With digital marketing being at the forefront of the advertising and marketing game, it makes sense that your business is going to want to get on board – and your lack of knowledge of digital marketing may be the only thing that’s stopping you from doing so. You may not consider yourself technically savvy, or you don’t know where to start in the first place. We got you covered!
Here’s a four-part monthly breakdown of how to do digital marketing, so you can be sure you don’t miss out.
Part One: What are your goals?
Defining what your goals are for the month is integral to your digital marketing strategy and journey. What are you looking to accomplish this month, or with this specific project? Some specific goals that you might be looking to tackle are:
- Increasing sales for that particular item or business
- Increasing brand awareness
- Gaining social media followers
- Gaining more general traffic to your website
- Converting someone from their current brand or business
Having a clear-cut goal for your marketing strategy month by month or even project by project is incredibly important. There is no point in investing in digital marketing if you do not know what you want your end goal to be. Defining your goal will help you decide how to best go about your next step, which is how you want to implement this goal.
Part Two: What is the best digital marketing option for your company?
Next up is deciding which scope of digital marketing is best for your company or the company you have been hired to work for. Not every digital marketingplan out there is going to suit every company, and you want to make sure that you’re investing your money properly. Some of the many scopes of digital marketing that you are going to want to consider include:
- Social media influencers (YouTube, Instagram, and other social media platforms)
- Blog posts
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Content marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
Part Three: What is your strategy?
Now that you’ve decided on your goals and the best digital marketing tactics to help you implement them, you now have to decide on your strategy. Say that you decide to hire a social media influencer to promote your product – it’s not as simple as picking one out of a hat. You have to decide on the target audience you are trying to appeal to, and then know this target audience like the back of your hand.
In establishing this, you can better narrow down what social media influencers you are going to approach as part of your digital marketing campaign. In doing so, you are going to want to consider the following about the social media influencer, and how it applies to your target audience and digital strategy:
- The type of content they create (Lifestyle, beauty, fashion, technology, etc.)
- The primary age range their content appeals to
- Their location
- The number of views and followers they have
You need to know the number of views and followers they have so you can reach as many potential new customers as possible because this could very well change the amount of money that you are going to spend. Budget is an important part of figuring out your plan for that specific project. Whether it’s a project that you are funding yourself, or you’re working with a company that is not your own, not going over budget is extremely important.
Your digital marketing efforts will include plenty of additional research, including the most relevant keywords on the topic for search word optimization. It will also include what you want the tone of your digital marketing campaign to be, and exactly what you are going to talk about, or what you want the person you hire to talk about. While it may seem that these three steps could be lumped into one, it is important that you take time to separate each one, and clearly define your goals in each category.
Part Four: Analyzing your results
Once you have finalized your first three steps and have gone ahead and executed your plan, you are going to need to analyze your results. This is what each part of your digital marketing process has been working towards – the end result. This is when your KPIs come into play or your Key Performance Indicators. It is important to have any kind of visual graphic in terms of measuring your KPIs, so you have the data in a clear format, right in front of you.
By evaluating your key performance indicators, you will be able to see what your return on investment (ROI) is looking like. The end result of any digital marketing goal is a return on investment – you want all of your hard work to be for something. Depending on what your goal was, your ROI may mean something different to you or your customer.
As set out in Part One, your ROI may mean increasing sales and profiting monetarily on your investment, right away. It may have meant gaining more social media followers with the knowledge that you would be investing that money and not getting it back right away.Becoming successful in the digital marketing industry comes down to trial and error, and how you can learn from your results.
While staying on top of the latest news and trends in the digital marketing industry is incredibly useful, you may be surprised when your results fail. Carefully analyzing your results after every project will help you clearly see where you went wrong, and what you can try differently next time.
At the end of the day, when it comes to digital marketing, pinpointing an exact monthly process is hard. There is so much that goes into successful digital marketing. It comes with a ton of research, as well as a ton of trial and error. The best thing you can do is to be as prepared as possible, learn from your mistakes, and keep growing and learning as a digital marketer!
