Things to Consider before you start your Digital Marketing Strategy
Whether you work for someone or own your business, having to conceptualize a digital marketing strategy can seem daunting. I’ve been trapped in hotel conference rooms in different parts of the world before for a whole week to get through strategic plans. It’s both exciting and exhausting all at the same time. I want to eliminate a bit of the exhaustion and give you some tools of what I found to be valuable and the most important parts in creating your strategy. Whether you’re outsourcing this to an agency or doing it yourself, if you follow these 5 quick steps you’ll be prepared to have a great plan at the end.
Who are you?
Knowing the core of the business is essential. Whether it’s someone else’s or your own the WHO is the most important part. This ensures that you don’t lose sight of the building blocks of your digital marketing strategy. If you can continuously remember the WHO it will keep you on track. It will help ground your ideas. Having far-fetched ideas is not wrong! Knowing the core of WHO the company is, makes those far-fetched ideas tangible. If you’re working as a group or even solely I highly encourage you all to take the Fascinate Test like I’ve done before and learn about yourself and each other. This makes the WHO stronger. You now will have a more well-rounded perspective that opens different lines of communication.
Know your Audience
Now that you’ve gotten to know yourself and others (if working in a team) better make sure that you clearly understand your company or who you work for, key consumer target audience. If you have no idea who you’re speaking to or selling to you’re just putting more work on your plate. Make sure you understand this and have the data to back it up especially if you own your own company. There’s always room for improvement and also in adhering to new consumers but you need to ensure they make sense in the space. Do your research and back it up with facts.
Where are you landing?
Something I’ve noticed across that board is that sometimes everyone gets so caught up in the plan they forget something so simple like paying attention to the landing page. Sometimes it goes unnoticed and should be part of your plan. If you have a new item or new topic, white papers, etc... Whatever it is, make sure you are connecting this to your landing page. How is your current landing page? Do you know your metrics? What is your consumer engagement on your platform? Did you know that although landing pages are not the most common form of sign up it still holds over 23% of conversion rates? If you need to freshen up on these hard stats take a look through Hubspot. These are important questions to not only ask but know before you even start to build a strategy.
Know your environment
We must always remain knowledgeable about current events and topics. You will fall behind and may never be able to catch up if you don’t. Understanding your climate is part of the communication you build with your consumers. Odds are they are paying attention and you need to be able to understand and even if you don’t. Make yourself open to understanding. Be part of conversations with friends and family. It will help you before you speak outwardly. There are global issues that will affect us even some that don’t come as second nature to some of us like understanding GDPR regulations. Make yourself understand as much as you can. It will help broaden not only your communication for your strategy but most importantly yourself!
What is your outcome?
Anything that has to do with any form of strategy you should always have on top of mind what your outcome is. Do you want to build brand awareness? Attain more leads or new leads? Get attendance for an event? Whatever it may be, just have in mind what your outcome is, especially when you’re working with outside agencies. This helps us marketers understand what your goal is and ensure that we get you there!
Why you’re doing something will always be fluid especially with all the digital platforms and constant changes that occur instantly and constantly. If you follow these 5 quick tips before getting started with your digital marketing plan I can assure you that you will come out of it less exhausted and more excited!
Stay tuned for next week!
