Create a digital marketing strategy

1. Create a list of goals for your digital marketing, with specific key performance indicators.

Common goals include: Increased leads per day/month Website traffic and unique visitors per month Pages per visit Engagement on social media Clicks on paid advertising Marketing qualified leads. For example, you may like to get more traffic to your website, so you set a target number of unique visitors per month.

2. Check your competitors’ social media pages, reviews, and websites to see what kind of people comment on their blog posts and social media pages.

Take notes about those that write constructive comments. Make a list of concerns, objections, issues, and any problem that reviews felt were hindrances as these are pain points of your potential customers.

3. Describe your potential customer either in the form of an empathy map, persona, or customer journey map.

Include information such as: Demographics. Who influences them. Goals. Pain Points. Common questions and objections they have about your product. State of mind – for example, busy or stressed. Relevant context – for example, retired. Preferred communication channels – for example, email, Facebook, or phone. Organize this information in a document and ask your sales, marketing, and customer success teams to contribute.

4. Make a list of digital marketing channels to focus on, based on your goals and customer research.

Common channels include: Content marketing SEO Search ads Display ads Email Social media marketing, Social media advertising YouTube marketing.

5. Decide on a budget and distribute that budget among your chosen channels by order of priority.

Your marketing budget should be around 5-15% of your revenue. Choose a percentage that you can take out without crippling core business expenses. To distribute based on priority, look at your customer research and goals. For example, if you focus on Instagram over other channels, Instagram should take more of the budget.

6. Analyze each channel to see which of your target audiences would use them and what stage they are in the funnel to determine how to use them.

There are bottom, middle, and top of the funnel stages. People at the bottom of the funnel are ready or almost ready to buy, while the top of the funnel is the brand or product awareness stage. For example, if you run a plumbing company, there’s a chance that you will have diverse audiences at each funnel stage. Someone might discover your blog post and look to hire you from searching on a phrase like how to unclog a slow or stopped main drain line manually. A past customer might find out you’re offering a special on some of your other services through email marketing and get in touch. A person whose toilet is leaky will be looking for someone right now to fix it. Your best bet might be to connect with them through Google Ads.

7. Write out specific steps and create channel-specific strategies that you’re going to take to accomplish your goals through those channels.

If organic search traffic on your website is one of your channels, and a part of your goals, create an SEO strategy to tackle that. When writing those steps and strategies, tie them back to the goals and funnel stage. If you’re looking to increase leads through organic search, consider including top of the funnel tasks, such as how-to blogs posts, as well as the bottom of the funnel tasks that will connect to your lead magnet (an ebook, for example), such as a pop-up form.

8. Check the analytics data in your channels periodically and set goals in the channels that provide the functionality.

Check your analytics data every day, week, or month. You can set goals on some platforms, including Google Analytics and Google Ads. Ensure you have a range of goals, rather than focusing exclusively on conversion. Also, include engagement metrics such as time watching video, and usability metrics such as the number of people abandoning a key process like checkout.

9. Use insights from the data to adjust your digital marketing strategy for better outcomes.

Suppose you’re getting more qualified leads from one location on Instagram advertising. Put more effort into marketing to that audience or creating a different ad aimed at other places.