May
7
What Digital Marketing Strategy Is All About?
Digital marketing was introduced years ago, but there are always new wedges to explore for better growth. The recent era is booming with digital marketing strategies. So what exactly is a digital marketing strategy? Well, it’s an upgraded version of marketing that is done through online means.
Understanding the Goal of Digital Marketing Strategy
From the point of view of experts, digital marketing strategy has the fundamental goal of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Mostly it's about the overall goal.
The most obvious question to ask is ‘why do you exist on social media?’ Well, I think for most businesses the answer ultimately comes down to something related to sales. However, if you're a non-profit your goal could be about creating awareness around a specific issue, or even driving donations. If you're in b2b, you probably still want to drive sales.
Sales in Digital Marketing Through Competitive Analysis
In digital marketing our ultimate goal is about driving sales and how do we drive sales? Well,
it's with a sustainable competitive advantage. So how do we create an advantage for ourselves that's sustainable?
If you ever read about business strategy which is something I love to read about, you might have read about 'Michael Porter'. In case, you don't know about him, let me give you some quick information. Michael Porter is famous for his advanced modern business strategy known as 'Porter's five forces analysis.
He always talks about different ways that businesses can achieve a strategic differentiation and achieve that competitive advantage. It's all about building a clear approach to marketing that sets you aside from your competitors so people choose you.
Long story short — Provide your customers with better service than your competitors.
Key points of Digital Marketing Strategy
Let's focus on what do we need to take away:
Know Your Ultimate Goal
The first thing is to start with your goal in mind. What is it that you want to achieve at a high level? It's not possible to follow up with a path without knowing the place to reach. Imagine walking anywhere on a solitary road. Is it possible to reach your target on time? Of course not! The same goes for marketing. Just fix your target before you jump into anything.
Time Range of Marketing Strategy
It's also important to keep in mind that your digital marketing strategy could in fact be short-term or long-term. So sometimes people think that after implementing a specific strategy it needs to be working on a long-term approach. Well, that's totally wrong! It could be shorter-term, especially if you have a specific short-term goal that you need to reach.
We think of goals as sales overall but we could break it down even further and let's say, I want to drive sales of the upcoming boot camp. I could start with a goal that's much more tangible than just driving sales in general.
That could be a short-term goal, maybe the boot camp is two months away, or maybe my goal is just to grow all of my sales by a certain percentage this year. Overall you can have a short-term goal or a long-term goal and it's also important to plan how you want to think about your overarching goal because it could be on a high level.
You may have some more tactical and specific goals based on your business and where you're at.
Path to Achieve Your Goals
The vital thing to keep in mind is the way you achieve a strategy in general. Whether it's a marketing strategy, a business strategy, or a digital strategy. It is really about how you achieve that goal. So if I assume that my goal is to drive sales in my upcoming boot camp. My strategy is how am I going to go about it.
Maybe one of my strategies is to drive leads because if I get more leads then I can convert those leads but the strategy is the approach that you use to achieve the goal. So think of strategy as your approach.
Tactics and Digital Marketing
On the other side of strategy, it comes about tactics. Tactics can be encompassed by a strategy. That's where you will usually establish a stable icon on social media either through Facebook page, Instagram page, Twitter, Blog, Website, Digital shop, and much more. So a tactic should be encompassed by strategy.
If you found that complex, here's what I mean by that. If my goal is to drive sales of my upcoming boot camp, one of my strategies is to increase the number of leads. So my strategy is to increase leads because I know if I get more leads I can convert some of these to profit. So then I get into my toolbox to get more leads.
Maybe I'm going to run a Facebook advertisement, or maybe I need to do some testing on my website to see how I can grow my conversion rate, and so on. What's important as a starting point is to understand what a digital strategy really is all about.
Now as we think about a digital marketing strategy versus a marketing strategy. These should go hand in hand. Your marketing strategy should define your overall approach to growing your business and meeting your business goals.
Overall Look About Digital Marketing Strategy
Your digital marketing strategy is about how digitally you will support your business at a strategic level. For example, I could say, I am working for a fortune 500 brand, and for my brand to grow this year my strategy from an overall marketing standpoint is word of mouth and building equity as the best tasting product.
So I have two very specific strategies from an overall marketing standpoint. Now my digital marketing strategies are going to be about how digital supports those marketing strategies. Hence in a solid business plan, your digital strategies should be supporting your marketing strategies so that everything is working together to achieve your business goals.
This is a little bit high level but we'll dig into exactly what all of this means and importantly how to bring it to life for you. Overall what's crucial to keep in mind at this point is, an excellent digital marketing strategy is a roadmap for success. It's how you decide where to invest your time and effort to maximize your business results.