Digital Marketing Strategy & Planning

 customer needs over bells and whistles

Team is consumed with building your web presence and developing your product or service, it's easy to lose sight of the customer you want to target. "When building a brand online, too many people rush to buy ads and acquire traffic to drive revenues by brute force," says Tony Delmercado, co-founder and COO of Hawke Media. "Small efficiency improvements in conversion rates, email capture, and retargeting can pay huge dividends tighten up the mouse trap first, then buy eyeballs. You'll acquire and retain customers more cost-efficiently and keep money in your coffers for higher-risk marketing strategies."

Audit and update your SEO more frequently

You may know your product or service is great, but is it reaching all the people it could be? Search engine optimization can significantly help your brand reach the people who want what you're offering. Industry experts recommend updating your SEO once a quarter; after all, Google updates its algorithm more than 500 times a year. Find the keywords that are making your business gain or lose traction in the search engine cycle in order to make your brand as discoverable and searchable as possible.

Blogging as a Lead Generation Tool.

Speaking of SEO
Posting relevant and valuable content drives traffic to your website and social media pages, while also increasing your ranking in search engines. In fact, marketers who blog are 13 times more likely to experience positive return on investment, and companies that blog generate 67 percent more leads than those who don't.

Each post you create is one more indexed page on your website, making it more likely customers will find you when searching online. It also indicates to search engines that your website is active, which will help surface your content to the top of search engine results. Further, blogging gives your brand a voice, and 91 percent of consumers say they are more likely to buy from a brand that is authentic rather than generic.

Host High-Quality Webinars and Live Events

There are a variety of digital marketing resources you can use to engage with your audience, including webinars, podcasts, and online promotion of live events. To streamline the process of event promotion, try using a third party to make the process seamless. Event technology platforms like Eventbrite help brands create and market an event, as well as promote ticket sales and manage their audience. By getting some external help with the details, you can focus on the big picture and create an experience your customers will remember long after it's over.

Expand and Refine your Email Distribution Efforts

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach your audience, and the fact that it costs nearly nothing to execute makes it one of the best tools to add to your toolkit. Email open rates have increased 180 percent on mobile devices since 2014, and more than half of all U.S. cellphone owners access their email on their phone rather than a desktop.

Email works better than other mobile forms of notifications (like text messages) because they don't cost the consumer anything, can be accessed on devices other than phones, and have more space to deliver a message. Emails keep your audience engaged across platforms, which in turn helps keep your brand top of mind.

Don't give Social Media short shrift

Social media has become one of the biggest tools for marketing any brand. By first finding out what platforms your audience uses, you can then target your posts to the best times and dates to share. Engage with your audience on social media by starting conversations and responding to both praise and grievances. Sixty-seven percent of consumers use social media for customer service inquiries, so make sure that you become a part of that narrative so that you can direct it to a positive outcome.

Make your Marketing Mobile

Even if a desktop version of your marketing content looks great, be sure to check that it translates across devices. Consumers expect cohesion across platforms, and the better accessibility you provide your audience, the more likely they are to purchase.

Remember that authenticity reigns supreme in any of these strategies. Once you have that, an online presence allows you to connect with your audience in ways previously unknown and build a brand that they'll continuously want to engage with.

Here are 7 steps to help you develop a digital marketing strategy or plan that can guide your team to better results.

Think Marketing System not Website

The first step is to stop thinking as your site as an independent concept. A website is one part of a marketing system. Building a more effective website on its own will not make a big impact on your business. Building a more effective digital marketing system will.

A system needs to be managed. That is why you need to set goals and measure them regularly. Start by tracking these metrics.

Traffic Google Analytics Active Users

You can view your site’s traffic performance in Google Analytics. Look for “Active Users” under audience to see the number of visitors to your site.

Contacts

Traffic on its own is not valuable. Converting visitor to contacts shows that you are attracting relevant traffic. You can track contacts in your email marketing system.

Customers

Converting contacts to customers validates that you are attracting the right traffic and contacts. You can access this metric in your accounting system or CRM.

Referrals

Consider implementing a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey to identify which customers may be open to referring new prospects and which ones need additional support.

A healthy marketing system will show growth across all four of these metrics.

Decide who your “Best Customers” are and target them with the Right Offer

No successful business targets everyone. You need to build a marketing system that focuses on a group or groups of people. This is the vital first step in developing your digital marketing plan. Your product or service should deliver more value than anyone else to these groups.

There are a number of ways to think about your best customers.

Segments

You can segment using behavior, demographics, company-specific information, psychology, and geography. You want to find a group that is large, growing, and with fewer competitors. Also, consider the average profitability of each segment.

Personas

Personas let you dig a little deeper. They are fictional profiles of people that represent your target segments. You should identify how they act, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment. This creates a fictional picture of your target customer that feels real.

Here’s a useful guide to personas.

Life Cycle Stage

Customer life cycle also helps with focus. A prospect making an initial contact is just starting to learn about you. A customer that has been with you over one year has different interests. Make sure that you are making the right offers at the right time.

Jobs to be done

Focusing on the jobs that a customer needs to be done is another way to group customers. There are two types of jobs to be done. The main job and the related job. There are functional (requirements / goals) and other needs (emotional, personal, social) with each job. The “job” focus allows you figure out which jobs are the most important and hardest. Then you can fix the problem with your product or service.

Make it easy for the right people to find you

Business growth via digital marketing is about converting web visitors to profitable customers. The website is a big factor in converting visitors. You need to create a traffic building system to grow the denominator (traffic).

To connect with your best prospects, you need to be part of their world.

Advertising

The fastest ways to reach your best prospects is paid advertising.

Retargeting

98% of visitors to most websites don’t convert. Retargeting allows you to show ads to your visitors after they have left your site.

Social Advertising

The free Facebook marketing opportunity is over, but there are opportunities with their paid advertising especially if you have a large Facebook community. LinkedIn advertising is a good option for business-focused organizations.

Google Adwords

Adwords is the driver behind Google success. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad. Set up an account and try Adwords.

Showing up in search results

Search marketing is free though takes a lot of time to do well. It is not instant. You want to target keywords that are popular with your target group. You need to beat companies that are currently ranking for the keyword phrase.

A big ranking factor is your domain and page authority. This is called off page search engine optimization (SEO). Use this authority measurement extension by Moz to review your site. Here’s a great post on how to increase your domain authority.

You also need to optimize your pages. This is referred to as on page SEO. Check out this great guide to on page SEO optimization.

Influencer Marketing

Another way to reach your target market is to partner with other companies. Think about non competitive companies that are already working with your target customers and prospects. The relationship needs to be beneficial for both parties. Offering to provide a guest blog post is a good way to kick off things off.

Email Marketing

Email continues to have the best ROI though you need to build your list. Joining an email list is a low-risk option for website visitors. Lead nurturing can triple the growth of your business.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media is useful from a trust building perspective. Visitors may want to check out that you have a community of interested people. You also want to post content regularly to demonstrate your expertise. Curating content from other experts in your area should be part of your strategy.

Website

Keep it simple

The reality is that people do not read a website. They scan it. Visitors make a decision about whether they will take the next step in seconds. Focus on simple, clear language. Use authentic visuals where possible to communicate your value proposition and values. The strength of your value proposition is the #1 conversion factor. Here are some handy value proposition formula’s to get you started.

Don’t try unusual menu placement or other website features that are not normal. Give users what they expect. Make the next step obvious with only one next step or call-to-action per page.

Be careful about “design” features. For example, image sliders can dramatically reduce your conversion rates.

Use Research

Very few businesses know how to use digital marketing well. You can be “inspired” by top digital marketers. Either competitor or good operator from other industries don’t rely on your opinion, though. Try to do some level of research with your target customers. Use surveys to test logo options, color palettes, image selections, and other key elements. You can also test headline copy with some simple ads on Adwords.

Get Visitors to Act

Here’s some great advice on how to encourage visitors to act or convert. Remember, increasing a conversion rate from 2% to 3% means a 50% increase in sales.

5. Use the right technology

The right technology depends on the maturity of your marketing program. If you are getting started, simple, low cost tools make sense like Squarespace for your website or MailChimp for your email marketing. Larger teams with more experience might consider integrated platforms like Hubspot or Marketo. It is relatively easy to upgrade as your business grows and you become more skilled.

Set SMART growth goals

Most people are aware of the SMART goal setting model.

Specific – Set specific numbers with deadlines.

Measurable – Make sure that you have a way to track your goal.

Attainable – Use your segment research to make sure that you goal is possible given the segment size and level of competition.

Realistic – Do a reality check. Look at your current year’s results. Are the changes that you are planning going to make enough of a difference to support your growth objective?

Time-bound – Have regular check ins (monthly is frequent enough) so you can make sure that you are on track. This also allows you to do a “what’s working / what isn’t” review.

Remember that you need to think about your full customer experience from awareness and top of the funnel engagement to customer success and referral goals.

We have a few spreadsheets built to help model your growth plan. Contact us and we would be happy to send over a baseline model based on your business type to get you started.

Get Help

Planning can be time consuming. Getting some outside help can accelerate the process. Marketing consultants are no longer only for large companies.

The important thing is to develop your marketing system with the right expectations. Don’t try to boil the ocean with an end-to-end rework. Start with a prioritized plan and focus on consistency and continual improvement to the marketing system. The process is likely to include website improvements but only when your strategy work is complete.