Creating a digital marketing strategy is one of the most important things you can do for your business online. Without a plan, you're going to be stabbing in the dark, hoping something sticks.

We will go through a quick rundown of digital marketing and what avenues you should pursue online to promote yourself. We'll also cover working out who your target audience is and sizing up how you compare to your competition.

So what is digital marketing?

Digital marketing promotes your products and services to customers using one or more online channels, bringing awareness of your existence and brand. So what are the different online channels? Let's go through them:

Types of digital marketing

Your website
Pay per click advertising (PPC)
Content marketing
Email marketing (Newsletters, updates, tips, guides, catalogues)
Social media marketing (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, Clubhouse)
Video marketing (Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook video, Snapchat, TikTok)
Search engine optimisation (ranking for relevant keywords)
Affiliate marketing
Mobile marketing (text messages, messaging apps)

What are your digital marketing goals?

It's essential to set goals. Without them, you're flying blind without a purpose. Some of the most common digital marketing goals include:

Generating more leads (a lead might be, for example, someone calling you to ask about a product or service or emailing you)
Improve your conversion rate (converting readers/visitors into customers - and remember this doesn't always mean something that's purchased. A conversion might be they sign up to a newsletter or book an appointment with you, and your specific goal will determine what kind of conversion you are looking to make with visitors to your website)
Content marketing
Increase your sales
Increase your traffic

Remember, you might only have one goal or more than one, but it should always be specific to your business's own needs.

Who is your audience?

Knowing your ideal-typical customers will make planning your digital marketing around them much more straightforward. Digital marketing targeting a senior investment banker will look different from digital marketing that targets the early teenage group.

Scope out your competition

Scoping out your competition is essential. Know what your competition is up to online. What are they doing, where are they showing up online, which channels? And what's working for them? What isn't? Are they doing anything you also ought to be doing?

How much are you budgeting for this?

Not all digital marketing costs money, but it might depend on what online channels you choose to target and what you plan to put out there. Knowing how much cash you have to burn for digital marketing can help you plan and space out your marketing calendar or prioritize what channels get more funding than others.

Do a SWOT analysis

Doing a SWOT analysis is always recommended when you're planning. SWOT stands for:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

Knowing how your business stacks up against your competitors will help guide your digital marketing plan.

Set up a calendar for your digital marketing plan

Executing a plan is one thing, but knowing what days of the year you need to execute that plan is equally essential.

Like traditional marketing, you need to note any important dates significant to your business and target market.

A sports memorabilia store, for example, might want to note all the season game dates throughout the year and coincide a chunk of their digital marketing on these days.

A water amusement park might want to ramp up a lot of digital marketing during the summertime when customers are looking to stay cool and keep kids entertained during the school holidays.

Knowing when to put out content can help you prepare for it in advance.

Review the results

Digital marketing is never a set and forget thing. You should always measure your results to see how effective you were, know what is working and what isn't. And where it isn't working, adapt and change.

If you don't do this, you can risk throwing time and money out the window if part of that plan needs to be calibrated the next time it's carried out.

Fortunately, there are a few good ways you can monitor and measure your results online; one of the most common tools you can use is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a dashboard that allows you to see web traffic to your website.

Google Analytics can tell you how many visitors you're getting to your website. From what countries. What time they're visiting, from what channels (e.g., social media, pay-per-click ads, and so forth), what pages they are visiting, and so on.

You can even set goals on Google Analytics to see how often you achieve them, for example, how many times someone uses the contact us form.

Are you looking for a Perth digital marketing agency to help you market your business online? Thriving Web Design is a Perth based company that can help you put together a killer digital marketing strategy. Contact us today to see how we can help.

Creating a digital marketing strategy

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