Revised February 2024
Planning your digital marketing strategy
In any business you need to plan for what will drive desired results that are aligned with your overall business objectives. These days, it can be difficult to map out your future if you don’t have a good digital marketing strategy – in fact I’d argue it is actually impossible to do so. We’ve written a number of articles on how to ensure your digital marketing strategy drives results that meet your business objectives. Be sure to read part 1 of planning your digital marketing strategy to see our recommendations for your initial stages in planning your digital marketing campaigns before you take a look at the following areas:
4. Tactics
This part of your digital marketing strategy is where you actually plan to implement the actions that will deliver results. Now that you’ve laid the foundations of which route you will take to reach your goals, you need to start planning exactly what actions are necessary to get there. You should always be thinking about how you can improve results in your digital marketing campaigns. A good starting point would be to plan exactly how you will raise your business visibility to those who need what you sell. The goal is to drive awareness among those who need what you have but aren’t yet aware that you are a possible solution to their needs. However, it is key that wherever you are driving this interest – usually your website – is properly effective in terms of lead generation. We’re talking digital marketing optimisation. That’s a whole topic in itself, so for now let’s concentrate on the essential area of acquisition. Two important areas to consider when it comes to acquisition of interested prospects –
– How could I improve results in PPC advertising?
– What can I do to gain more leads via social media?
Your SEM (search engine marketing) covers both paid for advertising online and organic SEO – are you using blogs to deliver meaningful, useful and relevant content that answers the questions your prospects and customer have? Are your videos fully optimised for the right keywords on YouTube? Are you using every digital marketing tool available to you to ensure that people who are looking online using search terms around your services and products are finding you? Clue : you might be for some of their searches, but many businesses neglect to have a content strategy for every part of the customer purchase journey…
5. Actions
By this point you should have answered the questions you need to around your digital marketing strategy and be ready to act upon your decisions. The question now is what you will handle yourself, and what you will need in terms of professional digital marketing help to optimise the performance of your campaigns. It’s important to remember that this isn’t the final stage in the process and that although it’s nice to get it perfect first time, it’s unlikely to happen. You will have opportunities to analyse the performance of your digital marketing campaigns and implement any changes that you feel necessary in the future. Measuring and monitoring campaigns – and making changes to do more of what works – requires tracking of the right data, and being able to decipher that data. Meaningful use of tracking and measurement leads to improved ROI – it is as simple as that!
6. Control
The control stage is a vital part of your digital marketing strategy as it will be the one that allows you to see what’s working well and what’s not. There are many metrics that you can use to measure your performance – such as the amount of clicks on your site or ultimately, the number of sales you’ve made. You can then make key decisions as to if and how you will change your digital marketing strategy.
The Road to Success
This guide for your digital marketing strategy has been tried and tested by marketing professionals and we hope it’s helpful when planning your next marketing campaign. If you enjoyed this read then please be sure to like our Facebook and follow our Twitter page for regular tips – and feel free to use our free resources for marketing managers
