How to Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy Part 2
by j-nevil in Circuits > Websites
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How to Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy Part 2
Intro: This is part two of a two part strategy. For more information and to find the first part of this how to develop a digital marketing strategy, follow me.
What we have covered so far:
1. Determining where your company is within the digital marketing world
2. Finding your target audience
3. Developing your brand to appeal to your target audience
4. Finding digital marketing channels that best suit your companies industry
5. Analysing your current strategy
So, by now you should have some idea as to where your target audience is within the digital marketing world. You should also be clued in to how well your strategy is working at the moment to target your specific audience.
Digital Marketing Strategy – Part Two…
What we have covered so far:
1. Determining where your company is within the digital marketing world
2. Finding your target audience
3. Developing your brand to appeal to your target audience
4. Finding digital marketing channels that best suit your companies industry
5. Analysing your current strategy
So, by now you should have some idea as to where your target audience is within the digital marketing world. You should also be clued in to how well your strategy is working at the moment to target your specific audience.
Digital Marketing Strategy – Part Two…
6. Analyse When You Can Get the Most Leads and Conversions
The next issue to look at is when and where in a time line you get the most leads and conversions from your website. Every type of business will have a different time line as to when they make their most money. Websites will get a different amount of traffic, leads and conversions depending on the products you are selling and the services you offer.
Looking at seasonal trends over the year will help you to determine when you should be putting most effort into your marketing skills. For example, we see a lot of perfume adverts on television in November on the lead up to Christmas. Advertising at this time of year is ideal for selling products for Christmas as this is the main time of year for perfume sales. You will notice that for most ecommerce shops, this is a trend that can be taken advantage of.
Other services such as property agents, gardening centres, building trade stores and water sports businesses tend to see a drop in traffic and sales overall in the winter as this is not a suitable time of year for them to make lots of money within their business. Often events and holidays throughout the year will play a part on how well a business does at that specific time. If you know when your busiest periods are, these are the times to market your business correctly.
There was only one way to ensure that you are on top of your competitors for Christmas this year, and that was to start optimising your website by creating new pages of content and promoting your products last Christmas. You should never just market at the time of year you are busiest, you need to ensure you are ahead of the game by marketing early, keep up on your marketing techniques and promote your brand even more when you are at the time where you get the most amount of conversions and sales.
It is all about brand awareness throughout the year that will make someone come back and buy from your shop. It’s a known fact that someone will have to see your brand at least six times before they will consider buying or converting on your website. This is why you should spend a lot of your time marketing your brand, getting your name known and out in the social media world and begin to develop a customer base.
It is not just seasonal trends that you will have to watch out for. Buying trends throughout the day can also have a big impact on when you should market to your audience. Email marketing should be done at a time when most people log on to emails and check them. The usual times are in the morning, at lunch time or in the evening. The same with social media, you should time your tweets, Facebook notifications and pins at a time when your users, buyers and potential customers are online. Social bro is a good platform for twitter users to work out exactly when users are online and the best time of day to tweet at them.
Looking at seasonal trends over the year will help you to determine when you should be putting most effort into your marketing skills. For example, we see a lot of perfume adverts on television in November on the lead up to Christmas. Advertising at this time of year is ideal for selling products for Christmas as this is the main time of year for perfume sales. You will notice that for most ecommerce shops, this is a trend that can be taken advantage of.
Other services such as property agents, gardening centres, building trade stores and water sports businesses tend to see a drop in traffic and sales overall in the winter as this is not a suitable time of year for them to make lots of money within their business. Often events and holidays throughout the year will play a part on how well a business does at that specific time. If you know when your busiest periods are, these are the times to market your business correctly.
There was only one way to ensure that you are on top of your competitors for Christmas this year, and that was to start optimising your website by creating new pages of content and promoting your products last Christmas. You should never just market at the time of year you are busiest, you need to ensure you are ahead of the game by marketing early, keep up on your marketing techniques and promote your brand even more when you are at the time where you get the most amount of conversions and sales.
It is all about brand awareness throughout the year that will make someone come back and buy from your shop. It’s a known fact that someone will have to see your brand at least six times before they will consider buying or converting on your website. This is why you should spend a lot of your time marketing your brand, getting your name known and out in the social media world and begin to develop a customer base.
It is not just seasonal trends that you will have to watch out for. Buying trends throughout the day can also have a big impact on when you should market to your audience. Email marketing should be done at a time when most people log on to emails and check them. The usual times are in the morning, at lunch time or in the evening. The same with social media, you should time your tweets, Facebook notifications and pins at a time when your users, buyers and potential customers are online. Social bro is a good platform for twitter users to work out exactly when users are online and the best time of day to tweet at them.
7. Determine Where You Want Your Business to Be Online
Everyone has an aim to be as big as Apple, Argos, or some of the bigger brand names. To start with, that’s not a realistic goal to give yourself at the start of your strategy. Instead you should set goals, such as being on page one for specific keywords, getting so many followers in a couple of months, building reviews and generally getting your brand known on different platforms. Then you can begin to build on the bigger picture. Don't forget that every business starts out small before they reach the big bucks!
Analyse how much demand there is for the products and services you sell. See what your competitors are doing, how they are optimising their website and putting their brand out on the web. There may be something that you are missing that is working really well for someone else. If it is working well for a competitor, it can work well for you.
Analyse the user’s experience on your website. Is it easy to use? How is the customer journey to your contact form or basket? Do people have to think in order to use the website, and if so, there is not a very good user path and you may wish to reconsider designing your website to suit the needs of a customer. Pretty websites are not always converting ones, they just help the journey along.
Do some analysis using Google Analytics to determine what is working for your website and what isn’t doing so well. See what pages have the highest bounce rate, where customers are leaving or exiting your website and find the pages that draw the most attention. You will be able to tell a lot from having this data in Analytics. Set up goal tracking on your website. If you are wanting to know exactly how many conversions you get for products, new products or contact queries, setting up these types of goals are a brilliant way to understand how well your website makes you conversions.
Analyse how much demand there is for the products and services you sell. See what your competitors are doing, how they are optimising their website and putting their brand out on the web. There may be something that you are missing that is working really well for someone else. If it is working well for a competitor, it can work well for you.
Analyse the user’s experience on your website. Is it easy to use? How is the customer journey to your contact form or basket? Do people have to think in order to use the website, and if so, there is not a very good user path and you may wish to reconsider designing your website to suit the needs of a customer. Pretty websites are not always converting ones, they just help the journey along.
Do some analysis using Google Analytics to determine what is working for your website and what isn’t doing so well. See what pages have the highest bounce rate, where customers are leaving or exiting your website and find the pages that draw the most attention. You will be able to tell a lot from having this data in Analytics. Set up goal tracking on your website. If you are wanting to know exactly how many conversions you get for products, new products or contact queries, setting up these types of goals are a brilliant way to understand how well your website makes you conversions.
8. Decide the Products and Services You Want to Promote First in Your Strategy
Every company has a set of either products or services that will help to make a good return on investment quickly for your business. Some products or services are more profitable than others, which is why you should determine what products or services will get you back the most profit in the shortest amount of time.
You will get the chance to promote your other products when your strategy is more developed. The more money you can make out of a good strong strategy, the more you will be able to invest within your strategy to help the rest of your business develop. The beginning of any strategy is a testing ground to make sure that you are putting the right marketing tactics together. At this stage, if something doesn't quite work for you, you have the chance to change it without creating a big impact on the rest of your business.
The starting point of your strategy is a key part that you will need to carefully choose. If it is a specific product that is quite costly but very niche, it could be less of a risk to optimise your website for it than to try and promote a product that is high in demand which every website is competing to sell.
Test a set of products out first and see how you get on. If you plan to do SEO, perhaps think about doing a PPC test to see if a particular keyword converts or not. You wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time on the wrong keyword building it to the first page and then find that it doesn’t actually convert into any sales.
You will get the chance to promote your other products when your strategy is more developed. The more money you can make out of a good strong strategy, the more you will be able to invest within your strategy to help the rest of your business develop. The beginning of any strategy is a testing ground to make sure that you are putting the right marketing tactics together. At this stage, if something doesn't quite work for you, you have the chance to change it without creating a big impact on the rest of your business.
The starting point of your strategy is a key part that you will need to carefully choose. If it is a specific product that is quite costly but very niche, it could be less of a risk to optimise your website for it than to try and promote a product that is high in demand which every website is competing to sell.
Test a set of products out first and see how you get on. If you plan to do SEO, perhaps think about doing a PPC test to see if a particular keyword converts or not. You wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time on the wrong keyword building it to the first page and then find that it doesn’t actually convert into any sales.
9. Find Out What Resources You Can Use in Your Company
Not everyone can do their own marketing in their company, which is why it usually gets outsourced to other digital marketing agencies. First work out who you have in the company that can help with marketing and promoting your company.
How will you utilise the people in-house to develop your company? No business owner wants to pay employees to sit around and twiddle their fingers. In most companies, this isn't the case, but for a few it helps to give out special projects that your employees can get involved in whilst they do not have a project on. Work to their abilities by deciding what skills they have, and how they can use them to help your business. Can they write good content for your website, or are they a dab hand at social media building relationships with customers or potential partners?
How will you utilise the people in-house to develop your company? No business owner wants to pay employees to sit around and twiddle their fingers. In most companies, this isn't the case, but for a few it helps to give out special projects that your employees can get involved in whilst they do not have a project on. Work to their abilities by deciding what skills they have, and how they can use them to help your business. Can they write good content for your website, or are they a dab hand at social media building relationships with customers or potential partners?
10. Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Developing a digital strategy is all about getting the methodology behind it right in the first place. Finding an agency to help you develop and define a digital strategy for you is one of the best ways of moving forward to develop your digital strategy to its fullest.
Putting together each of the points discussed across these two articles, we can use this digital strategy methodology to help guide any type of business in the right direction in the digital marketing world.
The main points to take away with you are:
1. Set goals to achieve
2. Research your business
3. Use new opportunities
4. Create good user experience
5. Manage your marketing strategy well
Good luck!
Putting together each of the points discussed across these two articles, we can use this digital strategy methodology to help guide any type of business in the right direction in the digital marketing world.
The main points to take away with you are:
1. Set goals to achieve
2. Research your business
3. Use new opportunities
4. Create good user experience
5. Manage your marketing strategy well
Good luck!