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!
Design the Business of Your Dreams
For the first time, I am releasing the exact strategy that has helped me manage corporate teams of 20+ professionals, multimillion-dollar campaigns, land me incredible consulting gigs and transform my client’s digital marketing and business strategy. OH, and not to mention, help me create my dream job… well, apparently being a wine and Kardashian connoisseur is not a profitable profession, so this is a VERY close second… that I didn’t even know existed 10+ years ago!
The days of questioning your marketing tactics, losing sight of your goals and delivering low converting content are OVER!
The Business Booster Blueprint will help you:
- Set clear business goals – then crush them! Whether that means growing your business, sales, leads, engagement, or all of the above… it’s all about intentional planning
- Get clear on your ideal customer, their needs, challenges and desires, and build out a customer profile, so you know exactly who you’re speaking to and how to reach them
- Map out your customer journey and create content that answers all your ideal customer’s burning questions, which leads to increased website traffic and higher conversion rates
- Craft a quarterly business strategy that translates into a monthly tactical plan, so you have clear to-dos to intentionally build your dream business
- Focus your time and energy where it will drive business results, giving you more time and freedom as you achieve your financial goals
There’s nothing more motivating than creating a plan, sticking to it, and realizing just how much you are capable of!

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