How is your digital marketing strategy performing? If you’re reading this article, chances are it isn’t going great, and you’re looking for a way to improve your results. The timing to start researching how to build a comprehensive digital marketing strategy is perfect. It’s the start of the year, so it’s the best moment for a fresh start.
While many articles will try to promote a one-size-fits-all strategy, this article aims for something different. You won’t find a rigid plan, but a set of recommendations you can adjust to your needs and use for your particular situations. Let’s spend less time scrambling and more learning.
Define Clear Goals
Set measurable objectives to track success and growth
Unfortunately, many companies go wrong from the beginning because they fail to define clear goals. Digital marketing specialists recommend setting tactical goals that stem from your business objectives. Let’s say that you want to expand your business in 2025 and start selling abroad; then it will serve you to increase your social media following. Additionally, you should focus your efforts on building brand awareness in the country you want to sell, generating qualified leads in the new market, and setting targets for revenue.
Additionally, it would be great to establish your annual goals because they will inspire accountability and action for your team. Suppose you aim to expand your business to new territories in 2025; it will be your primary goal. Then, you’ll establish supporting goals like developing digital marketing strategies with partners from the new territories, creating special social media pages for the respective countries, investing in local SEO, and building brand awareness locally. The supporting goals also act as steps that help you achieve your main one. The primary goal should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), while the supporting ones allow more flexibility.
Leverage Digital Channels
Use social media, SEO, and email marketing to reach your audience
Marketing can serve you in countless ways when you want to promote your business. Your specific goals will impact your choice, but it’s recommended to use more than one to make the most of your marketing plan. A successful comprehensive marketing strategy usually involves a combination of multiple digital marketing tools (SEO, social media, email marketing, influencers, and digital advertising).
- SEO (Search engine Optimization) is a tool that, if you invest resources in it, will pay off in the long run. It has the power to boost your number of website visits, but only if you learn how to do organic SEO well. Digital Marketing Strategy Consultants can provide you with recommendations on how to optimize your website experience, create high-quality products, and attract users naturally.
- Social media is suited for almost every business, but it’s important to identify what is the best means to attract your target audience because the platforms tend to be oversaturated. Your marketing goals and buyer persona decide how well social media fits into your strategy. The top platforms on which to create an account are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
- Email marketing is one of the most effective tools used for marketing because it has some powerful touch-points with the audience. Your business needs an email newsletter to engage with your customers weekly.
- Influencer marketing has gained quite a lot of traction over the last couple of years, and brands of all sizes have included it in their marketing strategy. Micro-influencers seem to have the best results for companies looking to engage with particular groups.
Personalize User Experience
Use data and AI to create targeted digital marketing campaigns
Your audience expects messages that speak directly to them and services that address their interests and needs, so personalized digital marketing is paramount. Using data and artificial intelligence can help deliver the expected messages because they enable you to understand your audience better and create effective and relevant marketing campaigns. However, before integrating AI into your digital marketing strategy, decide how it can improve your performance because there are several ways in which it can assist you in developing personalized ads.
Here is a list of the most popular strategies integrating AI for targeted advertising:
– Customer segmentation to easily target each group with specific content for maximum results. You can segment the audience by location, the device they’re using, browsing behavior, purchase history, and demographics.
– Email marketing to create paid campaigns based on a story that captures the public’s attention.
– Social listening to track mentions of your brand on social media and other online environments.
– Predictive analytics to forecast buyer behavior and create ads according to the gathered data.
Measure and Adapt
Continuously analyze results and adjust strategies for better performance
Measuring and adapting your plan is crucial to ensure its ongoing alignment and effectiveness with your business evolution. During this step, you need to thoroughly review your performance indicators to determine how successful your digital marketing campaign is and determine if you can improve any area. Measure metrics like the engagement rate, clickthrough rate, followers, bounce rate, brand mentions, conversion rates, and website traffic. CRM software, social media dashboards, and Google analytics can assist you in learning what works and what needs adjustment.
Get Expert Support
Work with an Interim CMO to refine and execute your strategy effectively
The thing is, you might not have the available time or knowledge to handle the development of the marketing strategy and need the assistance of an expert. An interim CMO is the specialist you need because they are usually people-oriented leaders who collaborate with your in-house team to design a marketing plan that matches your goals. They spend some time getting to know your business and identifying if there are any challenging team dynamics they need to address before getting to work. They have the knowledge and experience to provide you with a marketing strategy that enables your business to capture new opportunities and stay competitive in the market. Working within your team will inspire your employees to invest more in creating effective processes and strategies that serve the big picture.
Final thoughts
Now you know what it takes to create a comprehensive marketing strategy – are you ready to start the process?
