According to the study, 46% of brands do not have a defined digital marketing strategy. In comparison, 16% have a strategy but have not yet integrated it into their marketing activity. But here’s one thing: If you don’t have a plan, how can you expect to grow and innovate, measure meaningful results, and learn from past mistakes?
It is time to stop anxiety about the next year or the next month and start preparing a plan that can pack a powerful punch. We have selected the five most important steps for you, which the decision-maker must take to ensure that your digital marketing attempts produce a real impact on your bottom line.
1- Know What You Want (& Set the Objective)
Define your business’s overall mission/objective first – your digital marketing mission should fit into your grand plan.
Answer this question: What overriding objective do you want your digital marketing efforts to achieve. This is your mission.
- Get specific with your KPI by identifying the data you will be held accountable for obtaining.
- Be realistic with your KPI by analyzing your first digital marketing effort.
- Identify a method that can help you to measure each of your KPIs.
2- Analyze Your Past and Learn From Your Mistakes
You should not (and should not) go into the planning period in the dark. Analyzing past successes and failures of your digital marketing strategy can help you focus on determining the best KPI for your business. Therefore, you may want to complete steps one and two simultaneously.
Choose the time period you want to analyze (it is best to set this time period as the same time period for your new marketing strategy).
Analyze:
- The time period you set for analyzing and setting your Google Analytics calendar to match this time period.
- Try Google’s benchmarking report in your Analytics account to compare the progress of your competitors.
- Don’t forget to analyze your competitors’ marketing strategy and create a spreadsheet analyzing your online activities (you can use SEMrush to identify a competitor’s SEO strategy, which is, which keywords have the largest amount of organic traffic your website Are running. It can be used to compare organic and paid traffic to various websites so that it is useful again to see how aggressive they are with their paid spend.)
3- Remember Who You’re Talking to
Do not let the plan go away from the people you are trying to reach. You already know who your audience is (at least we hope you are too), but sometimes those are the first things a digital marketer can forget between KPI settings, budget fretting, and channel selection.
Develop a helpful persona:
- Start with the origin and note down all demographic information about your target consumers – such as gender, age, and location.
- Dig a little deeper and identify the things that can help you solve your target personality.
- Document their emotional desires, goals, aspirations, apprehensions, and all the factors that can tickle them (think of their conscious and unconscious desires).
- You can dive deep into the Reports Audience report of your Google Analytics account to identify key characteristics of your target personality such as age, gender, career, etc.
- When building your personality, this is the right time to identify the people who will be effective for them – these will be the influencers that your marketing strategy should target.
4-Identify Your Means (& Stick to Your Budget)
Three things are essential for identifying your tools: your budget, digital channels, and your team (or people). It is crucial to take stock of all your resources before deciding what else you need for the next period.
How to identify your meaning:
Your budget:
- Define your entire digital marketing budget.
- Look at the historical data of what you have done before (for example, has a particular channel brought you quality leads at a low cost?)
- Decide whether you will use paid promotions (AdWords or paid advertising on social media).
- Allocate a specific budget for each digital channel you want to use for paid promotions (with the most significant reach and conversions and the lowest cost per click) to assess your most cost-effective digital channels.
- If a certain element of your paid promotional strategy is not bringing the results you want, then revisit it and invest the allocated budget data in the channel that brings the best results for you.
Your people:
- Look at your present team and assess what you can achieve (be realistic here and make sure no one will stretch or overwork).
- Identify if you require to hire more people and whether you have the means to do so.
- Decide whether all your digital marketing activity will take place in-house or whether you will need to outsource some elements to a third-party agency.
- Get each team member to review your digital marketing activity and consider some ideas for future marketing strategy. The more liberty your employee has in their job role, the more they can be beneficial in executing your new plan.
Your channels:
Analyze your current digital marketing channels and decide which channels to keep and whether you want to invest in something new (it depends on where your customers are and how much time you have).
Clarify clearly what you want to achieve with each digital channel.
Make sure that at least one KPI is connected to each of your digital channels.
5- Make the plan and Don’t Stick to It
Make a plan and do not stick to it…really? But, but, what do you mean? ‘Before panic sets in the most organized sector of digital marketers … we know that your plan will never be right from the start. Not every assumption you make will be correct.
Create Your Digital Marketing Calendar:
- Try to create your timeline using Google Calendar – this way, you can share it with your team and allow them to edit your tasks whenever necessary.
- Highlight the significant campaigns that you will create and promote throughout the year and allocate a time frame for each.
- Digital channels must be documented to ensure success for each campaign.
Review your marketing strategy and identify the necessary changes:
- Create a measurement and monitoring plan (it should fit with your KPI).
- Check the success of individual elements of your digital marketing strategy at frequent intervals.
- If something is not working (i.e., you are not achieving the KPI you set), separate the elements and try to identify what is not working (e.g., this is the time when Are you posting content or the tagline you are using for your ads?)
- Revisit your previous analysis, personality, budget allocation & try something new.
- Make a clearly defined KPI for your new peril.
If you want to scale up your business with an effective business marketing strategy, you can contact us. Our digital marketing team will give you in-depth knowledge about all new digital marketing strategies that you shouldn’t ignore in 2021. Call Now!