Digital Marketing Strategy
Developing A Digital Marketing Strategy
Current business world requires a much larger platform to flourish on a full scale. And the internet has provided the much-needed scope to the business owners. Digital marketing has led to the foundation of a global marketing strategy that can bring in the maximum exposure of any business to its potential clients. Online marketing is nothing, but a business strategy formulated in alignment with the goals and objectives of the company. While it is common for business owners to think that the strategy is going to be limited to web marketing, but in reality, it extends much further. It is weaved into every sphere of modern life.
All You Should Know
Having a strategy for the company allows the business owners to describe every relevant field of the business in details. They can concentrate on their marketing plans, the efforts needed to establish the same, how to accomplish it and the costs it may take. It will also look over the returns to expect after a certain period of time. This needs the business owner to have a firm knowledge of the present market scenario including consumers, competitors, goals, and objectives of the business and budget for the same. They need to conduct thorough market research to realize the target market, the competition to cater to the demands and the other variables that can hinder the business to engage more people.
The best way to do so is to address all the preceding questions of the strategies of communication in digital marketing. It mainly has two stages. The first one is to analyze the marketing needs of the company and includes the brand, product, competition, manufacturing methods, value, culture, its place and position in the market. The later stage involves the creative actions development as relevant to the target audience and the market positioning.
Some of the most important questions to address include:
- You want to promote what, why and to whom?
- What objectives would you strategize to overcome the obstacles?
- How much can you invest?
- How much time can you limit?
- Who is going to help you in the process?
It is only on the basis of these questions that you can formulate the best business plan.
The 5 Ps of Ideal Marketing
Once the research is complete, you will need to sort the strategies of marketing and you need to define the 5 Ps for an ideal marketing combination.
1. Product
This is the item or service that you are trying to sell. You need to understand how unique the product is. The best way to do so is to list the physical specifications and how it differs from the other products in the market. This also includes the factors that will make the customers choose your product over the others.
2. Price
Price is one of the most important ingredients of business marketing principles. It includes considering the cost price required for producing the item and the price it can incur from the market. You also need to compare the rates your competitors offer and how much profit you expect by selling the product at this rate?
3. Place
It includes realizing the platforms where the product or the service is going to be available for your customers. It may be anywhere from a physical shop such as one near the bus stop, the metro station, online market or another e-commerce website. You need to analyze the business you can derive from each of the sectors.
4. Promotion
Promoting your product is the ultimate marketing piece. You need to think of the communication strategies to reach your customers and notify the base of the potential clients of your offer. It also includes the techniques you will use to promote the product and how to indulge more people by checking what you are offering them with.
5. People
This marketing mix includes all the people involved in the business and who can be held accountable for realizing the product. It includes assistants, vendors, and stakeholders. You need to consider their job roles, responsibilities and their contributions to the business.
Target Audience
The term target audience is coined for the market populace you are developing your product for. You need to know the required profile for your potential client to develop more aligned strategies. Once you realize the best target for your product and realize who you are going to sell your product to you can progress much faster. The best way, to begin with, is to understand the ideal customer. Ideal customers refer to the base of your customers that are willing to purchase your products at the ideal price without requiring you to invest any marketing effort.
For this reason, you need to realize various aspects such as the age, sex, location, finance, native language and work language of the customers. The audience must be capable of making the decisions for them on purchasing the product. You must also take into consideration the problems that will be solved by your product to realize your target audience to greater extents. The laws and customs can vary from place to place and you need to study those as well. This will help you to realize the scopes your product has in the local, national and international markets.
You need to define if your product is for business (B2B) or customers (B2C).
Target segments
As you realize your ideal customer, you can define the process of deciding on the purchase to better extents. This includes everything involved in the process from the comparison of the item to those of the competitor or dependence on other individuals to compete for the decision-making process. Consulting often plays an inevitable role in decision-making processes. It is a complex process and is much different from reactions that are immediate and instinctive. Decision making includes selection criteria for the item, issue analysis and the options that are required for making the final choice. The individuals involved in a decision-making process may include family members, community or a board of directors.
Goals and objectives
Setting the goals and objectives is one of the most primary requirements for the smooth running of any business. It includes monthly, quarterly, annual or long-term goals that you wish to achieve over the course of time. Defining the goals before creating the strategy of digital marketing can help you to have knowledge of what to expect after the planning is complete and how much you should or must invest to achieve those goals.
While most businesses require marketing plans for every year, opting for a online strategy for longer terms can be a lot beneficial. It may not bring in any immediate results, but it will bring in a lot of returns in the coming time. It also lets you establish the mission and vision for your business and also lets you take care of your short time status on progress. You must not underestimate or overestimate anything and hold an optimistic attitude to achieve the best of your business. As you keep tracking your business regularly, you can bring in better rectifications to walk closer to achieving your goals and objectives.
SMART principle
The best way to define your goals is to use the SMART system. This works as a guide to help you formulate better goals and objectives so that you can accomplish all and raise the business ladders.
Specific
This part requires you to consider the specific reasons as to what you should do and what importance does it hold. It also includes realizing the exact resources required or the limiting factors that can affect the production.
Measurable
You must know of the scales to measure the progress and how to know if the objective is accomplished. It is necessary to find a way of measuring the objectives. It can be anything from raising your market share by certain proportions or doubling your turnover. It can also include increasing the number of visitors on a daily basis or the count of subscriptions to your business.
Achievable
This section of the system requires you to define the steps of how you are going to achieve your goals. You need to consider the other constraints to realize how realistic your goal is. It includes financial factors, market demands, competitions, and many other variables.
Relevant
Checking the relevance of the business in the market is one of the most essential requirements. You must address the goals to be reasonable and realistic and if you have adequate resources to obtain the results. This also includes considering the relevant time for the product and its consistency for providing ample scopes to the other needs and efforts. You must also think of the contexts of the society, economics and the factors of the environment.
Time
The window may be time-limited or dependent on a particular period. Additionally, you also need to consider the frame within which you are planning to achieve the goals and objectives. Breaking it down to smaller segments such as periods of 6 weeks, 6 months or just a day can help you to progress faster.
You can set in any goal you may like but it must be aligned with the strategic plans, visions, and missions of the organization.
Analyzing your competitors
You must analyze the profile of the market competition if you want to lead the race. It will also help you to avail the best marketing strategies for the online digital platform. The best way to study potential competitors is to go through the official websites, social interactions, methods of organic search and many other factors. But the range of competition is not limited to the only ones present in the online market. Many others are present and operational in the physical market as well. You must not neglect them and analyze their business principles to know the customer base they thrive on and why they have not yet made internet presence.
You need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, develop superior strategies and recognize the barriers that can hinder your operation in the market. List their products and services in strategic groups and evaluate all existing competitors on the basis of this comparison. Once you are done with thorough research, you can easily find out the best ways to enjoy the upper hand in the market.
Studying the online presence of competitors
The best way to analyze your competitor is obviously to study their online presence. It includes their websites, count of pages, names, usability, and ergonomic design, use of blogs and any other interesting entry on the website including their contact details such as work hours, telephone number, feedback forms and other relevant features such as:
- Use and position of keywords
- SEO
- Budget
- Paid searches
- Social media management
- Manpower and their responsibilities
- Type and frequency of publications, and many other things.
It is an integral portion of marketing strategy and it will also be beneficial for assessing the product uniqueness alongside focusing on the competitors’ side of the key target market and the plans of marketing. This will also let you know their shares in the market, their past and current strategies and the platforms they are using to provide their products to the consumers. This will also help you to realize the importance and substitutes of your product in your market and how your clients can get access to it.
SWOT analysis
A SWOT analysis is referred to be an initial method that helps to assess the present conditions and considers four main sections. It involves tabulating a matrix that finds worldwide applicability from strategizing business plans, choosing schools and colleges to getting married in life. The main components required in this analysis include:
1. Strength
It is nothing but the properties of the project or team that works to bring in the advantage for the company to thrive well in the industry. It includes the factors of market reputation and the expertise in dealing the most prominent issues of the business. It can also include the talent pool that can help in the smooth running of the project.
2. Weakness
These are the components that can weaken the project. It can range from anything from a shortage of consultancy, resources, training or any other factor – both at the partner and operational level. The shortage at the operating level can bring in more hindrance than that at the partner level. It can also include an inability to deal multidisciplinary assignments due to the size or resources.
3. Objectives
Objectives are the variables from the external environment that can be fruitful for the business. It can include the position of the organization in the niche of a well-defined market or the establishment of their awareness among the target clients. The main portions of realizing the objectives include identifying the market areas that require attention other than their field of specialization.
4. Threats
This is also the list of external factors that can probably threaten the growth of the business and complicate the goals and steps of achieving the objectives. It can include the huge range of already existing competition in the present market and the new ones that are trying to rise and secure their place in the same field.
Tabulating these fields in a matrix can aid any business owner to great extents and help them to come up with the best strategies of digital marketing for their business.
Defining the budget
Once you have thoroughly researched out all the components relevant to the flourish of your business plan, you need to set the budget you are ready to invest or what you must invest. You must also consider the returns you wish to achieve in a set time period of 6 months, a year or longer terms. It must include all the expenses and revenues. Studies show that small business start-ups should invest 5-6% of their turnover to promote their business and it can rise up to 20% for businesses in the competitive industry. It can be dependent on a lot of factors including the presence of the business in the industry (operational time in years, months or days), sector of the business, changes in area businesses, activities involve and the ease of market penetration.
The basic elements of digital marketing
There are five main components involved in formulating a strategy for digital marketing for a business.
Website
It is the most basic component that holds the greatest significance in any strategy of digital marketing. Having a website provides any business with the greatest scopes of market exposure, client communication and engaging more potential clients to the business.
SEO
It is a massive portion of digital marketing that includes optimizing all on-page and off-page components of the website for the search engines. It includes internal links, Meta tags, headings, titles and any technical SEO service for onsite digital marketing. For the offsite portion, it includes backlinks, reviews, social media marketing, and any local off-site SEO component. It also includes developing creative contents such as e-books, press releases, images, video, etc.
SEM
Search Engine Marketing is a digital marketing technique that works to promote the websites. It does so by raising the website’s visibility in the result pages of the search engines and depends mainly on paid ways of advertising.
Email marketing
It has been one of the oldest techniques of digital marketing and a direct way to reach out to more clients through bulk personal emails with your products, services, and offers.
Social Media Marketing
Optimizing the contents for social media platforms are one of the best organic ways to generate healthy traffic to the website and bring in better conversion rates.
Measurement, analysis, and implementation of adjustments
The best way to come up with the best digital marketing strategies is to set the goals and objectives on the basis of driven data. This can help you to set realistic goals that can be comprehended with ease. Setting any kind of goals can be a hurdle to your business as the manpower involved would struggle more to accomplish the same. The best way to avoid this commotion is to collect accurate data from the market and analyze it to great extents. This will be beneficial for you.
Once done, you must identify the most optimum tool you can depend on to measure the success of your marketing efforts. This can not only work to motivate you but also help you devise further ways to bring in adjustments to keep the goals and objectives aligned with the mission and vision of your business. The best way to do this is by setting up marketing campaigns and test out the success of the steps to help you in achieving your goals and accomplishes your objectives.
