It’s 2019. Almost every business worldwide does some form of digital marketing. But can you believe only 45% of businesses don’t form a digital marketing strategy first?
Marketing is such an important business function as lead generation is the lifeblood of any company. It is such an important function of your company yet many do not place emphasis on this. Simply because of the misconception that launching a website, establishing a social media presence and publishing content will magically contribute to the growth of your business.
Sadly, it doesn’t work that way especially if you are keen on lead generation or online sales.
For digital marketing to be effective and successful, you need a roadmap. You need a well-laid out plan on how to achieve your business goal by leveraging online media.
In other words, you need a strategy that lets you take a series of clearly defined, data-driven actions to achieve your business goals before you actually use tactics like SEO, social media, ads, and more.
This even works when there is a major slump in the economy. In my case study where our client was a company with 14 finance brokers who were rather despondent because their sales techniques weren’t working during Perth’s economic downturn, executing a good marketing plan turned skeptics into believers that marketing actually does work.
Here are 3 undeniable reasons why you need a digital marketing strategy.
1. Your marketing efforts will not be going around in circles.
Without a well-defined strategy, it’s like driving somewhere new without a roadmap or GPS.
You put up a website. Get on all social media channels. And start religiously posting on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Snapchat and the likes.
But are your online marketing efforts taking you closer to business goals? Are you getting more leads or closing more sales? Are reinforcing your brand image in an effective manner? Are you getting more followers or better engagement? Are you even being found on Google for the product/service you offer?
Those would remain questionable!
In fact, many businesses don’t even know whether their posts reach the right target market.
Whereas, when you define your digital marketing strategy, you will have a solid plan that gives you the right direction to take charge of online marketing in an effective and proven manner.
2. Ensure consistent marketing messaging
All your marketing efforts should reinforce your business value proposition.
Why should customers choose your business over competitors? What problems give sleepless nights to your customers? How are you solving those problems? Why exactly should people care about your business?
Ideally, your online marketing efforts should be an answer to all these crucial questions.
Your business should address these issues in your social media channels and not come across like a carbon copy of your competitors.
A well-planned digital strategy can help ensure your message is consistent across all digital marketing channels and immensely contribute to your business bottom line.
You can do this by starting off with content marketing as part of your strategic marketing campaign. This strategy will help by finding your brand’s voice so it is both authentic and compelling to your ideal customer.
3. Track results. Optimise. Achieve your marketing goals.
The best part of digital marketing is, you can track, measure, optimise, and test almost every single marketing activity online. By doing so, you will be able to constantly improve your marketing and achieve the desired goals in a cost-effective manner.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t spend the time to review their analytics that helps them identify what’s working and what’s not.
Only when you have a well-documented digital strategy, you will know where opportunities exist even against the sea of competitors, which channels you don’t need to concentrate on, and whether your online marketing is paying off or not.
So before taking a plunge online, start on the right foot by creating a digital marketing strategy Or, you will be simply pouring money down the drain.
If you need help figuring out your digital marketing strategy, I would love to help you do this.
Does your business have a digital marketing strategy or not? I would love to know how you approach digital marketing. Share your comments below.