Greetings! Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy can be a daunting task. You’ll find a million theories out there that seem to contradict each other. Businesses and people are unique, and there’s not a standard solution that works for everyone.
Strategy is not one size fits all. Wear your own shoe size.
That being said, there are some basic principles that I believe should apply to building any ultimately unique digital marketing strategy.
Step 1: Customer Persona
No matter who you are or what your business is, you need to know all about your target audience and ideal customer. This starts with creating a customer avatar. Your customer avatar should be detailed, and should even mention the type of clothing and car they drive, down to where you’ll find them on a Friday night.
This is discovered through extensive brainstorming and market research. If you need assistance in defining your customer avatar, I recommend my friend Nicole with Happy Hour Marketing. She is stellar at defining target audience and building strategy.
Step 2: Identify and Set Goals
Setting goals must be more specific than, “get more followers and more business.” Now, you might not be able to be super specific yet. If that’s the case, you might need to simply name how much you hope to raise your profit, and how many more followers you hope to gain.
Something to keep in mind: think of quality over quantity. One hundred of the right followers is better than 10,000 people who will never buy your product.
Step 3: Choose Channels/Platforms
Do I sound like a broken record yet? Don’t get caught up in being on every platform available! In fact, if you only pick one thing to focus on, make it Google (and give me a call)!
Choosing the right platforms and channels to promote your business is more important than having every platform available with mediocre content. Again, quality over quantity.
Where does your target audience hang out? There are online “versions” of all the brick and mortar locations they spend time.
Step 4: Automate as Much as Possible
This is a tough one. Once you’ve established your customer avatar, your ideal results and platforms used to get there… It can be daunting to keep up with it all!
Existing automation tools are game changers. Remember to automate responses on your website, so customers hear back after reaching out… long before you’ve even opened the email to see that they contacted you! Remember to automate messenger responses on social media. This will give you some wiggle room, and allow you to seem as responsive as possible.
Lastly, be sure to use scheduling tools when you need to lift the load. Posting “live” will always be the most effective plan, but posting through Meta’s (cough cough Facebook’s) scheduling tool will give you more margin in your day. Most other scheduling tools on the market are pricey, and Facebook and Instagram algorithms don’t like having a third-party jump in the mix.
Best wishes on your digital marketing efforts!
Until next time.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
