7 Digital Marketing Strategies That Actually Work

Considering we have entered a new Digital Age, it’s safe to say that digital needs to be a big focus in your marketing strategy. Creating a digital marketing strategy for a brand doesn’t have to be difficult—it can be insightful and fun. Digital presents brands with incredible opportunities to target new and large audiences in ways that are genuinely engaging. 

Consumers are spending more time online, which gives brands the opportunity to study their online behaviour more. This means creating a digital marketing strategy for startups or established brands can be more accurate and effective than ever before. 

The constantly changing nature of the digital landscape can be overwhelming to keep up with if you aren’t prepared with an effective digital marketing strategy. Creating a digital marketing strategy involves many tasks and responsibilities that need to be monitored in order to help your business grow. 

We’ve pulled together a list of marketing strategies you should consider when creating or developing your digital marketing strategy.

Creating a digital marketing strategy 2021

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that helps your business achieve your digital goals through carefully considered online marketing channels such as paid, earned and owned media. Your digital marketing strategy should also help you achieve your overarching marketing objectives. 

Know your audience

One of the best ways to understand your audience is to create different buying personas for your types of customers. This will help you identify exactly who you are marketing to, which also leads you to the how. By using a mixture of quantitative, qualitative, demographic and psychographic data, you can fine-tune and tailor your digital marketing strategy to suit your audience. 

The key pieces of information you need to know are:

1. Location
2. Age
3. Disposable income
4. Career and job title
5. Goals
6. Challenges
7. Priorities
8. Hobbies and interests

These pieces of data will tell you where you should focus your digital marketing efforts (eg. the different social media platforms) and the type of content that best works for your audience (eg. long-form blog posts, infographics or videos). 

Know your goals and the tools you need to achieve them

Your digital marketing goals should relate to your overall marketing and general business goals. For example, if your business goal is to increase online sales by 30%, your digital marketing objective could be to generate 50% more leads. 

While having your goals and objectives defined is the first step, the second is to find a way to measure them. Many social media sites offer basic analytic tools that are a good starting point. However, as your business grows you may have to invest in digital marketing tools that will help you track key metrics and data. For example, if one of your main digital marketing strategies is to host a newsletter, you may want to use a tool such as HubSpot to track your contacts and leads. 

Assess your existing digital assets and channels

Looking at what you already have can be overwhelming, so it’s good to split it into 3 media types: owned, paid and earned. 

Owned media is precisely what it sounds like—it’s channels and media you own. This can be your brand’s website, blog, social media channels, imagery or videos. It’s usually branded and you have complete control over it. 

Paid media is where you spend money in order to catch the attention of your audience, on any platform or channel. This includes search ads, display ads, affiliate or influencer marketing, or any other medium where you pay in order to receive increased visibility. 

Earned media is the exposure you receive as a result of word-of-mouth. This doesn’t just literally mean people talking in person, it can be through online shares, reviews, mentions, user-generated content and viral content. 

Within these media types, you can see which perform the best and which need a little bit of extra work. Remember to always measure their performance back to achieving your digital marketing goals.

Plan owned media campaigns

Owned media is the heart of your digital marketing strategy. The majority of the time, owned media comes in the form of content. Content not only improves your online presence, but turns leads into conversions. If this owned content is search engine optimised (SEO), then you can organically boost your content to relevant audiences thanks to SEO keywording. 

So how do you plan an owned media campaign?

The first step is to see what you’ve already posted and rank them from highest to lowest performing in terms of your digital marketing objectives. 

Once you have a list of all your content, you can identify any gaps you may have (you can use your buying personas to help you here). You could be missing out on creating more informative content to provide value to your audience or you may need to provide some entertainment. 

Having found your missing links, you can now make an action plan to create your content. Consider the format, the goal, how you will create the content, where it will be published and the priority level. This is also the time to consider the budget you’ll need to make this content at a high quality. 

Plan earned media campaigns

Your earned media will tell you which platforms or channels you should be focusing on. The more media you earn in one location usually means that’s where your audience lives digitally. As with owned content, you should rank your earned media channels from highest to lowest performing. Performance could be based on the number of mentions per channel or where most leads are coming from. 

From this, you may have found that a particular website or industry specialist drove a large amount of traffic to your website. This could suggest that you could turn this earned media into a paid partnership. 

Plan paid media campaigns

You need to, once again, rank your previous paid media campaigns from highest to lowest performance which can usually be indicated by your ROI. If you have a campaign with a low ROI, it’s probably time to retire and tweak your strategy. 

Put it all together

Now you have a clear idea of who you are marketing to, what your goals are, your current digital presence and an action list for content you need to create, you can start putting your digital marketing strategy into one massive document before putting it into action. 

As with any strategy, you will want to continually monitor your progress initially to make sure it is working as you need it to. If not, you’ll be able to catch any issues early and rectify them. 

FAQ’s

What are the strategies of digital marketing?

Digital marketing can be split into 3 key media areas: paid, earned and owned. 

Paid media is where a business pays to have their media promoted to increase visitors, reach or conversions through search ads, display ads or affiliate marketing.

Earned media is exposure gained from methods other than paid advertising. This can involve viral content, word-of-mouth, user-generated content and shares. 

Owned media is digital content that is unique to your brand—you have full control over this content. These can include your social media profiles, your blog and brand website. 

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is a specific plan that helps you reach specified marketing goals that are achievable and measurable. A marketing strategy considers how your business is currently performing, the areas you need to improve on and the areas you are thriving in. With these considerations, you are able to create an effective marketing strategy that will ensure you achieve your goals. 

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