How to Build Your Digital Marketing Strategies

Are you looking for ways to build, leverage, and optimize your digital marketing strategies? 

That’s excellent news.

If not—it’s time to catch up, because your competition is certainly doing so. In fact, they’re probably reading this article right now, too.

By the end of this year, annual global ad expenditure is expected to rise by 4.2%, totaling more than $581 billion. Paid search will grow to an astounding $109 billion. Social media budgets are increasing to about $76 billion—and that’s only naming a few of the many strategies digital marketers use.

In this guide, we’ll tell you how to keep your tactics up-to-date, relevant in today’s climate, and, most of all, engaging. Put these practices to good use and watch your conversion ratings soar!

Measure Your Current Metrics: What’s Working, What’s Not?

How can you improve your marketing strategies if you’re not regularly evaluating their progress?

Before you do a thing, it’s time to look at the data. When you know what’s working, you can double-down on it. If something’s not working, costing you money for little return, it’s time to change strategies.

How do you measure your marketing efforts, exactly? We’re glad you asked.

How can you know if you're heading the right direction if you don't know exactly where you want to go in the first place? Click To Tweet

First, understand the goals of your campaign—whether that’s to sell a particular product, get more website visitors, etc. That sounds like an easy thing to do, right? But many marketers make the mistake of starting campaigns with no end goal in sight, giving them nothing to measure against!

Once you’ve outlined your goals, you can divide them into qualitative and quantitative ones. Quantitative goals deal specifically with numbers, which is where your focus should be (for now), whereas qualitative goals evaluate how your audience sees your product or service.

Test your criteria using three different methods: cost per sale, cost per visitor, and cost per qualified lead. These formulas consider your marketing budget against how much ROI you receive. This practice is a clear way to understand how your strategies are faring in terms of dollars.

If something isn’t working, can you identify why?

Was it because your product or service didn’t provide value? Did you understand your target demographic well enough, and then cater to it? How about your competitors—what are they doing that’s working?

This strategy should provide you with invaluable insight into your marketing campaign. Once you’ve understood where you currently stand, you can move on to step two.

Know the Three Rs: Reuse, Refresh, Reimagine

How’s your content strategy doing? 

If you have one, go ahead and evaluate it using the information provided above. If you don’t have a content strategy, here’s some food for thought:

• More on-site content gives your brand higher authority, allowing your audience to trust you
• More content means that your name shows up more often in search engines
• It increases your visibility online
• Content gives you more social media traffic and followers
• It ups your odds of converting viewers into customers
• It builds the relationship between your brand and your audience
• It’s not as expensive as other marketing strategies

Now, for those of you who have a content campaign in the works, it’s time for you to learn the three Rs of content marketing. This strategy allows you to get more bang for your hard-earned buck.

Reuse your evergreen, i.e., timeless, content by resharing it on all of your social media platforms or by promoting it to new buyers via an email marketing campaign.

Refresh your content by reformatting it, adding relevant images or videos, and updating your keyword selection. 

Reimagine your content—turn it into an infographic, an ebook, a how-to guide. Basically, reformat it completely, which doubles-down on resuing and refreshing. 

Get to Know Your Audience (If You Haven’t Already)

We mentioned in step one how to evaluate your content. One surefire way for your content to fall flat? By failing to market to your target demographic.

It’s imperative to understand your audience. The greater you know them, the more specific your solution to their problem. 

First, consider specific demographics, such as:

• Age 
• Location
• Gender
• Income
• Education
• Occupation

. . . And so on.

Then, once you’ve narrowed your focus down, you can get even more specific with your targeting. For example, you can begin to look at psychographics, such as:

• Behavior
• Personality
• Lifestyle
• Interests and hobbies

If you have more than one niche in your inventory, you may need to come up with different audiences for each niche. That all depends on your business. Additionally, if you find that your target audience is really small, you may want to ask yourself—is it worth it? Should I change strategies here? 

Understand your target audience by sending out surveys, researching blogs, networking, taking a look at your competition, and by simply asking for feedback. In many cases, your audience might be perfectly willing to tell you how to feel. If not, you can consider providing an incentive such as a 10%-off coupon, a free dessert item (or whatever’s relevant to your business).

Build Your Digital Marketing Strategies (Fast!) With This Guide

Digital marketing takes a certain kind of person—one that’s continuously evaluating progress or regress and changing tactics at the drop of a hat. The internet is fast-paced, meaning that your marketing strategies have to be, too.

Use these practices to improve your marketing game across all avenues, and good luck with your influx of new customers!

We can help you understand what’s working (or not) with your SEO efforts. Click here for a free SEO audit. Once you know how your website scores, contact us directly to understand how you can improve it.