While billboards and other traditional marketing strategies are still part of every brand’s marketing plan, it goes without a doubt that, in today’s modern landscape, Digital marketing plays a much bigger role than any other sort of campaign.
Given the fact that people spend a tremendous amount of time online, missing the opportunity to let the online community know about your brand would be a shame. But developing an online marketing strategy can turn out to be quite difficult, especially since there are so many ways to do it. Some brands work with influencers, others use Instagram and Facebook to engage their audience, and some turn to branded content to tell a story.
All of these strategies are successful for achieving one or multiple goals, such as increasing sales, raising awareness or generate leads. This means that, in order for you to succeed, you need to first determine what you want to accomplish, and then build your strategy around it.
How to Write a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Brand
Run an in-depth analysis
The first step for running any kind of marketing campaign, be it online or offline, is to analyze both your company and the market. This will help you determine what customers want to see, what drives them, and how you can solve their issues.
A SWOT analysis is the best way to do so, as it reveals both internal and external information. SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. This means that, by the end of the analysis, you will be able to determine both the internal and external factors that will influence your campaign and help you set realistic goals.
Strength: determine what are the biggest advantages of your brand, why did your company manage to succeed, and what part about your overall business influences sales the most.
Weaknesses: being able to determine which are your biggest weaknesses, both forum your point of view, and from the buyer’s journey, will help you come up with solutions on how to improve them.
Threats: What are your company’s biggest obstacles? Are you experiencing any issues that prevent your business from running the way you would want it do run? Determining both internal and external threats is the main goal.
Opportunities: determine what is going on inside the market, that you could leverage from boosting sales or raising awareness. At the same time, find out what the opportunities for growth are, inside your company.
Establish your campaign goals
After getting a more accurate idea of what is going on both inside the company, and on the market, you will be able to determine where your campaign should go. When you will be drawing a line at the end of the campaign, what are you expecting to achieve? Do you want to increase sales? Are you looking for ways to get more people to notice your brand? Have you been planning to launch a new product?
First of all, you need your goals to be as clear and specific as possible. It’s not enough to just what to sell more; you need to have a specific number in mind. The reason is pretty obvious to understand. If your goal is to increase sales, and the campaign only helps you sell 1% more, it would still be considered successful, right? Based on your goals, yes, but when you calculate the return on investment, a 1% increase in sales is not profitable at all.
After establishing your objectives, make sure you also determine the appropriate timeline in which they can be achieved. Being realistic is key here. Obviously, you would want your sales to increase overnight, but that is almost impossible to happen. And, quite frankly, it would bring out more problems than you may think. This is why setting up clear goals over a realistic period of time is key.
Define your strategy
You have your internal and external analysis in place, your goals determine, and now it’s time to pick out the best strategy that will help meet those goals. An Effective Digital Marketing campaign focuses more on the consumers, rather than the brand. You need to determine who the people you are talking to are, what they like, and what you can do to capture their interest.
Are your customers drawn to visual content, or do they like to read how-to guides? Is there someone that they look up to? Are there influential people in your niche that you can discuss a collaboration with? There are multiple tactics that you can use to develop a successful campaign, such as:
Content Marketing
People consume much more content than you imagine, which is why, if you want to implement a content marketing strategy, you need to ensure that you deliver valuable material. Well-written text, high-quality photos, and meaningful video material should be your main focus. Professional tools and services, such as Trust My Paper, Place It, Grab My Essay, and Infogram is amongst the best solutions for delivering high-quality written, video, or photo content.
Social Media Marketing
When it comes to Social Media Marketing Techniques, there is literally a strategy for any goal you may want to achieve. Want to raise awareness or make a statement? Come up with a good hashtag and encourage people to post content using it. Partner up with influencers for affiliate marketing that generates both sales and leads. And last, but not least, organize giveaways, or give out discount codes for your community.
Downloadable Content
E-books and How-to guides are really appreciated in the online community. Instead of going on and on about how beneficial your products are, show people how to use them and how they can change the most basic parts of their life for the better. Give those who purchased your products access to a variety of exclusive content that will help them out.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is good for promoting sales, preparing your audience for a new product launch, or simply keeping in touch with your customers. Offer discounts for subscribing to your newsletter, provide personalized content and let them know each time your brand brings out something new to the market.
Bottom line
Everything nowadays is digitalized, and marketing is no exception. But just like traditional marketing, running a digital marketing campaign without a market analysis and clear goals established is doomed to fail. This is why, before starting a campaign, you need to develop a clear strategy, with clear objectives, timeframes, and steps in mind. While this may sound difficult, all you actually need is a bit of planning and research.
Author Bio:
Dorian Martin is a professional writer, with experience in online marketing and content creation. During his first years as a content writer, he discovered his passion for marketing and how it can help his business. Now, he is looking to inspire and help others achieve both their personal and professional goals, by providing insightful advice both through the websites that he collaborates with, such as Best Essay Education, WowGrade, and Supreme Dissertations, as well as his personal blog Not Business As Usual.
