7-Step Digital Marketing Strategy for Business Growth

Marketing is not the problem with most companies. The issue is that most companies don't have a strategy. Companies use social media, email campaigns, advertising, etc., and can't figure out why their business isn't growing. I created this 7-step guide to help you develop a strategic marketing process. If you follow this process, everything you do will be strategic.

A digital marketing strategy will help you reach your business goals by using different types of online media to do so. In addition to defining what your goals are, who your target audience is, and how you plan to measure your progress toward those goals, you should also include which channels you intend to use to achieve those goals.

The strategy is like a map; the tactics are each turn you take. Your strategy defines where you want to go and why. If there isn't any strategy then you're driving fast but never reaching your destination. A well-defined strategy can be written in a few pages. It addresses four basic questions: what is our goal? Who must we contact to achieve our goal? Where can we find these people? How will we know if we have achieved our goal?

The strategy is what gives direction to the project. The project is the work that has to be done. The strategy tells us how we are going to get those small-business buyers using search engines and emails. The project tells us how many guides we are going to write each month (two) and how often we are going to email them (weekly).

The strategic portion of your marketing process is always the first step; however, it rarely varies once it has been established. On the other hand, the plan varies significantly as you discover what works for your business. Most businesses will skip the strategic portion of their marketing efforts and immediately go into planning. As a result, most of their marketing efforts are disjointed. Our growth services begin with creating the initial direction for your company.

Because of this, you will be able to avoid wasting resources such as time and money.

Online channels have low barrier of entry; however, they can be costly if you spend too much. Therefore, there's always an urge to explore all avenues. A well-defined strategy will provide you with the authorization to say "no." Additionally, a strategy will help a team to progress in a singular direction. Writers, designers, and advertisers will each be working towards the same objective. Once you receive your results, you'll know what decisions were effective.

The seven steps of the framework are Goals, Buyers, Journey, Audit, Channels, Budget and Content, and Measurement. Each of these steps creates a single, definite product.

The steps should be done in order; the output of each will determine what is needed for the next. The individuals you are attempting to reach will ultimately dictate how you choose which channels to utilize. The channels you select will ultimately determine how much money you spend. If you skip any of these steps, then the rest may fall apart. The following sections will guide you through each of these processes.

Start by establishing a single business objective. Then, identify one or two metrics that demonstrate how far along you are toward achieving this objective. These metrics represent your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

A weak objective would say, "Increase our company's brand." A strong objective would state, "Win 40 new clients by December." Then choose the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that will help you achieve this. Examples of these could include qualified leads, the cost of each lead, or your conversion rate. Do not use KPIs that simply look good on paper; i.e., "vanity" numbers such as likes and impressions. While they can provide some short-term satisfaction, they don't produce money. When considering any KPI ask yourself: If I increase this KPI, will my revenue increase? If the answer is no, then eliminate that KPI.

Your ideal customer is a buyer persona that represents a specific person, role, problem and motivation to purchase.

Create a persona based on actual information. Ask 5 customers questions. Review sales emails. Examine customer support requests. Identify themes. What are the concerns of your customers? How do they find answers? What words do they use? Incorporate those words into your marketing materials. Limit each persona to a single page. If it requires more time to read than the length of time needed to drink a cup of coffee, then it is too long.

List the steps a buyer takes from first hearing about you to buying. Then note what they need at each step.

The majority of journeys are comprised of three phases. In the first phase, customers recognize a need/problem. In the second, they evaluate alternative solutions to resolve that need/problem. In the final phase, they make a decision as to how best to address their need/problem. Customers in the first phase are looking for information. Customers in the second phase are looking for validation. Customers in the final phase are looking for direction. Your content should be matched to the phase. An example of when this will fail is when you try to sell your product/service to a customer who has only recently identified a problem. Conversely, if you provide a very basic guide to a customer who is ready to purchase, it too will fail.

Analyze the current situation: What do I currently have? What is working? What is not working? Evaluate my website, social media accounts, and competitors.

Open up your analytic program. What pages are bringing in visitors? What pages are bringing in customers? What channels cost the most money to get the lowest results? Now, research three of your competitors. Find out where they appear on the web and how they describe themselves. Find areas that they do not address. Put your research into plain language. The audit will prevent you from making guesses about your business. It will also help protect the things you have that are working.

Look at your site. When visitors arrive to the site and then don't convert, the cause is usually related to design. Badly designed pages with no logical flow and no clear next actions can lose you many possible leads. Good UI/UX design can fix this. If you find yourself limited by the features of the tools or systems you use, you may want to consider building something specifically for you.

Find out which platforms your target audience uses most frequently and where you would be able to present yourself effectively. You don't need to be present on every platform; a couple of them will do for now.

Your persona can help you identify which channels will be most effective for reaching your target audience. Business-to-business (B2B) buyers typically find information through search engines and professional networking sites. Social video and email are commonly used by consumers. While there is nothing wrong with using some of the same marketing channels as competitors, it's important to evaluate whether their strategy makes sense for your business before copying it. To assess the effectiveness of any channel, consider the following three criteria: reach, cost and alignment. Don't over-promise what you can achieve with limited resources; three channels that are executed successfully can provide better results than seven channels that are poorly executed. And remember, you can always expand into new channels at a later date.

The way you split your budget among various channels should depend on what your goals are as well as how those channels have performed for you in the past. After that, you will want to create content that can serve customers at different points along their customer journey.

If you don't have any data, begin by testing. Most of your budget should go towards what you think will work best. A smaller portion of your budget should be used to experiment. Now create a content calendar. Decide what you plan to post, when you plan to post it, and where you plan to post it. Each piece of content should have only one purpose: either to draw attention to your business; persuade potential customers; or convert visitors into paying customers. Assign a person to each task.

Set a regular time to review your key performance indicators (KPIs). At this point, make any adjustments based upon the results shown in the metrics. For many organizations, reviewing their KPIs monthly is sufficient.

Create a simple report. Display the objective, the metrics, and the trend. Write about your next steps. Find out what works well and do more of it. Find out what does not work well and either fix it or discontinue it. Allow time for changes to produce results prior to making judgment. Strategy is not a single document that you create once; rather, strategy is an ongoing process of creating, implementing, evaluating and modifying strategies. When organizations have large amounts of data, using artificial intelligence based tools can help make reporting faster, and find patterns within the data that would otherwise go unnoticed.

A small design studio would like to obtain 30 new customers over the next half-year. This example is meant as an illustration, and does not represent actual results from our client work.

The studio tracks just one KPI each month: qualified inquiries. Its typical customer is a startup founder looking for product design assistance. He or she will begin by searching for design assistance, then review some of the designer's work samples (portfolios), and finally make contact. An audit of the website revealed that although there was high traffic to the site, very few of those visitors contacted the company. It was obvious why. There were no "next steps" on any of the service pages.

The Studio selects two channels: Search and Email. First, the Studio will improve the Service Pages of their website. Next, the Studio will produce Guides for Founders. Finally, each month the Studio will send out an email to all previous visitors to the site. At the end of two months, the Studio will analyze the data. Inquiries increase. Email produces the least expensive leads; therefore, the Studio shifts more of their resources toward Email. Since the Studio measured the results, the Plan was adjusted.