Digital Marketing doesn’t need to be a mystery. It is simply the marketing of your products or services using digital technologies, mainly the Internet, but also phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. It is in a interchangeable term with online marketing.
Follow these 8 steps to digital marketing mastery.
Digital Marketing Step 1: Identify our Customer
Who is your ideal customer? Whilst everyone may be able to use your product or service, it’s not easy or advisable to market to everyone.
Segment your potential purchasers and you will find it much easier to hone your message to speak directly to them and encourage them to interact and ultimately transact with you.
Consider:
- Age
- Sex
- Location
- Profession
- what problems they have
- how the (your) solution will benefit them
- where they hang out (online and off)
Digital Marketing Step 2: Get to know each platform/tool
There is a multitude of online tools to help you market and advertise your business. Social media, newsletters, websites, blogging, and more. Using the majority of them is non-negotiable in today’s small business world.
Get to know the basics of using each one but most importantly understand the demographics of each one to ascertain whether or not using that tool will get you in front of your ideal customer/client.
Don’t dismiss any of them until you have researched it fully.
Pay for training if you have to. Outsource it if you need to. But definitely pay attention to them.
Digital Marketing Step 3: Plan the Customer Journey
When was the last time you looked at the journey your customer takes with your business? From beginning (awareness) to end (purchase/review) map out a buying process that you think will be easy for the customer (identified in step 1) to follow.
Digital Marketing Step 4: Consider Free and Paid Traffic
In the world of free social media you may think it crazy to start paying for advertising. BUT it can be the difference between being seen and not seen. Plus it can give you an advantage over your competitors if they are not using paid ads.
Create a strategy that includes both forms of advertising – free and paid – to get yourself in front of your ideal client.
There is a multitude of channels to advertise on in this age of internet marketing: Facebook ads, Twitter cards, Instagram ads, Google Adwords etc – so make sure your strategy includes all relevant channels and media (see No3).
Digital Marketing Step 5: Plan your content
Making sure your content is timely and relevant is paramount in gaining traction in a busy online world. It is not unusual for small business owners to plan out three month’s, or even a year’s, worth of content.
Having a marketing content calendar makes this easier. No more posting off the cuff. Know what you are posting, when you are posting it, why you are posting and more importantly what you are aiming to gain from the post.
Digital Marketing Step 6: Track everything you do online
You can’t analyse what you don’t measure so make sure you keep an eye on all your metrics, including (but not limited to):
- Website visitors
- Traffic flow TO website
- Traffic flow THROUGH website
- Landing pages
- Bounce rate
- Facebook followers/likes
- Twitter followers/retweets
- Instagram followers
- etc
By tracking these measurements and comparing them to the time and type of content you are producing, you can see what is, and more importantly, isn’t working.
Digital Marketing Step 7: Never forget a “Call to Action”
A call to action is a prompt for you reader to DO something. Examples include downloading an ebook or signing up to your newsletter (but do bear in mind GDPR)
Research has shown that when asked (or told) to carry out an action a website visitor is more likely to take that actin then do to it of their own free will.
Whilst you should never be annoying in your online marketing, you should always strive to not let someone “get away” without taking further action or capturing their info.
Digital Marketing Step 8: Don’t feel like you HAVE to do it all.
It is not necessary for you to be present EVERYWHERE. I always tell clients that small businesses only have to fish where the fish are swimming. So if you discover from research that your ideal client is more likely to use Facebook than Twitter then there is absolutely no need to spend a huge amount of time on Twitter
Does the above make you feel better about starting with digital marketing? What else would you like to know? Ask a question in the comments and I’ll do my best to help.
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