Sure, your business is online. But how’s that working out for you?
Simply having a website or social media presence isn’t enough for you to start attracting new customers and making sales. You have to do something with your online presence in order to achieve the goals you want.
Here’s how a to create a digital marketing plan that will help you coordinate the moving pieces that’ll reach new customers:
Create actionable digital marketing goals
Likely, you already have goals in place for some or most of your business operations. You want to achieve a certain profit. You want to attract a specified number of donors. Anything that involves measured progress over time can qualify as a goal.
When it comes to your online presence and digital marketing plan, you want to think in similar terms. If you’d like to achieve 100 new clients within the next year, why not attract 40% of them through your online sales funnel?
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to establish your digital marketing goals, but you may need to think outside the box in order to leverage your platform to help you reach them.
Identify your market
There are a lot of people online. Thankfully, you only need to reach a fraction of them in order to get your message across to those who actually need to see it.
This is where it comes in handy to identify your ideal market… These are the people who want to see your online messaging because they’re potentially interested in your product, services, or cause.
Develop a set of imaginary customers who represent your existing (or ideal) customer segments and think about the way that they use the Internet and interact with content online. If you don’t have answers for that, don’t be afraid to research consumer spending habits or consult a digital marketing professional to help you find the answers.
Develop a coordinated approach
Once you know who you’re marketing to, you can develop a marketing plan that puts your content right at their fingertips. These days, there are many components that you can use to develop your digital marketing strategy, including:
- Website
- Blog
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
- Google adwords
- Downloadables (ebooks, infographics, etc.)
- Digital design
- Video
- Podcast
- Photography
- SEO strategy
Obviously, it would be awesome to implement all of the above components for a robust digital marketing strategy. Realistically, most digital marketing plans for midsize businesses include a limited budget.
When it comes to balancing your budget with your goals, you want to identify the components that will allow you to reach the largest percentage of your ideal audience possible. For example, if you are selling products that appeal especially to younger users, you would want to take advantage of social media marketing and mobile optimization for your online properties, as well as video content.
