Why do organizations invest time and money on a sound Digital marketing strategy? The reason is that there is no ‘one size fits all’ in Digital Marketing. Most organizations are uncertain where to start. Should you focus on Brand awareness? Should you focus on Demand generation? Should we first talk to the Consumers about their Journey? Should you focus on market share? Should you focus on creating some thought provoking content? Should you ideate on changing the brand image? Should you add more marketing Channels?
Where should you start to build a Digital Marketing Strategy?
Well, you start by understanding your company’s short term and long term goals related to Revenue and Brand.
For example, consider that your company is looking at a 20% increase in revenue for the upcoming year. The question you then need to ask as a Digital Marketer is – what part of that 20% is going to be driven by Digital Marketing initiative? Assuming 10%, the next set of questions are – how much more traffic you need, what kind of conversion rate and what should be the Average Order Value. If you are a B2B business, you need to figure out how many new leads are required and how many can be closed?
Know why Google is not admiring you like you want it to?
Alternately, if your organization’s goal is to enhance Brand equity, from a Digital Marketing’s perspective what would be your strategy and how do you measure it? Well, start from your current Digital reach. How many people is your Brand able to reach in a month. What is the engagement level you have at the moment (Engagement level can be derived from dwell time, likes, comments, shares, re-tweets, email open rate, CTR, earned content etc). Once you know the baseline you can then define your new target and make sure your management team is in agreement with those numbers.
Now that you have derived your Digital Marketing objectives from your business goals, it is time to come up with a Digital Marketing Strategy and Plan. From a strategy perspective, decide the products / services you are going to market, the geography, target segment and how to do it differently from your competition? Going to the same market with same product and the same digital marketing strategy can be a recipe for failure.
For example, if your competition has already gone long and far in terms of establishing themselves as thought leaders by providing educational content about the industry, then you should not take that path. You can perhaps think about building your positioning on best after sale service or best product design and then build content around those areas of differentiation.
So now you have your Digital Marketing strategy and your objectives in place. It is then time to plan your yearly campaign calendar, execute them and track the results against your goal.
Hope this helps you to effectively create your Digital Marketing strategy and plan.
