WHAT IS A DIGITAL STRATEGY? EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

Regardless of your industry or company size, competing in the online marketing world has become a real challenge. Every company is currently trying to find the proper promotion channels to gain a competitive advantage to show its customers that it offers what they need. Today, more than 55% of all advertising efforts are digital.
Digital marketing is one of the most essential tools to help you expand your business, increase your market share, and maximize your profit. But to achieve these goals, you need to develop the right digital marketing strategy.
So, what is a digital strategy? Why do you need one? Keep reading to learn more about this topic.

WHAT IS A DIGITAL STRATEGY?
A marketing digital strategy is an online marketing plan designed to maximize your company’s benefits from various digital tools. These digital tools are combined to create a comprehensive plan across different marketing channels to improve customers’ experience and increase company profits.

This digital strategy is part of your overall marketing plan that incorporates several traditional and new tools, getting information from your marketing team, sales team, and information technology team. These teams cooperate to deliver a thorough competitor and market analysis to help you come up with the right mix to achieve the company’s goals.

Such a strategy usually focuses on short-term actionable goals and how they impact everyday business decisions. It usually involves a mix of in-house and outsourced services to create the right digital marketing plan. You gain a digital value proposition that makes your company more appealing to different customer personas as you establish your status by offering something different from competitors.
You get to know your customers better, so you’re able to tweak your products and services to suit their needs. You can manage your resources better without wasting time or money or duplicating efforts.
Your overall marketing efforts become integrated, so all your company’s departments and employees are working towards achieving the same goals.

WHY DO YOU NEED A DIGITAL STRATEGY?

Planning a digital strategy at the beginning of every project is crucial. First, you need to prepare a plan with all the tools you already have and can operate on and then calculate the marketing budget for what needs to be added to achieve your goals.
Once all the planning is done, launching your digital marketing strategy will be straightforward. Here are the benefits of designing an excellent digital strategy.

It gives you direction in a competitive market.

Careful planning helps you identify the most crucial goals and guides you towards utilizing the company’s resources to help bring them to life. You get a better understanding of your target audience. As a result, you’ll be more able to provide the products and services they need.
You understand your position in the market and your market share. This will help you come up with action plans to improve your presence in the industry. You gain a digital value proposition that makes your company more appealing to different customer personas as you establish your status by offering something different from competitors. You get to know your customers better, so you’re able to tweak your products and services to suit their needs. You can manage your resources better without wasting time or money or duplicating efforts.
Your overall marketing efforts become integrated, so all your company’s departments and employees are working towards achieving the same goals.

WHAT SHOULD A DIGITAL STRATEGY INCLUDE?

Creating a successful digital marketing strategy is no longer an option, but it’s a must if you want to excel in today’s competitive market. Luckily, there are multiple tools that you can currently use to create a fool-proof digital marketing strategy.

AT IM4U DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY, WE HAVE CREATED OUR OWN CHECKLIST FOR BUILDING AN EFFICIENT DIGITAL STRATEGY. HERE ARE THE NECESSARY 11 STEPS:

1. Setting strategic goals for the next year
Set up your marketing plan for the upcoming year by identifying your goals, strategies, objectives, and the tactics that align with all of them.

2. Defining a company’s mission, vision, and values
Clarify the mission of your business that states the purpose of your company, its vision that shows insights into what you want to achieve or become in the future, and values which are your core principles and ethics.

3. Conduct SWOT analysis
Assess both internal and external factors, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that your company faces, to find out your competitive position on the market and create strategic planning.

4. Conducting competitive analysis
Study the market, analyze your performance, and evaluate the performance of your competitors. This will give you an idea of what your first move should be.

5. Creating a Customer Journey Map
Depict all the stages your customers go through when interacting with your business. This way, you will better understand their needs and ways to satisfy them more fully.

6. Conducting analysis of a target audience and creating a buyer person
Get to know your customers using surveys, questionnaires, or a digital tool like Facebook Insights to understand your buyer persona.

7. Finding the right tone of voice for your company
Find the right words to make a lasting impact on your customers and build strong relationships with them.

8. Finding a proper unique selling proposition
Make your business stand out from the competitors and tell your customers why they need to choose you by creating unique selling propositions (USP). Then live and breathe it.

9. Selecting the most effective marketing channels
Select the marketing communication channels that better fit your buyer persona. A mix between several channels will guarantee that you’re reaching your target customers wherever they are.

10. Making a financial budget for the year
Create and stick to your realistic budget for the upcoming year. Record how much money you can spend and what for.

11. Creating a marketing roadmap (specific plan and timeline for achieving your goals)
Based on all the above mentioned steps, create your own marketing roadmap. Measure, analyze, and adjust as necessary. Remember that a digital marketing strategy is an ongoing effort.

HOW DO YOU CREATE A DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY?

Of course, as a business owner, you have to own your marketing plan and be involved in its creation. However, you should not be the only one to build it out. With a defined budget, goals, deadlines, and professional staff — you can easily make your marketing strategy a reality. Luckily, there are many marketing experts on the market that can help you discover what works for your company and what doesn’t.

LET THE EXPERTS HELP YOU

You can’t afford to fall behind in today’s competitive market, and designing a successful digital marketing strategy will definitely put you under the spotlight.
Take no risks and hire a reliable digital marketing agency today to get all your questions answered. The experts will help you design a flawless plan, keep up with the execution, and adjust your tactics depending on the outcome. Stay ahead of your competitors, and contact us today.