What Is A Digital Marketing Strategy?

Strategy, strategy, strategy!! It seems like as soon as you start marketing your business online the word strategy starts popping up too!

First, let’s start with what a digital marketing strategy is! 

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that helps your business reach specific goals through the use of online marketing below you will find a few examples of areas of digital marketing and basic descriptions of each: 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – optimizing website content to improve ranking and placement on search engines such as Google, Bing and others. 

Paid Advertising – Pay-Per-Click or PPC are ads that are run and you’re only charged when the ads are clicked on. Other ads are run on social platforms and search engines based on the placement of the ad. 

Social Media Marketing (SMM) – marketing conducted through organic or paid means on social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Usually used to build brand awareness and connect to potential leads. 

Content Marketing – Content created usually for a company website with the goal of increasing traffic and improving rank in search. This category includes blogs, videos, and even social media posts. Anytime your business is creating content that is considered content marketing. 

Email Marketing – marketing that is delivered to the inbox of people who have joined your email list. These emails can be newsletters, announcements, educational, and promotions. 

As you can see there is some overlap in a few of these digital marketing strategy categories. This is why it can be confusing for some businesses to know where to start and where to go as they grow their brand. 

Keep reading to find out 7 key elements of a digital marketing strategy. 

Key Elements of a Digital Marketing Strategy

1. Evaluate Business Goals – first take a moment to look over your overall business goals. What do you want to achieve in 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months? Keep these in mind you’ll need them for the next step. 
2. Conduct a SWOT analysis – This is simply an analysis of your business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. (If you need a complete rundown on conducting a SWOT analysis Google has examples. 
3. Establish SMART Goals – After conducting your SWOT analysis you should be able to establish some SMART goals. These are S – Specific, M – Measurable, A – Attainable, R – Relevant, T – Timely. 
4. Understand your Target Audience – This is a crucial element of any successful marketing strategy. If you don’t understand your audience you will not be able to speak their language, you will not be able to anticipate their wants and needs.
5. Purposeful Content Marketing – All content should have a purpose. Don’t simply post, email, blog or create videos just to have content out there. Be purposeful this goes back to understanding your audience. If you understand them then you can create content for them. 
6. Choose The Right Channel – Choosing channels is not based on the new hottest trend. It should be based on your audience and where they are at in the buyer journey. Reaching your audience at their brand awareness stage and getting them to the conversion stage requires different platforms and content strategies. 
7. Messaging – Another key element in digital marketing strategy is messaging. If you aren’t speaking to your audience with the right messaging, you risk potentially filling your marketing funnel with the wrong audience and making no sales. YIKES! This goes back to understanding your audience. Understanding means you will be able to craft messaging that resonates with them. 

Check out this article to learn more about the importance of Marketing Messages. 

What Digital Marketing Strategy Is Best For My Business?

Digital marketing strategies are different from business to business. Each business has its own unique goals and each digital strategy should reflect that.

This means there is no one-size fits all approach to marketing. 

 Most businesses that are just starting out are looking for more cost-effective ways to market their business.

As they should, if you are a business running with limited funds you should NOT be focused on big spending ad campaigns and marketing strategies. 

Small start-ups might turn focus to social media channels, optimize their website for SEO and include blogs in their strategy, and grow their email list with an optin, these are all relatively low-cost ways to start marketing your business online.

As a business grows and revenue increases it can then allocate funds to high-cost marketing strategies such as ad campaigns, paid influencers, and more. 

Looking for Digital Marketing Strategy Help?

If you are looking for help with your digital marketing strategy we are here to help! Stephanie Mead Creative offers a variety of different digital marketing strategies and management packages to fit your business needs.