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With technology being harnessed more thoroughly now than ever before, businesses know how the landscape of marketing has changed dramatically. Acquiring new tools and understanding new strategies can help win new clients and keep costs down. It’s sad to say, however, that there are businesses and agencies struggling to keep up. To be more specific, digital marketing remains a difficult concept for many businesses to wrap their heads around so they can use it effectively.
Then again, adapting to the changing digital landscape remains crucial to business success. A shift towards new digital distribution channels will make a big difference to the bottom line, so much so that 36% of marketers are integrating digital channels with traditional marketing activities.
This is telling of the kind of future that awaits the industry, and whether it involves building effective websites or running a search marketing campaign, it’s important that you focus more on creating a digital marketing plan that works best based on your needs.
Here are a few tips to consider.
1. Outline your objectives
What are the main reasons you’re running a digital marketing campaign in the first place? Is it for increasing your brand awareness in your local market? Or are you aiming to increase the number of leads you receive from new customers? What strategies and tools you use will change depending on what your ultimate goal is, which is why an effective digital marketing plan need a clear set of objectives to pursue. Once you are able to set the direction your campaign is taking, other important considerations will follow.
2. Set your budget
After you have determined the goals you want to achieve, it’s only a matter of making sure you have enough resources to set up your campaign. Budgeting has to be the most difficult part of formulating a digital marketing plan. The reason is that you need to build your campaign around the resources you currently have at hand.
You can only do so much with minimal funding that you have, but thankfully digital marketing can get good results with small budgets. You might also be thinking of downsizing your operational components just so you could push through with the strategy you have in mind. One thing’s for sure, though, you can still run a successful digital marketing campaign without exhausting all your resources. It’s all a matter of using the right platforms and coming up with engaging content for your audience.
3. Keep tabs on your competitors
Other than your finances, you might also want to focus on what your closest competitors are currently doing. In this sense, market intelligence is highly crucial to the formulation of your digital marketing plan. Especially when you’re a start-up, it’s important that you have something to work on that fits your campaign’s objectives. Determining the strategies you will need to apply has to involve knowing what approaches work and don’t work within your industry.
The best way to go about it is to analyze your competitors and see what it is they’re doing online that gets them more exposure and business. For that, simply monitor their social media pages and keep tabs on what they post everyday. You should also visit their websites and browse their blogs. What topics usually get the most comments? How does your competitor handle negative reviews? How do they structure their calls-to-action? With these questions in mind, you will be able to identify the strategies that ensure long-term success.
4. Focus on your SEO game plan
Businesses should know better than to treat search engine optimization as an afterthought. Increasing one’s web presence means investing time and resources for research and development. And for your business to survive the online grind, you will need a good list of keywords and phrases you can use for your content creation activities. You can use tools like SpyFu to determine the search queries you should rank for. But other than keyword research, you may also want to perform on-site SEO activities which include adding metadata to your content and building links in authority sites. You might also want to include plans on improving the functionality of your website. At any rate, your digital marketing plan has to prioritize SEO as an important part of growing your online clout.
5. Draft out your team
Another important approach is to build your digital marketing team. This should be composed of graphics designers, web developers, copywriters, social media experts, among others. Opt for individuals who already have a considerable amount of experience in handling multi-channel campaigns. Another option is to outsource certain campaign components to a capable service provider such as ‘corePHP’. That way, you won’t have to spend too much time and money hiring the right people locally. As an added tip: opt for virtual assistants who are already experienced in handling a variety of marketing campaigns.
6. Identify the channels to use
The success of your campaign relies on the choice of channels that are available. Websites remain as effective channels for getting the word out about your business and, more importantly, increase your sales. To widen your reach, you can also set up a social media marketing campaign that lets you publish engaging content, including infographics and other visual material. By adding these strategies to your digital marketing plan, it’ll be easier for you to generate new business.
7. Invest in creativity
An effective digital marketing plan should be both functional and creative. More importantly, it has to underscore the need to attract new clients. For this, it’s important to put more focus on designing your website and creating highly effective graphics materials for your campaign. Sure enough, marketers will often ask themselves “How important is web design to a digital marketing plan?” The main reason is pretty much simple: you need people to stay on your site until they decide on making a purchase. When they have a great experience browsing page to page, buyers will not hesitate to buy.
Digital marketing is just one of many fields that businesses will have to focus on. As technology becomes even more sophisticated, a digital marketing plan becomes a staple to success.