How to Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy Part 3
by j-nevil in Circuits > Computers
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How to Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy Part 3
Intro: Welcome to Part 3 in my series on how to develop a digital marketing strategy. Make sure you’ve read part 1 and part 2, before continuing – as this final part will be dealing with the more advanced aspects of digital strategy.
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 company's industry
5. Analysing your current strategy
6. Analysing when you can get the most leads and conversions
7. Determining where you want your business to be online
8. Deciding the products and services you want to promote first
9. What resources you can use in your company
10. Managing your strategy
By now you should have some idea about the effectiveness of your campaign. It is either going well, or not so well. This part of the guide will focus on measuring the effectiveness of your campaign and refining it to make it more effective overall.
Digital Marketing Strategy – Part Three…
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 company's industry
5. Analysing your current strategy
6. Analysing when you can get the most leads and conversions
7. Determining where you want your business to be online
8. Deciding the products and services you want to promote first
9. What resources you can use in your company
10. Managing your strategy
By now you should have some idea about the effectiveness of your campaign. It is either going well, or not so well. This part of the guide will focus on measuring the effectiveness of your campaign and refining it to make it more effective overall.
Digital Marketing Strategy – Part Three…
11. Using Analytics
One of the best and most accurate ways of measuring the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy is to use a web analytics package. These are basically software applications that track all the interactions your site might have with a user. It can track the number of hits your site gets, page views, visit duration and even the click path – which is the order of pages viewed within a user visit.
This can be very useful, and provide some insight into the effectiveness of the strategy. For example, by viewing the click path it is possible to determine where customers drop off and exit your site. This can lead you to construct a detailed ‘user journey’ through your site, which shows where people leave the site – this in turn provides you with an opportunity to correct and refine any usability issues at the point users leave the site, which can then help increase leads and conversions.
Analytics packages can also help you to understand whether the social media or marketing channels you are using are benefitting the site. For example, you can track referral traffic which will show you how many visitors are coming from a particular source – be it Twitter, Facebook or any other site from which users can visit your site. If you’ve been focussing on Facebook for user engagement and promotions and your traffic levels remain unchanged, or do not match the effectiveness of other sources of user engagement and promotion, then you should consider revamping the strategy for that particular platform or even getting rid of it and focussing solely on the more effective one.
It’s all about getting an insight into how users interact with your site. There’s no sense in wasting valuable time on something that isn’t working, so it’s good to see what is and isn’t working and then correcting problems or reassessing. Using analytics should guide your decisions. There are many different web analytics software packages available, some of which are free.
Free packages include Open Web Analytics, Piwik and Google Analytics (which is a hosted analytics service) as well as many proprietary packages. Your budget will affect your choices, but having analytics set-up is absolutely crucial to measuring the effectiveness of your marketing – as well as determining when, why and how to refine or improve it.
This can be very useful, and provide some insight into the effectiveness of the strategy. For example, by viewing the click path it is possible to determine where customers drop off and exit your site. This can lead you to construct a detailed ‘user journey’ through your site, which shows where people leave the site – this in turn provides you with an opportunity to correct and refine any usability issues at the point users leave the site, which can then help increase leads and conversions.
Analytics packages can also help you to understand whether the social media or marketing channels you are using are benefitting the site. For example, you can track referral traffic which will show you how many visitors are coming from a particular source – be it Twitter, Facebook or any other site from which users can visit your site. If you’ve been focussing on Facebook for user engagement and promotions and your traffic levels remain unchanged, or do not match the effectiveness of other sources of user engagement and promotion, then you should consider revamping the strategy for that particular platform or even getting rid of it and focussing solely on the more effective one.
It’s all about getting an insight into how users interact with your site. There’s no sense in wasting valuable time on something that isn’t working, so it’s good to see what is and isn’t working and then correcting problems or reassessing. Using analytics should guide your decisions. There are many different web analytics software packages available, some of which are free.
Free packages include Open Web Analytics, Piwik and Google Analytics (which is a hosted analytics service) as well as many proprietary packages. Your budget will affect your choices, but having analytics set-up is absolutely crucial to measuring the effectiveness of your marketing – as well as determining when, why and how to refine or improve it.
12. Building Relationships
A lot of marketing is about relationships. It’s about the relationship a customer has with your brand, product or service and the relationship you have with other people in your industry. This is very important when managing your own PR as a business online, having an effective marketing strategy should put you in a position of strength to deal with any complaints or problems – as well as compliments.
Relationships can also be built with influencers. If you’re in the legal profession, and you stumble across a brilliant and influential blog that happens to have a lot of followers – that’s the kind of influencer I’m talking about. People who affect your industry, and help shape it, are good to have on your side – as a result it’s always wise to build relationships with people you think have a high level of influence on your industry. Even if you just like or admire another company, why not connect with them?
Do some research, probe social networks and draw up a list of people who you want to follow, friend or otherwise, engage and build a relationship with. There are many ways of building a relationship, but it normally just takes time. Start small, follow them and say ‘Hello’ – let them know you like them and are a fan. Chances are that influential blog or fellow industry company will have their own social media and engagement activity as part of their own digital marketing strategy. As a result, interacting with them is a great way of making an impression and letting them know that their engagement is working. Respond to their tweets, comment on their blog posts or just ‘Like’ them on Facebook. It’s all about familiarising yourself with them, and them with you, and building a relationship gradually.
Once the relationship is established you could ask to put some content with links and expertise on their site, or maybe do a content trade. This creates value for both of you as you can promote your brand on their site through an informative and engaging guest blog post, and they can have a free piece of high-quality content! The idea is that you build up enough relationships so that you have an expanded brand presence on the internet, and hopefully more and more audiences will relate to you and your services.
Relationships can also be built with influencers. If you’re in the legal profession, and you stumble across a brilliant and influential blog that happens to have a lot of followers – that’s the kind of influencer I’m talking about. People who affect your industry, and help shape it, are good to have on your side – as a result it’s always wise to build relationships with people you think have a high level of influence on your industry. Even if you just like or admire another company, why not connect with them?
Do some research, probe social networks and draw up a list of people who you want to follow, friend or otherwise, engage and build a relationship with. There are many ways of building a relationship, but it normally just takes time. Start small, follow them and say ‘Hello’ – let them know you like them and are a fan. Chances are that influential blog or fellow industry company will have their own social media and engagement activity as part of their own digital marketing strategy. As a result, interacting with them is a great way of making an impression and letting them know that their engagement is working. Respond to their tweets, comment on their blog posts or just ‘Like’ them on Facebook. It’s all about familiarising yourself with them, and them with you, and building a relationship gradually.
Once the relationship is established you could ask to put some content with links and expertise on their site, or maybe do a content trade. This creates value for both of you as you can promote your brand on their site through an informative and engaging guest blog post, and they can have a free piece of high-quality content! The idea is that you build up enough relationships so that you have an expanded brand presence on the internet, and hopefully more and more audiences will relate to you and your services.
13. Go Viral With Videos
Videos are a huge part of the internet. Whether it’s on YouTube, Buzzfeed, Metacafe or VideoJug – it’s all about getting your name out there some more with well-made video content. Some people might be a bit put off by the prospect of making a video, but it doesn’t have to be difficult – and it doesn’t have to be a viral sensation to be effective.
If you run a business, then detailed videos on how your business works or operates are beneficial. Explaining processes or standard practices about ‘How We Work’ provides a learning experience for the user, whilst also raising your brand awareness. If you can get a reasonably capable video producer, this effectiveness can be enhanced. Explanatory videos are very informative, but they can be dull if you’re not careful. This is why having someone capable of adding graphics and properly editing a video is beneficial – as it adds a level of professionalism and is more entertaining. Just explain how things work, share your knowledge, and remember to always cross-promote your new videos on your website, on your blog and on all social networks you might be on.
If you want to push the envelope, you could also invest in a more conceptual video, one that is more like a piece of branded entertainment as opposed to an informative video. This is a good way to make a real impact and gain some momentum with an entertaining viral video. It’s very difficult to determine what will and what will not catch on, so this strategy is somewhat risky if you don’t have the resources – but it’s worth bearing in mind should a brilliant idea come up.
If you run a business, then detailed videos on how your business works or operates are beneficial. Explaining processes or standard practices about ‘How We Work’ provides a learning experience for the user, whilst also raising your brand awareness. If you can get a reasonably capable video producer, this effectiveness can be enhanced. Explanatory videos are very informative, but they can be dull if you’re not careful. This is why having someone capable of adding graphics and properly editing a video is beneficial – as it adds a level of professionalism and is more entertaining. Just explain how things work, share your knowledge, and remember to always cross-promote your new videos on your website, on your blog and on all social networks you might be on.
If you want to push the envelope, you could also invest in a more conceptual video, one that is more like a piece of branded entertainment as opposed to an informative video. This is a good way to make a real impact and gain some momentum with an entertaining viral video. It’s very difficult to determine what will and what will not catch on, so this strategy is somewhat risky if you don’t have the resources – but it’s worth bearing in mind should a brilliant idea come up.
Find a Promotion, or a Cause
Coming up with a quick but effective promotion from time to time in order to spice things up is a great way to enhance your digital strategy and keep it fresh. For example, why not organise a contest or giveaway in order to drum up some interest?
Contests and giveaways are quite simple for retailers and companies that are focussed on delivering products to customers. For example, if you run a toy site then giving away a batch of toys as prizes will be relatively simple. However, service based companies can also do giveaways. For example, a spa could run a contest for a free spa day.
Some services don’t lend themselves well to giveaways. For example, a law firm might not have the same incentive for people to enter their competition to win a free service – however these companies can always adopt a cause to which the promotion is geared to. For example, choosing a charity to donate to when people use your service is good to raise awareness for the charitable cause and your brand, as well as give some much needed funds to the charity itself!
Contests and giveaways are quite simple for retailers and companies that are focussed on delivering products to customers. For example, if you run a toy site then giving away a batch of toys as prizes will be relatively simple. However, service based companies can also do giveaways. For example, a spa could run a contest for a free spa day.
Some services don’t lend themselves well to giveaways. For example, a law firm might not have the same incentive for people to enter their competition to win a free service – however these companies can always adopt a cause to which the promotion is geared to. For example, choosing a charity to donate to when people use your service is good to raise awareness for the charitable cause and your brand, as well as give some much needed funds to the charity itself!
Keep Refining & Evolving
A marketing strategy really is like an organic being. So many different aspects come into play and there are many refinements and tweaks you can make during the course of your marketing. As a result, you should always be looking to change and adjust your marketing – with the end goal always being to extend its effectiveness.
Using this digital strategy methodology can help guide any type of business in the right direction in the digital marketing world, however you should always be looking inwards and evolving your strategy along with your company. As your company grows, so should you.
The main points to take away with you are:
1. Get analytics set up
2. Build relationships
3. Try and go viral with videos
4. Utilise contests and giveaways
5. Always refine and expand
Good luck!
Thanks for reading; I’d love to know what you think – so please feel free to let me know. If you liked my Instructable, then why not see my other one related to digital marketing – ‘How To Choose A B2B Marketing Agency’. I write on a number of subjects, on a number of different platforms, so why not follow me on Twitter? @JeffNevil.
Using this digital strategy methodology can help guide any type of business in the right direction in the digital marketing world, however you should always be looking inwards and evolving your strategy along with your company. As your company grows, so should you.
The main points to take away with you are:
1. Get analytics set up
2. Build relationships
3. Try and go viral with videos
4. Utilise contests and giveaways
5. Always refine and expand
Good luck!
Thanks for reading; I’d love to know what you think – so please feel free to let me know. If you liked my Instructable, then why not see my other one related to digital marketing – ‘How To Choose A B2B Marketing Agency’. I write on a number of subjects, on a number of different platforms, so why not follow me on Twitter? @JeffNevil.