The Importance of Having an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

How effective a digital marketing strategy is will often be the difference between the success of a modern business and its downfall. Like anything that requires forward thinking, the more preparation and detail that can be put into these strategies the better.

Digital strategies require the setting up of business goals and the initiation of campaigns, which can be anything from gaining more customers, raising brand awareness, lead generation, or boosting sales. These will ensure that monthly, daily and annual goals are being reached, and if they aren’t, it gives businesses a chance to adjust their budgets and decide how best to move forward and plan a long-term business strategy.

So, what is digital marketing and what does a digital marketing strategy comprise?

Encompassing the Right Tools

Digital marketing uses the likes of the internet, mobile devices, social media and search engines to reach consumers. Unlike traditional marketing methods, such as print, billboards and TV, digital marketing is essentially data-driven. This technology then allows us to measure and track what users are doing so it can be collected, analyzed and used to understand how each touchpoint contributes to sales and conversions.

A digital marketing strategy can encompass anything from search engine optimization to YouTube, pay per click to Google Analytics or video marketing to social media management, but beyond the tools is a goal-driven approach. This is created to reach more clients, increase revenue and growth, track progress, and find out what’s working and, more importantly, what isn’t. This includes:

• Evolution: If transforming your business is a priority, a digital strategy will give you the means, platforms and ways in which to grow your desired business model.
• Reaching customers: A well-crafted digital strategy will be able to pinpoint how customers/potential customers are behaving. This could be how they prefer to interact, e.g., via mobile or desktop, their age and their consuming preferences. Through this analysis and planning, businesses can address their audiences in the way they prefer and will be able to hold their attention moving forward.
• Metrics: Performance measuring platforms are designed to provide tools that can be used to study the success of your campaign and help businesses to optimize the message, track the target audience and make any improvements to the campaign while it is still live. These metrics allow for more opportunities to reach goals and are of huge benefit to future campaign plans.
• Budgeting: A digital strategy plan will specifically analyse all set targets, the budget, assets, tools and people. Implementing this makes planning for the future easier and enables businesses to grow and produce more revenue.

Get the Basics in Place

Digital marketing strategies are much more than just a few social media posts, and when all the activities are put together they form part of a much wider plan.

It’s important to start by understanding the basics in order to develop an effective digital marketing strategy, which in turn will greatly improve the presence of your business online. After what can only be described as a turbulent 12 months which have presented many challenges, the ever-changing algorithms that come with digital assets have meant that it is now a better time than ever to develop or update a digital strategy. Using the tips mentioned above, it’s time to consider what a digital strategy can do for your business and how to start reaping the benefits right away.

Ash Stronge is senior performance specialist at Loud Mouth Media, a performance marketing agency and Google partner.