Hooked on Strategy: Navigating Your Digital Marketing Waters
Five simple concepts to make sure you are sailing in the right direction.
Running a marketing strategy is no easy task; being on digital takes it to a new level. It can be stressful to find a place to start; it can be overwhelming to remember what to focus on. Well, today, I’m here to share my humble perspective on successfully establishing your digital marketing strategy. Hopefully, you can be inspired by the concept and apply it to your operation!
Make sure that everywhere, everything, everyone is on the same page.
It’s crucial we establish a clear direction of where we are headed. To have a strong start for the strategy, we make sure everyone on the team is fully aware of our mission, vision, and objectives because only then can we get this boat going. Whether it is something the brand stands for or a point of view we look from, they need to be aligned.
As a team on a fishing boat, if the captain is trying to go forward, but the anchor is not retracted, then we are definitely not going anywhere…
We need to be in sync.
Everything and everywhere needs to be in the same language. When designing the logos and websites, think about how this would affect the company’s image. Making sure that the color, fonts, style, tone and such need to be building toward the same picture.
Back to the sailboat, if the port (usually left) and starboard (usually right) sides are not moving at the same pace, then we will not be heading in the correct direction…
These minor increments make all the difference.
Fish where the fish are.
Knowing where your target audiences are is crucial in building the correct foundation for future strategies because it provides the correct people that we want to reach. Think about this: if we are selling the new VR headsets to the 70+ years old demographic, how would they even know how to use them? Are we selling them to Gen Z? or Gen X? Boomer?
Understanding the target demographics helps us tweak the next step, and through research on the demographics, they provide insights on how we can reach them through the various digital channels.
Back on our boat analogy, if we are fishing for bluefin tuna from the deep ocean, but we are on a small Amazon river, the chances of finding that bluefin tuna would be insignificant…
Hello? Can you hear me? — make sure they can hear us or find us!
With our message aligned and people defined, we can now see how to reach our people. If we were to launch our new VR headset and we defined that Gen Z is our target demographic, then we probably need to look into the medium that delivers our message and values to them. With the studies from our previous step, we know that Gen Z prefer to use TikTok and Snapchat as their primary source of socials. We can maybe then think about how we would launch our campaign on these social media while still staying within the overarching brand image and aesthetics.
Tools like social media enable us to reach the target demographics.
Back on our boat analogy, if we were to still look for that bluefin tuna, having a traditional-style fishing rod simply wouldn’t do the trick. You might want to find a suitable tool that can actually locate the fish and bring them up!
Quality content defines your traffic.
Quality content is good content that is engaging and spark curiosity for our customers. They want to learn more because it is eye-catching, its worth stopping, they simply want to know more from you!
Quality content drives traffic, traffic provides exposure, exposure can gain awareness, awareness brings engagement, and engagement can bring purchase or further actions! It’s all about bringing them down the marketing funnel, closer and closer, reeling them in like those bluefin tuna.
We are still on the hunt for that bluefin tuna. If you want to reel them in or get them to spot your bait, then we need quality bait and upgraded equipment to locate those prized fish that we’ve been looking for.
Adaptability & Active scanning
If you have been following along, we should have a couple of things all set and good to go.
Messages aligned, people defined, channel established, content developed.
Okay, what's next? We might be naive and think we just need to sit and wait for them to come by and know about your campaign…
.
Wrong!
Because anything can happen at any time, things can go wrong in a split second, and we need to be on top of the content and messages we are putting out. Having a dedicated social media team that actively scans the environment for potential opportunities and threats is also crucial to the strategy.
An example would be the Zara’s apology for their recent campaign, they didn’t realize the correlation between their campaign and the event that’s happening. Think about how we can adapt our content to the local markets that could better reach our audience, this requires the active scanning to ensure that the delivery is — spot on.
If we finally found that fish we’ve been looking for, but then SHARKS! Or a tsunami! How can make sure we seek shelter or better prepare for impact?
Active scanning and adapting to the environment!
Gotcha! We’ve done it! Thank you for following along on this fishing trip; it’s been great working to build toward the digital marketing strategy for you. I hope this sparks some ideas or serves as a structure for your future strategy!
