An effective digital marketing strategy is paramount to the success of today’s small businesses. Understanding how to create and execute a solid plan can increase visibility, drive traffic to websites, and increase revenue generation.
Today’s average consumer spends nearly 7 hours a day on the internet. To reach people where they are spending their time, small businesses must use digital marketing to spread the word about their business.
From SEO and emails to social media and quality content, digital marketing helps to identify your target audience and build brand recognition. However, where do you begin when it comes to developing an effective digital marketing strategy that yields results?
Keep reading to learn the importance of digital marketing and how to develop a successful strategy for your online marketing efforts.
Quick Takeaways
- Digital marketing helps you understand your target audience clearly and create omnichannel campaigns that broaden your reach and increase customer loyalty.
- Understanding your audience and determining your goals gives you a solid outline for a strong digital marketing strategy.
- Create quality content and measure your progress to ensure you’re on the path toward success.
Why is Digital Marketing Important?
Digital marketing effectively identifies and reaches your target audience with meaningful content that resonates with them. It provides an in-depth understanding of audience demographics, so you clearly understand their shopping habits, needs, and frustrations.
This enables you to create customized content that directly addresses their concerns and positions you as a viable solution to their problems.
This insight also helps you build a deeper relationship with your customers. Engaging them on social media and connecting with them through personalized, automated follow-up emails allows you to strengthen your relationship and secure their loyalty. This is significant because 65% of a company’s purchases come from existing customers. Digital marketing helps your customers become your biggest advocates.
As a small business, your digital marketing strategy needs to focus on the online channels that work. This helps you broaden your reach and ensures you’re delivering the right message to the right people at the right time without breaking the bank. All of this is essential to increase conversion rates and boost sales. The following video further explains the importance of digital marketing and its role in a company’s success.
Source: Mrkt360 on YouTube
5 Steps to Building an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy
Although digital marketing is a powerful tool for any small business, many marketers don’t know where to begin. Tackling this task will seem less overwhelming when you follow these five steps to building an effective digital marketing strategy.
Step 1: Know your online audience.
When it comes to knowing your audience, it isn’t enough to simply identify age, location, and purchase behavior. You need to understand their online activity, such as:
- Which channels do they use?
- How frequently are they on these platforms?
- How do they prefer to receive information?
Knowing these will help shape your digital marketing strategy and guide which channels would be most effective for your needs and when best to reach out to your audience.
If your target audience is between 25 and 34 years old, Facebook would be a successful platform. If your target audience prefers email, it’s best to reach them between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.
Conduct research to first determine who your audience truly is. Then, learn more about their concerns by visiting their preferred platforms and monitoring chat threads and forums. There you can gain a deeper understanding of their frustrations, pain points, and what they’re looking for in a company like yours.
This information can reveal what kinds of solutions they’re seeking and how you can best meet those needs with effective content.
There are several ways to determine who your audience truly is.
Step 2: Determine your goals.
Because digital marketing covers so much ground, it’s hard to know whether you should invest in your website development, email campaigns, SEO, or social media marketing. Once you’ve determined your ideal audience and their preferences, decide what you want to achieve with your digital marketing strategy. Are you:
- Looking to reach more prospects?
- Wanting to increase engagement?
- Hoping to entice more people to visit your website?
These objectives will determine your approach to online marketing, what kind of content you produce, and how frequently you distribute this information. Your overall marketing goals will help shape the structure of your digital marketing strategy.
Step 3: Develop your content marketing plans.
Once you know who you’re trying to reach and how to reach them, you’ll want to decide what message you want to distribute. Content marketing is essential to creating a positive user experience and positioning yourself as a leader in your industry.
Publishing consistent, quality content that brings value to your audience is key to a successful digital marketing strategy. Not only does content build customer loyalty, but it also helps with SEO and earns higher-ranking placements. This gives you increased visibility and drives more traffic to your site.
Whether you write a blog, send out scheduled emails, or post to social media, content marketing is a way to solve your audience’s problems and allay their fears about products or industry issues.
Content also helps people put a face to your company’s name and brings familiarity to your marketing efforts. This builds trust, which is of the utmost importance to 53% of shoppers. Your content is the driving force behind a successful digital marketing strategy.
Step 4: Establish partnerships with reputable sources.
Today’s consumers rely heavily on the feedback and reviews of others as they make their own purchase decisions. When developing your digital marketing strategy, it’s helpful to establish partnerships with reputable companies.
When you develop your content, link to these pages as additional valuable resources for your readers. Ask them to do the same for you. Offer to guest post on their blog to help build readership and give your content even more credibility.
You might also partner with influencers.
These are well-known people that others trust, like celebrities or online personalities with a loyal following. If they promote your products, all of their followers will be encouraged and possibly persuaded to give your company a chance.
If nothing else, you’ll likely get an influx of traffic from quality leads that you can then contact with sales information.
Influencer marketing can be highly effective for increasing sales.
5. Measure your progress.
The only way to know whether your efforts are effective is to measure your progress.
Metrics can reveal what channels are performing well and what areas need improvement. Much of digital marketing is trial and error, but following key performance indicators (KPIs) will help give you guidelines to adhere to and let you know where to invest your marketing dollars for the best possible outcome.
From email open rates to social media engagement, metrics can ensure you’re delivering relevant information to your audience while investing in the right digital outlets to meet your company’s goals. Digital marketing is a highly effective tool when it follows a clear, well-designed strategy that is measured regularly for success.
Explore a Wealth of Small Business Resources
There are several elements to creating a successful small business. Whether you need help establishing a digital marketing campaign, ideas on building a thriving work environment, or leadership advice, every small business leader can benefit from helpful resources. Under30CEO.com features articles that offer guidance, tips, and suggestions for small business leaders.
Check out the Under30CEO blog today and explore a wealth of invaluable resources to help your small business grow and succeed.
