How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing is not optional in today’s world. Virtually every business that serves consumers has a digital marketing presence. However, knowing that you need digital marketing is different than knowing how to do it. There is no such thing as a digital marketing strategy that works for every brand. Although businesses may all be striving to accomplish the same broad goals with their digital marketing strategies, the road to accomplishing these is unique for different brands, depending on a business’ identity, customer base, and goals. Does the idea of choosing a digital marketing strategy have your head spinning? Here’s how to choose the right approach for your business’ specific needs.

Get Clear About Your Market and Your Goals

Every marketing campaign needs to be directed at a specific audience and have clearly defined goals. Taking the time to identify these factors will help you make the rest of the decisions about your strategy. It will also help you track the results of your efforts and determine what works well and what isn’t working for your brand.

A great way to clarify your market is to develop customer personas. Think about the demographics of the customers who currently respond to your brand and the ones you think you would like to target. Create customer personas from that information. You will likely need multiple personas to capture your whole market.

Once you have identified the demographic information of the customers that you will be targeting, start thinking about each persona a little deeper. For example, think about what motivates them to engage with your brand, which of your products and services appeal to them, and what other companies, personalities, and products are likely to appeal to them. The more detail you can put into each persona, the better, since it will help you determine the best ways to target each group with your digital strategy.

With a clear understanding about your market, turn your attention to determining the goals of your digital marketing strategy. Some common goals for digital marketing strategies include:

  • Increasing traffic to your website
  • Creating awareness of your brand
  • Generating leads for your business
  • Converting leads to sales
  • Getting more subscribers to a mailing list
  • Promoting a new good or service
  • Increasing followers on social media profiles

You will notice that some of these goals are easier to track than others. For example, you can easily monitor the impacts of your marketing efforts on site traffic but measuring brand awareness is a little more challenging. It is OK to have a mix of goals that are easy to track and those that are somewhat less tangible. After all, an increase in brand awareness will have the effect of a larger customer base, so while you may not be able to pinpoint the driver, you will still reap the rewards.

Understand the Options

There are multiple channels you can use to achieve your digital marketing goals. Most digital marketing strategies will include the use of multiple channels. Understanding the channels and how they can best be used is critical to building an effective strategy. Here is a look at the most common digital marketing channels:

  • Display advertising. This refers to advertising that is hosted on third party sites, such as a banner ads or pop-up ads on websites. This can be a helpful way of targeting specific personas in your market, since your can pay for the advertising to appear on sites that they are likely to target.
  • Search engine optimization. If you want your website to rank highly when potential customers search for keywords that are relevant to your brand, then you need to perform search engine optimization, or SEO. There are several parts to executing an SEO plan effectively, including identifying keywords and building content around them and using high-quality internal and external links.
  • Pay-Per-Click. Pay-per-click, or PPC, is another way to get to the top of the search results when customers search for keywords. The difference here is that SEO strategies create organic ranking, while PPC involves paying for placement. When you outbid competitors for a keyword, your website will appear in the advertised results that appear above the organic results on search engine pages.
  • Email marketing. As the name suggests, email marketing involves collecting email addresses from existing and potential customers and then sending them emails to market your products and services. The more targeted you can get with your email marketing campaigns, the better.
  • Social media marketing. This involves using social media profiles to engage with customers. You can use social medial platforms to drive traffic to your website, share advertising, or increase your brand awareness. Social media also gives you a chance to speak directly to your customers and develop an identity for your brand that will increase loyalty in your target markets.
  • Conversion rate optimization. CRO—customization rate optimization—involves strategies to convert visitors to your site into sales or leads. For example, if your goal is to get more people to sign up for your mailing list, CRO will help get visitors to your website to join.

Work with a Specialist

Often, businesses think that digital marketing is something that they can do in-house as an extra duty on someone’s plate. The reality is that it takes a great deal of attention and specialized knowledge. By hiring a digital marketing company that is experienced in helping brands build and execute strategies that target their customers efficiently, you will reap a better return on investment without stretching your staff too thin.

Salem Surround helps both local and national brands fill gaps in their digital marketing strategies with customized solutions to help them reach the right audience. We don’t help you just target your audience, but rather we surround them online, so that your name is there on the sites and platforms they use. Contact us today to talk about your goals for online marketing and find out how we can help with digital presence solutions.

 
Smiling people participate in a standup meeting in an open office
A woman makes a purchase on her laptop

Learn more or receive a free digital presence evaluation. Contact us today.