” or “Online” is a familiar word. Internet users are spending almost 2 hours approximately on a daily basis as per surveys made by “Statista”, companies keep on searching for different ways to market their products or brand in internet to gain profits.

Perfect Marketing happens only when you are able to connect with your target audience at the right time and right place. Since people are spending so much time on internet, internet marketing is gaining a lot of popularity.

Internet Marketing is also called “digital marketing”, “online marketing”, or “web marketing”. Promoting and selling of products done through digital channels, like search engines, emails, social media etc. is called Digital Marketing. To make it more precise, any marketing done online is called Digital Marketing.

Steps to Make Digital Marketing Strategy a Success

Clear Objectives

What do you wish to achieve on digital media? Have you set specific goals for the same? Do you have ways to achieve them?

Make a list of objectives and goals which you wish to fulfil through digital marketing.

In this way, you will be able to implement the marketing process smoothly once your objectives are clear.

KPI’s are important

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) plays a pivotal role in monitoring and analysing your data. They also help you know what segments are working for you and what segments need to be improved for better results.

In short they measure the performance of your business.

KPI’s differ from business to business. But the main points as to how to measure them is the same for any business.

Always choose KPI which are quantifiable. Measure your company’s progress with straightforward metrics. Though all metrics cannot be directly related, make sure that at least 5-8 metrics are directly related to your business goals.

Consistency is the key to success. As a team, focus on KPI’s set for the business and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal.

Create Customer Awareness

There are lots of products available in the market. How do you make your product known to the customer? In other terms, how do you market your brand or product to a target audience so that they are compelled to buy it?

You need to create awareness about your product in the customer mind. There are many ways in which awareness can be created.

Generate Leads

You can take help of digital marketing tools to generate leads and turn unknown people to prospective customers. A few tools which are useful are:

• Google Analytics tool has a URL Builder which monitors the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and brings traffic to your website.

• SumoMe offers tools that increase your online customers. These tools help generate new leads for your website thus increasing your business.

• Ubersuggest is another digital marketing tool which gives you better keyword ideas. It is one of the best keyword research tools which can help generate leads by giving more keyword suggestions

• MeetEdgar is the best for social media posting. Instead of manual posting you can always plan your schedule of media posting with Edgar. It keeps your group organised and performs the task of creating content marketing strategies also. It connects with all media platforms and you can schedule re-sharing your content and watch your traffic thus increasing ROI.

Promote and Advertise

The main secret of a power packed digital marketing strategy is its traffic. If you can master how to acquire more traffic on your website, you can achieve higher sales and growth.

Grab people’s attention, attract them towards your website, and convert them to subscribers. This can be done by meticulously planning a Digital Advertising Plan.

The basic questions are:

• What is traffic?
• What are the types of traffic?
• How to acquire more traffic?

There are two types of traffic, Paid Traffic and Organic Traffic.

Traffic coming from SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is free and it’s called Organic Traffic. Traffic generated by PPC (Pay per Click) ads is not free. It’s chargeable so it’s called Paid Traffic. Facebook and Google are the best for Paid Traffic.

As per study done by SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, the estimates state that, 87% of search engine dollars are spent on PPC vs. 11% spent on SEO efforts.

Advertising is the key to increasing traffic. It makes your product visible, increases conversions and improves ROI. Make an advertising budget and be sure you get proper responses for the same. You can either put ads in display form or search form.

In Display Advertising, your created ad will be placed in relevant sites for display. Once the customer opens the site, they can view the ad.

In Search Advertising, ads are placed on web pages in search engines. When a customer enters a query related to your ad, the search engine result pages (SERP) will shows your ad.

Customers Acquisition and Retention

Qualify your needs and turn them into prospective customers. Forward the leads to the sales team for follow-up and monitor their feedbacks.

Offer E-books, create website popups for email subscription and engage clients in conversations to increase loyal base.

Instead of focusing on profits, focus on customer prospects. Your main motto at this stage is to keep on acquiring customers rather than monetary benefits.

Customize email messages and interactions with regular customers; get references from them and follow-up with their reference list to acquire more customer base.

“Once a customer, Always a customer” is true but sometimes you may face unsatisfied customers also. Solve their queries and try for retention as soon as possible before they move to competition.

Customer Relationship Development

Now that the customer is aware about your product, and has a liking for it, they will start using it. Develop a strong trust band with your clients through Email Marketing, Digital Advertising, and Search Marketing.

Engage the customer by sending emails for feedbacks, promotional mails etc. Even approach a customer on social media to promote your brand. You can also use content marketing strategy in developing relations.

Re-Edit Strategies Regularly

Analysing your strategy helps in finding loopholes if any. You should even analyse competitor’s strategy also to understand why customers are landing with competitors though both have the same products.

Check for their media platforms, images, contents, their services offered to customers, their rankings and edit your strategy if needed.

These guidelines will help in strategically planning for Digital Marketing. There are many Digital Marketing Services available in the market which helps you to check your website traffic, suggest best online platforms and maintain balance between marketing activities and their results.

Follow Regulations & Guidelines

Whenever you’re successfully marketing a product or advertising something, you need any necessary regulations or guidelines involved in creating ads for your product. This is especially important if you plan to use social media or digital marketing for cannabis sales and/or marketing. Whenever you’re doing a paid ad for such products, you have to follow certain regulations and procedures. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the paid ad regulations for cannabis & CBD if you’re going that route. It’s also critical to find out if there are any regulations or governance required for other paid ads you might be creating for your clients. Staying on top of these things is important to helping you craft effective marketing campaigns for certain types of products.

Professional Digital Marketing Services

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

As per live states report there are more than 1.5 billion websites in the world of which 200 million are active.  From 1 website in 1991 to 1 billion in 2014, there is a tremendous increase in sites over the years.

Search Engine Optimisation helps to improve the ranking of your website in search results. Big search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing etc. have search results wherein web pages, contents, videos, listings and many other relevant things are shown to users. These sites are optimised and ranked by these search engines based on the most relevant details offered to users.

Content Marketing

Using the most relevant content to attract, engage, convert or lead customers is Content Marketing. According to a 2015 IBM Digital Experience Survey, 56% of marketers love personalized content because it engages better.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertisement

PPC means Pay per Click Advertisement wherein the company pays a fee each time the ad is clicked. As per statistics, 64% of consumers click on google ad while buying online. In many cases PPC works better than SEO.

There are many other digital marketing services like Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Website Strategy, Social Media Marketing, Inbound Marketing etc. Select the best which is appropriate for your business.

Digital marketing is a dream for many. The amount of digital ad spent worldwide is predicted to reach over $375 billion by 2021.

So keep patience, use the right resources, choose the proper services, aim your goals and utilize this digital technology to achieve your dreams. Good Luck.