Digital marketing doesn’t sleep, and neither do online opportunities.
Right now, there are over 4.57 billion people online. That’s 59% of earth’s population representing a possible lead, customer or evangelist for your business. Digital marketing is quite simply the best and most cost-effective way to reach literally billions of people every day with a few hours of work, a few pages of content and a well-thought-out strategy.
Without digital marketing, it is impossible for small businesses to compete with multinational organisations that have millions to spend on marketing. Competition as we know it would cease to exist, and innovation would grind down to a halt. In today’s world, you have to be online to remain competitive and reach your customers.
In order for your business to grow and thrive within an online environment, you need a plan. The following approach is used by industry leaders worldwide, across industries, to get the most out of digital marketing. There are 8 core elements:
- Strategy
- Content
- Automation
- Branding
- Website
- Enablement
- Campaigns and
- Social
Let’s take a look at these elements in greater detail.
Strategy
A digital marketing strategy is essential to any business that wants to market itself online. It informs every aspect of digital marketing and will provide direction for the other 7 core elements that follow.
An effective digital strategy will help you make the right decisions and guide you towards success online. It provides a framework that provides a logical sequence of all the key activities of development and implementation.
How to develop a winning digital marketing strategy
There is a lot that goes into developing a fully integrated digital marketing strategy that is not only effective but efficient. We will cover digital marketing strategy in greater detail in the future, but for now, we’ll briefly outline the most important steps:
Research customer channel behaviour and marketplace activity
A good digital marketing strategy begins with understanding your market and how they interact online. Different customers will value different communications and naturally congregate around their interests. As a digital marketer, this information is critical to decide on your primary marketing channel.
Identify and prioritise your marketing channels
Digital marketing provides many opportunities for companies to use multiple channels to reach their audience. Based on who you would like to target, some channels may be more effective than others. Examples of channels you may consider include different social media platforms, websites, video marketing, blogging platforms, image-based media and more.
Define short-term and long-term objectives
Now that you know which channels you want to target, you must decide on what your objectives are. These objectives will inform on the types of content you push out, the style and the amount. Objectives can include engagement, education, training, customer generation, sales and more.
Outline and set budget
With digital marketing, you can really create tonnes of content through limitless channels - but your budget is more often than not limited. This is why it’s important to select the channels and content that will fit within your budget and give you the most bang for your buck.
Develop and implement content
Finally, it’s time to develop your content, implement, and distribute it through your channels using tools such as marketing automation. This will be covered as we proceed through the 7 remaining core elements of digital marketing.
Content
By now everyone has heard the old adage, “content is king” and for good reason - the king has not left his throne yet, and has instead expanded his kingdom.
Content is more important today than what it was last year and the year before that. Your potential customers online have a vast array of tools to tune out your marketing efforts and access competitors who offer more. If you expect your customers and leads to engage with your marketing, you need to make it worth their while, and content is the best way to do this.
Creating good content requires time and effort, and different content is required depending on the target and objective. Generally speaking. However, the content will be the ‘wheels’ that move customers along the buyer’s journey and is used to:
- Create awareness
- Educate
- Persuade
- Train
A combination of different types of content used for these objectives in the buyer’s journey will be the lifeblood of your digital marketing. It will have the ability to gain and convert leads throughout your marketing channels.
Automation
Automation is one of the many tools at your disposal to help deliver your content to your customers and potential customers. However, in digital marketing it’s influential enough to be a core element.
This is because marketing automation is the key to punching above your weight and competing with organisations that have twice, triple or even ten-times your budget. Once set-up, marketing automation can help your marketing team become more efficient, gain better insights and appeal to customers faster and easier.
Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot not only give you access to tools such as email statistics, website visitor identification and analytics and customer behaviour metrics, but also the tools to automatically make the most of that information. This gives your organisation extreme flexibility and enables productivity in an unprecedented manner.
Branding
It’s no longer effective to simply provide a product anymore. You have to sell emotions and an identity that comes with a product or service by virtue of simply using it. This is what branding is all about, and it is the 4th core element of digital marketing.
A brand is even more important in the digital marketing environment as there is limited human to human interaction when attracting potential leads and customers. A brand gives your business an identity and style that is memorable to your audience.
Digital marketing provides plenty of opportunities to broadcast your brand’s style and content. The metrics and data available with digital marketing also help to determine what works and what needs a little bit of tweaking, allowing you to refine and perfect your brand.
Website
Of course, when talking about online marketing your website will always play a critical role. It’s the digital version of your storefront and business persona rolled into one and should be the central location for everything your customers need. From resources, blogs and interesting articles, to pricing, e-commerce and support your website must provide an array of options for its visitors.
In digital marketing, your website can be leveraged as a marketing tool, providing an ultimate destination for your marketing efforts. All of the marketing content you create should eventually lead back to your website in order to convert your leads.
In addition to this, analytical tools such as HubSpot can be used to gain a greater understanding of your audience and website visitors to optimise your website and digital marketing in general.
Enablement
Enablement refers to giving your staff the ability to perform well within digital transformation. It involves training, understanding and technology to achieve an enhanced customer experience and smarter business processes.
Tools such as marketing automation open many doors for your business, but staff must be trained and educated on how to get the most out of the tool. This is why enablement is core to digital marketing which involves using many advanced tools and advanced digital concepts.
If you empower your staff to use the tools at your disposal, you will reap the benefits that come with a great digital marketing campaign.
Campaigns
Campaigns are what brings all the core elements together to form one cohesive narrative. All of your content should support your brand and encourage potential leads to visit your website and convert. This is powered through automation and forms a large part of your digital marketing strategy.
Digital marketing campaigns usually revolve around a theme, event or even a keyword to attract the most engaged users available. The substance of the content itself and sometimes even the channels they go through are informed by the campaign objective as well as these aspects.
Digital marketing campaigns carried out over time grow your client base and your reputation. This reputation, in turn, improves your search ranking for engines such as Google to enhance and improve your future marketing efforts.
In short, Campaigns are a powerful core element of digital marketing.
Social media
Social media is often overlooked in many B2B digital marketing campaigns. However, social media is something that can be constantly utilised to reach people throughout the week. This makes it an ideal addition to any digital marketing strategy, B2C or B2B.
There is a multitude of social media tools that can assist with a digital marketing campaign, many of which are free. For more detailed analytics, functions and insights, there are paid tools like HubSpot that can help you grow on social media and extend your reach.
Dominate digital marketing
Digital marketing is a valuable tool for any modern marketer. It enables us to extend our reach and access a global market across hundreds of industries. It gives us the power to compete with multinational giants with a fraction of the budget, and it helps us become more efficient, knowledgeable and empathetic with our customers.
Now, it’s time for you to gain a competitive advantage for yourself.
Demodia provides digital marketing consultants that can assist with your digital marketing efforts. Through sophisticated software and advanced marketing techniques, Demodia can boost your marketing efforts online to grow your customers, income and productivity.
Contact Demodia today, and discover what it’s like to dominate digital marketing.
