How to create a solid digital marketing strategy

Thinking about promoting your business on the web but don’t know where to start? There are some essential elements you must consider when designing and carrying out a digital marketing strategy. Those factors are the foundation of any plan. They will help you organize and optimize processes so you can get more customers through digital channels.

The presence of brands, organizations, and people in the digital environment has recently increased big time! Leading companies from different industries are now integrating digital and social platforms, namely, web pages, microsites, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. This is relatively new to communication and marketing plans, which formerly focused on traditional media (TV, radio, door to door, etc.).

It’s a digital transformation that has brought new opportunities to companies. Entrepreneurs have also reaped great benefits, they only need a good idea, a low budget, and a functional website to manage a thriving digital business. We´re talking about a new model with an incredible scope that has disrupted the status quo.

Where to begin with my digital marketing strategy? 

There are several essential ingredients for designing and executing a successful digital marketing strategy. One that allows you to increase conversions on your website. For example, you need to:

1. Assess your current situation

2. Have a clear definition of your objectives

3. Know your audience

4. Analyze your competitors 

5. Understand your conversion funnel 

6. Determine the appropriate tools and channels for your business 

7. Create a value proposition

8. Optimize user experience 

9. Use appropriate language 

10. Apply A / B tests

11. Measure and analyze results

Assess your current situation

This is the starting point for your strategy. It’s when you ask yourself, where am I now? The first step is to evaluate the whole online environment. In other words, you need to define what are the internal capacities that your company currently has. 

At this stage, here are some questions you need to be asking yourself:

1. What is your company’s current situation? 
2. Is it a new company, or is it expanding? 
3. Which products or services do you offer? 
4. What needs are you trying to satisfy? 
5. What is the image your brand has in the market?
6. Do you have a physical store?
7. Do you sell only online or both? 
8. What are your sales methods in traditional marketing? 
9. What are the main differences between your brand and the competition? 
10. Have you carried out any online marketing actions before? 
11. How much money are you willing to invest in this? 
12. What is your strategy for keeping your customers?

2. Have a clear definition of your objectives

Now you must answer the question: what do I want to achieve specifically? Here are some common examples: 

• Developing an appropriate brand image 
• Expanding sales channels 
• Improving customer service
• Attracting more clients
• Reducing costs

Correctly defining your objectives is paramount. From there on, your strategic plan can make progress in one way or another. It would help if you aimed high, but also be realistic to avoid frustration later.

3. Know your audience 

Knowing your buyer persona is crucial for any digital marketing strategy. The buyer persona represents your ideal client, which means the final consumer that carries out the purchase of any of your products or services.

For defining your buyer persona, you should consider specific data, for example:

• Sociodemographic aspects (age, gender, place of residence, academic level, income level, culture, marital status, etc.)
• Personality type 
• Objectives 
• Behavior on social media

A critical characteristic for defining your buyer personas is what their pain points are. Pain points are those concerns or problems that your potential client has, which can be real or just a perception. The term “pain” may seem inappropriate for those outside the marketing world. It´s a concept that refers to a need, motivation, or concern that the buyer persona has. Ideally, you can solve the latter with your product or service.

4. Analyze your competitors

Since we’re talking about creating a digital strategy, you should focus on online competitors. You can start with a list of your competition’s websites or blogs. Identify their strengths, weaknesses, and ask yourself: can you do better? 

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself at this stage:

1. Who are my five direct competitors? 
2. In what social networks are they present? 
3. How many followers do they have in each one? 
4. What content do they publish, and what visible strategies do they carry out?
5. What do they share that people like the most? 
6. Publication frequency? 
7. Which words or topics do they repeat regularly?
8. What do people say about them on the web?

5. Understand your conversion funnel 

The conversion funnel (or sales funnel) is a digital marketing term directly related to your objectives when you start an online store, a website, or blog. Understanding it is vital, especially if you have commercial purposes. In this funnel, you need to determine the different stages or steps a potential client takes until reaching a specific objective. That objective usually refers to a purchase or a registration (providing their information).

The stages of a conversion funnel depend on your industry and your specific processes. However, here are some standard stages:

• Awareness: Spreading your brand or service through online marketing strategies (content generation, SEO optimization, activity in social networks. 

• Interest: Gradually gaining the trust and interest of the audience. 

• Desire: The goal is for users to spend as much time as possible on your website for creating a desire. It’s essential that they officially become leads by providing their data so you can track them. 

• Action: This is the most critical conversion; it’s when you transform your audience into real customers. 

• Fidelization: You must make sure that customers who have already bought from you are satisfied so that they purchase again and spread the word. Keep in mind that other people’s opinions are still essential aspects people consider before buying.

6. Determine the appropriate tools and channels for your marketing strategy 

Your website and your blog are fundamental for achieving conversions; however, they are not the only tools and channels available for acquiring new leads. Here are some tools and media you need to consider:

• Social media

• Marketing automation software

• CRM (Customer Relationship Manager)

• Email marketing tools

• Landing page creation software

• SEO, SEM, and Social Ads

• Analytics software

• E-commerce platforms

The important thing is to define which are appropriate for each case. Then design measurable strategies for each one of them.

7. Create a value proposition

A value proposition is how you define the aspects of a product or service that a customer may need. It’s a way of presenting all the advantages of your product, especially those that your competitors cannot offer. 

Here are some key questions you should ask yourself at this point:

• Why should a customer use your service or buy your product instead of the competition? 
• What do you offer that no one else offers and why is what you offer better? 
• How can you make your client’s life better?

Your value proposition materializes your company’s strategy for each customer segment. It describes the unique combination of product, price, service, and image. For a clear value proposition, communicate what the company hopes to do better or differently than the competition. Also, offer a solution to consumers’ problems and satisfy their needs (explicit and latent). A company can offer several related or independent value propositions directed to one or more groups of target customers.

8. Optimize user experience

The term user experience (often referred to as UX) is basically about how a person feels when interacting with a system. It can be a website, an application, or a program. In digital marketing, we talk about the user experience regarding websites or mobile applications. UX experts study and evaluate how users feel about a system. The latter is based on ease of use, perceived value, usefulness, and efficiency when navigating your website or app.

Regardless of your industry, there are some things that users expect from a website. For example, company information such as phone number, address, and email must be accessible on the home page or with a single click. Users expect the contact or customer service links to be in the upper right section of the web page, either in the main navigation or in the header. Users also expect the company logo at the top of a page to link to the home page. For mobile apps, the search icon, the house icon for getting to the home page, and the menu are universal navigation elements.

A good UX design results from extensive user research, information architecture design, layouts, prototypes, user testing, and final implementation. The development carried out from a UX design is cautious and measured.

9. Use appropriate language

Sticking to clear and straightforward language is the best advice we can provide here. The idea is to persuade users, not confuse them. Therefore, avoid overly specialized slang. Also, don’t write for companies; write for people. The best way to rethink the language you will use for your website is to imagine that you explain it to someone who knows nothing about the matter. If there is a sentence that you wouldn’t use in a conversation with that person, find another way to say it.

Avoid complicated words, idioms, or complex analogies. We also recommend that you use the sentence’s basic structure in the usual order: subject and predicate. Again, go straight to the point you want to develop. Don’t exaggerate with unnecessary verbs, adjectives, or descriptions. It’s also vital that you keep your sentences and paragraphs short, and if your text is lengthy, use subtitles. All these recommendations will also improve your SEO ranking.

10. Apply A/B tests

A / B testing means developing and launching two versions of the same element and measuring which one works better. It helps us optimize an email marketing strategy or improve a landing page’s effectiveness. 

Randomly show content “A” to half of your users and content “B” to the other half. Then measure and analyze each of them based on specific variables, such as CTR, conversion, engagement, or rebound rate.

Some contents on which A / B tests are usually carried out are: 

• Lead Magnets 

• CTAs 

• Email marketing campaigns

• Landing Pages 

• Images 

• Product presentation formats in an e-commerce

• The main objectives of A / B testing are:

• Understanding what the user prefers

• Increasing the conversion rate

• Improving user experience
  

11. Measure and analyze marketing results

An analysis of the results of a marketing strategy is as critical as implementing it. You must be able to measure outcomes in digital marketing. Sometimes you may think you have a sound system; nonetheless, results say otherwise. Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) is essential at this point.

Is it enough to measure your website data? No! You must measure each action and tool that you are using. Do it individually, of course, but mind the big picture. You must know that all those results are related to each other and the specific objective you’re chasing.

One of the key benefits of implementing a digital marketing strategy is that it allows you to measure all the actions you execute. That’s one big difference digital marketing has with traditional, offline marketing. Measuring the success of campaigns in the past used to be harder and costly.

Some key performance indicators you should look at, depending on your objective, are:

Website traffic

• Unique visitors 
• New versus repeat visitors 
• Traffic sources 
• Referring websites 
• Popular pages 
• CTA performance 
• Conversions 

SEO

• Keyword performance 

• Search rankings 

• Traffic from search 

• Inbound links 

• Conversions

PPC campaigns

• CTR (Click-through rate)

• LTR (Lead through rate)

• CPC (Cost per Click) 

• CPA (Cost per acquisition) 

• Conversion percentage 

Email marketing

• Subscribers 

• Openings 

• Unique openings 

• CTR 

• Growth rate 

• Sharing and forwarding

• Unsubscribes 

Social media

• Audience size & growth 

• Engagement

Conclusion

These are the fundamental factors you should consider if you want to have a successful digital strategy. I know that it may seem like a lot of information to digest! But if you take your time to develop each of the points, you will have an excellent online presence and achieve your marketing goals. In case you want to stick to what you do best, you can always leave your digital marketing strategy to us.