What is digital marketing strategy? The phrase can mean different things to different people, but for us at Gulo it means creating a marketing plan for how best to represent your organization or company online in the most positive way possible with the highest impact.
Below are our 7 insider secrets for digital marketing strategy success that any marketer can implement today to take their thoughts, ideas and tactics to the next level for their brand’s digital strategy.
Here is our video podcast covering the same topic if you’re more of an audio-centric learner.
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1. Discovery and Review
The first step is to have an orientation meeting with your team and do a full review of your existing digital marketing campaigns including a web traffic audit, SEO audit, website audit, social media marketing audit and email marketing audit. You’ll need a solid foundation of data and anecdotal information on which to build your plan.
2. Define
In the define phase of your digital marketing strategy, you’ll want to devise and document key elements of your future success including mission statement, objectives and KPIs and audience. Writing out your mission statement has shown to increase awareness and adherence internally at most organizations. And defining the personas and scenarios of those coming to your site is essential.
3. Strategize
This is where the real thought-work begins. Take what you’ve learned so far in the process and start determining how to reach your audience through your given channels in a creative, strategic way. You’ll define the campaigns you’ll be using along with the timing and cadence of each. Some example campaigns could be awareness of a new program using social media and video. Or a conversation optimization campaign using data and page flow revisions. These are just a few of many options.
4. Create
In this step, you will determine all the content required for a successful digital marketing strategy. You will examine existing content and decide what can be used and also highlight initiatives that will require newly created content. Content marketing could be anything from a landing page to an image to a video and more. You’ll also define areas of specific engagement (like a survey on the website) and propose the tools and/or applications needed to execute on them.
5. Implement
After all necessary content pieces are completed, it’s time to implement. Upload your videos, write and send your tweets. In short, make it all happen. This is the execution phase of the plan.
Please note: While this is a 7-step process for successful online marketing, some of the work and implementation can be rolling over time. This makes sense since some content may be easier to create and implement than other content.
6. Promote
Once all content, tools and applications are implemented, it’s time to begin promotion. Most promotional plans will include some variation of cross-promotion. In other words, a blog post could be promoted over LinkedIn , Twitter or even Facebook Ads. Or a Tweet could reference a video on YouTube while the YouTube video links to a related event. The execution of promotion can and should be a collaboration with your digital agency who can also consult and assist in the preparation of the promotion/content calendar.
7. Optimize
A key to reaching customers is search marketing. Gaining traffic and visibility from search engines requires fine-tuning and tweaking over time, leveraging data and findings during the course of the campaigns. The other elements of optimization could include copywriting, improving the quality of imagery, improving user experience on the website, modifying a Twitter bio and more.
Digital Marketing Strategy – In Closing
So as you embark on your future marketing channels, a digital marketing strategy keeps your brand focused. These 7 secrets will guide you to higher penetration and a more visibility among your target audience. Some will take a while and some may be quick. And you may find that you overlap some of them and also repeat them over and over. Embrace the format and make the process your own.
