Digital Marketing 101 – Building a Strategy That Works

Why you need a digital marketing strategy

If you’re reading this or familiar with the rest of our content, you’ve probably heard the term digital marketing more than once, even if you are new here – hello there! – you’ve still probably heard it multiple times; that’s because digital marketing is a buzzword. 

Digital marketing is the ‘it girl’ of marketing terminology. She’s trendy, popular, but also kind of mysterious – you don’t really know that much about her, but if she asked you to lunch, you’d say yes (and become best friends… I’m talking to you, Blake Lively). 

Digital marketing is essentially an umbrella term for all your online marketing efforts. You are using digital channels like websites, social media platforms and search engines as marketing tools to engage your audience and attract new business. 

If we are comparing that to traditional marketing, think Don Draper in Mad Men, pitching ideas for billboards, printed media, TV commercials and creative copy for global brands like Coca-Cola. The main difference is the medium through which an audience encounters and engages with a marketing message: magazines vs. Instagram. Up until the ‘90s, aka the explosion of the internet, traditional marketing methods were really the only ones being used.  

In today’s world, things look a lot different from a marketing standpoint and the way we absorb information. There are over 4.3 billion users on the internet, so having a strategy and understanding how to interact with your customers online is crucial for success. 

Andi’s Answer: Now, I know what you are thinking; unless you are Jeff Bezos, you aren’t going to be targeting 4.3 billion users, but you still need to understand how to navigate and measure your efforts using digital channels and online tools. 

In this article, we will cover the basics to get you started and show you the keys to a successful digital marketing strategy. And if you are looking for something more advanced to boost your business – we’ve got you covered!

6 steps to optimize your strategy

1. Set measurable goals 

Before you develop and implement your strategy, you need to get clear about what you want to achieve. This might sound like a no-brainer, but creating detailed, attainable, measurable goals often gets overlooked.

Let’s say you want to increase the traffic to your website, but that alone is not a measurable goal. However, stating you’d like to increase the traffic by __% through your Instagram ads in the next __ months is a measurable goal.

2. Audit your existing marketing efforts

Now that you have your goals in place, you need to understand how your current marketing tactics and channels are performing. Take a look at your analytics… even if the results aren’t what you expected (or want to see), you will understand what’s working and where you need to focus. 

Depending on where your ideal customer is, your digital marketing tactics will likely include: 

• Search engine optimization (SEO) 

Increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

• Content marketing

Creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. 

• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising 

An online advertising model where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads. 

• Email marketing 

Using email to promote products and services while developing a relationship with potential customers. 

• Social media marketing

Creating tailored content for each social media platform to drive engagement and promote your business. 

• Web design and optimization 

Using specific tools to improve the look, feel and performance of your website. 

Which of these is driving the most leads and traffic to you? Try and rank each tactic in order of what’s working the best. 

3. Identify your audience by building an ideal customer profile / avatar

Before you can reach your customers, you need to know exactly who you are targeting. An ideal customer profile and avatar will help understand who your audience is, how you can solve their problem and how you can successfully connect with them. 

Andi’s Answer: We’ve talked about the importance of identifying your ideal customer and audience on here a lot. In case you missed it check out our blog: Easily Identify Your Ideal Customer by Answering These Four Questions and download our free Ideal Customer Checklist! 

4. Understand the digital sales funnel and customer journey

The digital sales funnel, or what we like to call the customer journey, is the journey your buyer takes from discovering your company to considering your product / service as a solution to their problem to finally becoming a customer (and hopefully brand advocate). Otherwise known as:

• Awareness
• Consideration 
• Conversion
• Loyalty 

You can achieve your marking goals by having a strong online brand presence and addressing each stage of your customer’s journey with the appropriate digital marketing tools.

5. Target your customer 

Depending on which stage in the customer journey your customer is at, you may need to target them slightly differently. Each stage has a different goal to move your customer through the funnel, and so you may use different marketing channels, tactics or messages, depending on your goal.

6. Create a content plan

High online conversion rates are highly impacted by your content strategy. For most online businesses, your marketing and web content is the primary source of communication with your customers. So it’s imperative that your content resonates with your audience, has a consistent message and brand feel across channels, and helps answer the customer’s questions. Here are a few tips to help build an effective content strategy: 

• Identify your customer questions at each stage of the customer journey and create content to answer those questions
• Build a keyword strategy that aligns with your business and customer needs
• Research what content you should post on each channel
• Create a content calendar to ensure your content tells a consistent story and ties to your business goals
• Be generous with your CTA’s (which stands for calls to action for the newbies!) – spell out what you want your customers to do next
• Utilize a social media management tool to pre-schedule your content…. if you need help choosing one, check out our tool assessment

The next steps 

Hopefully, you’re now ready to get started creating a strategy that works for you. We know it’s a lot of information and can be a little overwhelming to tackle on your own. Luckily, I have a few resources that can help you!

If you want to accelerate your business strategy and create a tactical plan that will help you stay focused on your business goals, you’re going to want to grab our Business Booster Blueprint. It contains plug-n-play templates to walk you through the whole process above (and more), plus it has examples of how we have created our own Proof strategy. It’s a game-changer!

If you’re looking for a few additional bite-sized tips, check out our Free Resources page for some goodies!