Getting Started With Your Digital Marketing Strategy...

What do you actually want to achieve from your digital marketing?

Last month we wrote aboutdigital marketingand what it is. This month we want todelve a bit deeper into the importance of defining clear aims and objectives before you embark on your digital marketing journey.

This is our first step for digital marketing success and we hope this blog will help to reinforce the importance of establishing clear and concise objectives, plus the need to continually measure your online performance.

If, like most of us, you want to increase your business online you need to sit back and ask yourself some hard questions. You might not know the answers right away but that doesn’t mean you just ignore them. At it’s highest level you may want to increase business or you may just want to increase brand awareness. You might even want to use online platforms such as social media for customer service, or like quite a few companies, you might just want a wee bit of everything. Take the time to map out at it’s highest level what you want to achieve as this will allow you to develop clear action plans for each of these core objectives.

• You probably have a website already but is it simply a brochureware site with no clear method of capturing leads or generating sales?
• Are you on social media but just shouting about your latest product, or even worse, how great you are? #humblebrag
• Did you sign up to Google Ads a few years ago but don't really know what you’re getting?

To get your strategy right you need to focus and make sure you have the right approach for your business. Why not let today be the first day on your journey towards digital marketing success? Take time out now and refocus your approach to digital marketing.

• Define your target audience (who do you want to do business with?)
• Do you deal with different groups of customers (segmentation)?
• Define the persona(s) of eachtarget group - build Customer Avatars
• Where are they on the web? What are they up to on social media? What are they blogging about? Are they commenting on online forums?
• How will you get to them? Will you use organic methods such as great content and social media or paid techniques such as online advertising - or both?
• How will you interest them? What is your online proposition?
• Where are you going to bring them to? Is your website fit for purpose? Does it take prospective customers on relevant journeys?
• How will you engage with people and get them to interact?
• What will you do to convert these new leads into sales?
• How will you measure it?

Important Note - if you have no definitive goals; just hoping for any old traffic to your website; and no thought about what you are going to do when they get there could be an expensive mistake!

The list above is just a starter to get you going and hopefully it will trigger something. Go on, get your pen and paper out and start planning your digital marketing success and think about what it is you actually want to achieve!

Is your digital marketing working or not working?

Ok, so you’ve taken the time to nail down your digital marketing objectives, you’ve refocused your approach and now you’re on course for some spectacular results... but, how are you going to know? It goes without saying, you must stay on top of your results but how are you going to do it? There are some great tools out there to help you but it can be quite confusing to work out which one to use.

In the meantime, make sure you i) measure where you are now; ii) log everything you are doing; and iii)check your metrics at set times to see how you've done.

Establish regular reporting and discipline yourself to go back at set times and check to see what has been working and what hasn't. This is the only way to see if you are achieving the results you set out to achieve at the beginning. The only way you will know if you're meeting your objectives is to measure. However, be careful you don't get consumed - there's so much to keep track of you need to make sure you develop your own process and reports to suit your business and avoid paralysis from analysis.

Summary

To recap, what do you really want to get out of your online activities? Take the time out now to define your aims and objectives before you get into your digital marketing plan. By doing this you will be a lot clearer in planning your online activities, such as, deciding how and where to allocate your time and budget. Once you have your plan locked down though make sure you remember to establish how you are going to measure what you do. This is the only way to know what is working and what isn’t and will allow you to refocus what you are doing as you go. The beauty of digital marketing is that you are always learning and always looking for better ways of doing things.

So, go on - what are you waiting for? Define your digital marketing objectives now and get started on your digital marketing journey to increase the success of your business.

If you would like to discuss setting your digital marketing objectives, defining your digital marketing strategy or measuring your online performance, feel free to get in touch.

You can read the first article in this series here Digital Marketing Explainedor alternatively skip to the next articleEngaging Your Audience With Digital Marketing.

photo credit: Roger Smith via photopincc