Are you intentional about creating a thorough marketing strategy each quarter? Or at minimum, each year? If not, you are missing the mark, likely wasting a great deal of budget, and preventing your business from thriving at the level it is capable of. Our digital world changes daily, and your strategy needs to flow and adapt in order to succeed.
What exactly is a digital marketing strategy
Digital Marketing is a segment of marketing that utilizes online based technology such as computers, mobile devices and other digital media platforms to promote products and services. Your digital marketing strategy is the component of your overall marketing strategy that sets goals for and plans out the who, what, when, why, and how your branding and messaging is pushed out across this digital platform. Your digital marketing strategy is essentially your road map to all forms of digital media.
How often should you evaluate your strategy?
We are in a digital world that literally changes daily; Google alone changes their algorithms an average of 2.5 times a day. This means your strategy should be evaluated more often than you are likely willing to or even able to evaluate it. While it may seem like a daunting task, one of the great benefits of digital over traditional marketing is the ease of access to performance data. Hard data that shows exactly what is resulting from your digital marketing strategies shows you exactly what is working and what is not, making the evaluation process much quicker and easier.
Klout 9 recommends a minimum of quarterly digital marketing strategy meetings that solidify where your digital traffic is coming from, how it is performing, what your ROI’s look like, how messaging is being received by buyers and if it should be adjusted. We also recommend an annual (or bi-annual) strategy meeting that lays out your content (messaging) strategy for the year along with annual maintenance. Annual digital maintenance includes things such as evaluating systems and processes for managing your marketing funnels, detailed annual reports (either internally or from third parties) that show where money was spent and how business was impacted, and website performance: page load speed, updating graphics, contact forms all working, ease of use, etc.
What to include in your digital marketing strategy for 2020
Your digital marketing strategy should cover every form of digital marketing you are currently utilizing as well as finding ways to incorporate new things. Below are the top 5 channels you should be using if you are not already in 2020.
- Video – Video Marketing has been on the rise and is not going anywhere anytime soon. Not only are more videos watched each day than television, but data shows that 95% of your messaging is consumed through video over other forms of media. Consumers are requiring more and more engagement and video delivers just that. To learn more about how to convert customers with video marketing check out this post.
- Social Media – Social media is evolving quickly and no longer just means Facebook Ads! As new social channels emerge, view their audience and place your media accordingly. Keep in mind that Youtube is considered a social media platform and is the second largest search engine – second only to Google.
- SEO with a twist – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just as important as always, but it is drastically changing.SEO creates the opportunity for free traffic and when done properly builds you an audience that will become your voice, spreading your messaging anywhere and everywhere – completely free of charge to you. SEO is no longer making sure your website functions properly and seeking out backlinks. While these elements are still important, SEO now demands user engagement and a consistent content strategy. Contact us for a free SEO audit.
- Local Search Marketing (LSM) – local search marketing is making sure your information both exists where people are looking and is accurate everywhere on the web. To learn more about what Local Search Marketing, check out our post “What is Local Search Marketing & Why is it Necessary?”.
- Google Ads – Google is still the largest search engine and has done a very good job of evolving as needed for it to remain that way. PPC & Display ads provide an excellent way to get your messaging and brand in front of a very large audience precisely when they are seeking out your services. While Google Ads are great, it is very easy to blow budget quickly if you don’t know what you are doing. There are certain elements of the platform built to gain profits for Google, so consider hiring an agency that knows what they are doing to manage these ads for you.
Creating and maintaining a digital marketing strategy can be time consuming, but when done properly will bring in new business and prevent you from overspending in areas that are not proving profitable. If you need help coming up with a digital marketing strategy, we’re happy to help.