Are you a business owner looking to exponentially boost your business sales? If yes, this guide has the solution for you!
A digital marketing strategy is like a big plan that helps businesses figure out how to use the internet and social media channels to reach more people, make their brand more known, generate more sales, or achieve their specific business goals.
Now, this plan involves different online channels, which are basically different ways to drive more potential customers online. These can include things like showing up in search results, running paid ads, using social media, sending emails, and more.
Here’s the thing: You might end up with more than one plan because there are different types of strategies. For example, you could have one plan for social media marketing, another for making sure your website shows up when people search on Google (which is called SEO), or for media buying which means you promote your business online via paid advertising.
Now, let’s talk about what makes up a Digital Marketing Strategy:
Marketing goals: These are clear and measurable outcomes you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. Like, how much stuff you want to sell or how many people you want to reach.
Target audience: This is about knowing who your potential and current customers are. Like, understanding the people who might be interested in what you’re offering.
Budget: It’s like deciding how much money you’re willing to spend on these marketing plans. Money doesn’t grow on trees, after all!
Available resources: This is about the tools you have, the size of your team, and the things you can use to carry out your marketing plans. Like having a good toolbox to fix things.
Competitors: These are other businesses doing similar things. It’s good to know what they’re up to.
Online marketing channels: These are the different online ways you can use to connect with people and get them interested in what you’re offering.
Why do you need a good Digital Marketing strategy?
So, why is having a good strategy so important? Well, think of it like a roadmap. It shows you the way to reach your business goals. It’s like having a guide that says, “Hey, go this way to get where you want to be.”
And that’s why businesses should really think about making a marketing strategy a top priority. It’s like having a game plan to win in the big world of internet marketing.
Making a digital marketing strategy for your business might need a bit more effort in the beginning, but it brings lots of advantages in the long run.
Now, if you skip making a marketing strategy, it might lead to problems like campaigns that don’t work, spending money on things you don’t need, and missing chances to win. When you create a plan, it’s like having a map that helps you get more value out of what you put in, this is very important.
The plan involves steps like deciding what you want to achieve, researching who might be interested in your stuff, creating detailed profiles of the people you want to target, etc. Having a strategy makes it clear for you and your team to know where, when, and how to talk to the people you want to reach.
But again, if you skip making this plan, you might end up making expensive mistakes. Imagine trying to talk to the wrong group of people, spending money on the wrong ways to reach them, or not paying attention to how they experience your business. That’s where an effective digital marketing strategy strategy comes in handy.
With a good plan, everyone in your marketing team can really understand who your business is trying to talk to. This means you can create ads that connect with what your potential customers care about or need. If you don’t know your customers well, you might struggle to create messages that matter to them, and your ads will be pointless.
5 Types of Digital Marketing Strategies
So Digital marketing covers a lot, it is a vast field, and there are different strategies you can use to drive more sales to your business. Here are the top 5 most effective ones you should consider.
#1 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is like giving your website a boost in online visibility. It’s about making your site show up at the top when people search on Google for things related to your business. The more keywords you rank high for, the more people will find you and get to know about your business.
SEO is your way of guiding the right audience to your website, those who are actively looking for things that you or your business offers.
Why bother with SEO? Well, think of it as a must have in your digital marketing strategy. It connects you with potential customers at every stage of their buying journey. Since most people kick off their product hunt online, having a solid SEO strategy ensures that your business pops up when they are searching.
Imagine, 80% of consumers search for information to check things out online before purchase, and over half of them discover new products through searches. With SEO in play, that new discovery can easily be your product, service or whatever your business has to offer.
That’s why having SEO in your digital marketing strategy is crucial. Search Engine Optimization is all about naturally making your website more visible on search engines like Google and Bing to drive you more potential customers.
It’s like giving your website a boost so that when people search for what they need, they can easily find your business, so it’s a win-win situation!
#2 Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is probably the best way to get your message to the right people online. It involves running paid advertising campaigns to show your ads on platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and so on..
This marketing strategy lets you target potential customers, and you can even reach out to those who’ve shown interest in your business before. Once you set up and fund a paid advertising campaign, your ads start appearing in front of your chosen audience almost immediately.Â
But remember, when the funding stops, so does the traffic from these ads. One of the most popular online advertising models is PPC (Pay-Per-Click), where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad whtough your digital marketing campaign. This can happen on search engines, social media, and other online platforms.
PPC, or pay-per-click, is a smart way to get your ads in front of people actively searching for what your business offers.
Here’s how it works in a simple way: You bid on keywords, and when someone searches for those keywords, your ad appears at the top of the results.
The beauty of PPC is you only pay when someone clicks your ad, not just for the ad space. It’s a cost effective method, especially for businesses starting with digital marketing or wanting a quick boost running a digital marketing campaign.Â
PPC is great for bringing your website to the forefront of search results, even if your organic ranking is low. It targets users ready to make a move, and when they click, they land on your page with a clear call-to-action.
#3 Social Media Marketing
With more than 4.5 billion people actively using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, every single company should really think about starting social media marketing, it’s that big of a deal when it comes to digital marketing.
So, what is social media marketing? It’s basically using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to promote your business or brand. It’s super useful for making your business much more visible, connecting more with your audience, getting people to check out your website, and boost sales.
But here’s a common mistake, some businesses pick platforms just because they have lots of monthly users. Why’s that a mistake? Well, what matters more is finding out where your target audience hangs out the most, even if it’s not the platform with the most users, and you should focus on those channels.
Otherwise, you might end up wasting your time and money on those platforms with tons of users but not so much interest from your target audience/potential customers.
And here’s a key tip for better visibility on social media: regularly post awesome content no matter what, never skip your schedule! This is very important on all social media. The tricky part is that you should do this on all social media platforms, which can be tough if you are a solo entrepreneur.
But luckily there are tools that you can use to make your life easier, like for example the Social Poster tool from Semrush.
This tool lets you plan and schedule your posts in advance. This way, you can save a lot of time to do other important stuff for your business, like keeping an eye on how well your social media is doing or focusing on creating better content.
For that, you can also check out their Social Analytics tool to get more insights and useful data which helps you see how well your posts are doing on social media.
With this tool you can boost your social media marketing strategy with smart suggestions based on data, you can monitor important metrics (KPIs) using clear and simple data graphics and receive timely reports automatically sent directly to your email. Easy, huh?
#4 Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the oldest digital marketing strategies and it involves using email to send promotional, transactional, and informative content. The great thing about email is that it provides a direct line of communication between businesses and their audience.
It plays a very important role in both retaining existing customers and attracting potential clients. It’s an effective strategy for creating brand awareness, making sure that your business remains memorable, and promoting repeat business.
The concept is simple, even if potential customers don’t currently require your services or products, regular email communication ensures they remember your brand when the time for a purchase arises. This brand awareness increases the likelihood that they’ll choose your company when making a buying decision.
The primary goal of email marketing in the digital marketing field is to maintain a prominent position in the minds of potential customers. It achieves this by providing valuable information, such as industry updates, and personalized content, like product coupons, to current clients, fostering ongoing engagement and loyalty.
When someone subscribes to your email list, they’re showing interest in hearing from you.
Unlike some other digital channels, email isn’t subject to algorithms deciding what your subscribers see, and this is a huge advantage.
However, it’s not a guarantee that every email will land in your subscribers’ main inboxes. Email providers like Gmail filter emails to ensure users get the most relevant ones.
That’s why it’s super important to send high quality, relevant and valuable content to those who have subscribed, because if they don’t open your first 1-2 emails, then your future mails will definitely end up in spam folders.
There are multiple types of emails that vary based on their goals, here are the top 3 examples:
- Informative emails: Educate your audience or share essential information/updates.
- Transactional emails: Send details of commercial transactions or specific actions.
- Promotional emails: Advertise products, services, special deals, events, or launches.
So email marketing is a highly beneficial digital strategy, with over 80% of companies, ranging from manufacturing to retail to technology businesses, leveraging its advantages.
The Key benefits of email marketing include:
- Impressive Return on Investment (ROI): With an average ROI of $44 for every $1 invested, email marketing stands out as a cost-effective strategy.
- Significant Sales Boost: It provides a 50% increase in sales compared to other lead generation methods.
#5 Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is basically a partnership between a brand/business and the influencers to promote the business’s products or services. Influencers are people on social media with a significant amount of online followers, recognized as experts or trusted figures in specific niches.
Businesses, regardless of size, are using influencer marketing strategies to boost brand awareness, attract more followers, reach new audiences, potential customers and drive sales. If you decide to try influencer marketing for your business (you actually should), it’s important to understand the different types of influencers:
- Nano-influencers: 1K-10K followers/subscribers
- Micro-influencers: 10K-100K followers/subscribers
- Macro-influencers: 100K-1M followers/subscribers
- Mega-influencers: 1M+ followers/subscribers
Your choice of influencers obviously depends mostly on your budget and other specific needs such as niches, products etc.. The key to success in influencer marketing relies on collaborating with the right influencers whose content is within your niche and whose followers match your target demographic.
It’s important to work with influencers who are having a high engagement rate so you can have a high or meaningful impact and of course audience interaction. So remember, it’s not always about the amount of views of followers, so focus more on engagement when you choose influencers to work with.
When you are planning an influencer marketing strategy, it’s important to consider the best and most effective ways of connecting with your target audience through an influencer’s following.
Collaborations can be done on multiple different social platforms, and it’s crucial to tailor your strategy based on the uniqueness of each platform.
Understanding the most popular and most effective social media platforms, along with the formats employed, is crucial.
Here are some of the best and most popular social platforms for influencer marketing:
- TikTok
- X (Twitter)
- Snapchat
- YouTube
The effectiveness of each social platform is different, depending on the influencer and your audience. Therefore, it’s important to align your strategy with the platform that resonates the most with your target audience and the influencer’s strengths.
And yeah, identifying the right influencers for your business can be hard but once you find the right influencer for your business, it is definitely going to be worth it!
How to build a Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Own Business
Now that you learned the top digital marketing strategies to invest in, let’s talk about how to actually kickstart your digital marketing strategy.
Build buyer personas
Buyer personas are basically like profiles of the folks who are most likely to buy what you’re selling. These are the people you really want to reach through your marketing strategy to boost your sales and make more money.
Making a buyer persona is like putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience. You think about what they like and most importantly what they actually need. Once you’ve got this persona, you can make your marketing messages really connect with what they care about, making them more likely to buy from you.
To make a buyer persona, you’ve got to really get your target audience. Consider things like who they are and what makes them choose your company, products, or services. It’s like understanding what makes them tick!
Set goals and objectives
When want to create effective digital marketing strategies, the main idea is definitely to achieve your goals. So, it’s super important to be crystal clear about what you want to achieve right from the start.
To do this, you use what we call S.M.A.R.T. goals. These goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Cool, huh?
But really, it just means your goals should be clear, you should be able to measure them, they’re doable, realistic, and you set a time frame.
Let’s say your big goal is to make $300,000 this year. Now, break it down into smaller objectives like getting more people to visit your website, selling more products, and stuff like that. It’s like creating a roadmap to get where you want to go!
Allocate Your Marketing Budget
Make sure your marketing strategy doesn’t mess up your company’s money goals. Set a budget that makes sense for your strategy, so you know how much you can spend on different campaigns.
You might even want to make a few budgets for your plan. Like, decide how much you’ll spend on ads in one budget and how much you’ll spend on making content in another.
Execute Your Marketing Campaigns
After you’ve chosen where to promote your business, the next move is to decide how to do it and create a solid online presence. What you choose depends on how much money and stuff you’ve got.
For example, if you’ve got $2,000 to spend on social media every month, it wouldn’t make sense to do all three things, social media marketing, ads, and influencer stuff.
It’s smart to figure out how much each strategy will cost and how much time and effort you’ll need. Then, pick the ones that fit your budget and what you’ve got to work with.
Once you’ve decided on the channels that match your money and resources, the next step is to make plans that fit your budget and start getting noticed online.
Monitor and report
Make sure to keep an eye on how well your strategies are doing by checking their performance and data.
Checking how well your online strategies are working lets you see what’s going well and what needs tweaking and optimization. It’s like looking at a report card for your online stuff. For example, you might find out that more people like your social media ads compared to your PPC ads.
When you see what’s working, you can put more effort into the good stuff and maybe not so much into the things that aren’t doing as well. This way, you can bring in more sales and money for your business without spending on things that don’t really help.
To keep tabs on how your plans are doing, you can use simple tools from Google, like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads. These tools help you see how well your strategies are performing and if they’re giving you a good return on your investment or not.
Conclusion
Alright, let’s wrap things up! We’ve dived into the top 5 different types of digital marketing tactics to give your business a boost.
First off, we learned about the benefits of SEO making your website a superstar in search engines. As well as, paid advertising, where you can use catchy ads to get noticed by your ideal customers. Social media marketing was next in line, helping you connect with new potential customers on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
We also learned about email marketing, where you can send newsletters and promos directly to your audience. And, of course, influencer marketing, teaming up with online trendsetters to spread the word about your business.
Remember, these strategies aren’t one-size-fits-all. You gotta pick the ones that match your budget and most importantly your business goals. Once your strategies are in action, keep an eye on how they’re performing using tools like Google Analytics, think of it as your digital report card.
So, there you have it! With these digital marketing strategies in your toolbox, you’re all set to create your own effective digital marketing strategy, and boost your business sales. Good luck!
