With online sales taking up a large chunk of all retail sales and businesses competing in a digital market, it’s no wonder that creating a successful marketing strategy is high on the agenda for businesses and organisations.
Making your product and service stand out in a vast digital ocean can be a daunting prospect, even for hardened marketing teams. With SEO having a huge impact on the way marketing campaigns are conducted, building a marketing strategy often requires the knowledge and experience of digital marketing experts like here at Click Through Digital.
A fully developed marketing strategy is an end-to-end process that delivers on your business aims and objectives but what is involved in building one?
- Outline your business goals
Your business objectives need to be outlined at the outset as it is these that will drive your marketing campaign and define the strategies used. Having specific goals and outlining the actions you want to take can not only keep your marketing strategy on track but give you the time to adapt your strategy to reflect any changing markets and adjust your plans accordingly.
Your business aims and marketing goals should also be closely aligned with your brand. Any tweaks to your existing brand should be done with your customer, the market and your competitors in mind. What you offer your customer as a brand and as a business will create the foundation from which to build your marketing strategy.
When it comes to marketing, being pro-active and staying ahead of the curve with clear marketing objectives that mirror your business objectives can make a massive difference to your business.
- Conduct market research
Market research is essential to any marketing strategy and the plan that gets put in place. Without the correct research, you are just guessing, and guesswork often costs time and money!
There are several types of market research that needs to be done thoroughly before embarking on a marketing campaign.
- Product/service research – how does your product or service address the needs of the consumer?
- Competitor research – what are their selling points, how does their product and service differ from yours? Understanding the marketplace and your competitors by using results of a full competitor analysis, can help your business identify the biggest threats in your industry, where and how they are positioning their brand and will give you the knowledge to find the gap for your product or service.
- Customer research – Engage with potential clients – you can communicate directly via social media, run polls and surveys, find out what matters to them and what their expectations and needs are. This will help to define your demographic. Knowing your demographic is vital (see section below on defining your audience), so look at who are buying your products or services, what specific things they are buying and create your strategy to appeal to that target audience.
- Keyword research – understanding what keywords or key phrases your customers are searching for means you can then optimise the SEO framework as part of your marketing strategy to include the terms most likely to put your product or service at the direct forefront of your target audience by improving traffic, increasing the likelihood of generating a lead or a sale.
- Conduct a website audit – discovering how your current website performs can help shape your marketing strategy and allow you to make the changes needed to support your campaigns. There are many digital marketing agencies that offer to carry out a site audit, however, here at Click Through Digital, we believe that this is an essential service, so we offer to conduct a thorough website audit for free. Find out more here.
- Define your audience
By defining your target audience at the beginning, you can adjust your marketing strategy to reflect your target customers wants, expectations and address their pain points. This can avoid wasting valuable time, money, and resources on trying to target a consumer who is never likely to buy your product or service.
This may involve creating buyer personas, or discovering how a user gets to your website, what social channels they use for example. This will enable you to position your marketing strategy correctly, so you reach the widest possible target consumer base within your target demographic and get the most monetary value for your marketing campaign.
Staying relevant and engaging with your audience is a key element of any successful marketing strategy, especially in the fast-paced digital environment and the rise of social media.
Having a customer-driven marketing strategy ensures you are more likely to generate the leads and sales to provide an excellent ROI.
- Choose your platforms
Choosing the correct marketing channels is essential to get your product and services to the right people, using the right campaigns. The different types of marketing channels can be broken down into the following:
- Social Media – social media campaigns are a vital component of digital marketing. With most of the world using social media every day of their lives, not using the social channels means you are missing out on a huge platform. With such a range of platforms available, from Facebook to tiktok, you can choose the right channel based on your research and target demographic to help improve brand awareness.
- Paid Social Media Advertising – social media is not just a good way to improve engagement and awareness with your brand, it also offers the option to pay to increase your reach. With bigger platforms changing their algorithms to favour paid advertising over organic social media posts, the popularity of social media advertising is growing and should not be overlooked when deciding what marketing channels form part of your overall marketing strategy.
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising – If done correctly, a PPC campaign can be a cost-effective marketing channel for businesses. Not only are you driving targeted traffic to your website, but you are improving brand visibility and reach, which can result in higher click through and conversion rates for your products and services. Performance and ROI is essential when running a PPC campaign and any campaign should be continually monitored and analysed to ensure the best outcome for you and your business.
- Email Campaigns – the versatility and targeted nature of emails can make them a hugely successful addition to any marketing strategy. Communicating information about your brand
Utilising a range of channels to form your marketing campaigns ensures your overall strategy is more likely to be successful and provide an excellent ROI.
- Review and analyse
Once you have your marketing strategies in place, you can begin to execute your plan. However, the digital market is constantly evolving, and the dynamic nature of social media means that all marketing strategies should be regularly reviewed, tested, and analysed to ensure that they are working. This can also help identify any areas that aren’t as successful as you would like them to be. This is especially relevant if you have included any PPC ad campaigns such as google advertising.
Having the resources in places to stay on top of your marketing strategies is often where businesses fail. Unless you have a dedicated marketing team, you may struggle to adapt to changing markets. This is why we would always recommend using a digital marketing agency or social media management team to make sure you are getting the best ROI you can.
Here at Click Through Digital, we are a comprehensive digital marketing agency, which means that whatever your marketing strategy requires, from the design of new landing pages to writing new and updated content, we have it covered.
Our marketing experts have the skills and the knowledge needed to help you build a complete marketing plan, creating the strategies needed to help your business become a success. If you’re interested in learning more, then please get in touch via our website, email [email protected] or call us on 01609 590035.
