Digital is now more deeply ingrained in an organization’s identity, operations, and expansion strategy. As a result, a company’s marketing strategy becomes more integrated with a digital transformation strategy. It would be a mistake, even in these digital times, to not to plan for digital as a separate entity.

All marketing has a digital component, however the term “all-digital” refers to more than just traditional marketing. This article contains a comprehensive guide to developing a potent digital marketing strategy in 2023 as a result of this. We’ll discuss what digital marketing is, its essential components, and how to begin.

• What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
• What Kind of Approach do you Take When Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy?
• What are the 4 Marketing Approaches?
• What are Examples of Marketing Approaches?

What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Using one or more online marketing channels to connect with your target audience is the goal of a digital marketing strategy, which is a plan of action. It includes a step-by-step guide and detailed objectives for digital marketing.

Having a digital strategy is crucial since it will enable you to coordinate various online marketing tactics so that they all contribute to accomplishing your company’s objectives. The company’s digital marketing manager is in charge of creating and implementing a digital strategy.

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They will make sure that every marketing initiative is integrated into your digital marketing strategy with the help of his staff.

You can choose the best business strategies and implement them more effectively if you have a clear plan. You can arrange your efforts with the aid of a digital marketing strategy in order to engage your audience and motivate them to take action on a consistent basis. You can plan ahead, collaborate with departments, and combine your digital marketing for more impact when you have a digital marketing business plan.

It may also include company objectives, digital strategies, a review of the competitive environment, timeframes, financial constraints, and other factors.

Consider a digital marketing strategy as a kind of road map. You have a destination in mind, and the plan outlines a precise path you should take to get there.

What Kind of Approach do you Take When Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Let’s now discuss the many elements of your digital marketing plan as well as the precise procedures you should take when you create your strategy.

1. Define Your “Why?”

Everything begins here. What is the purpose of your organization? Although it seems like a straightforward question, the solution requires digging deep. This is a perspective of your brand from a height of 100,000 feet as opposed to only 10,000 feet. What purpose does your organization’s work serve?

Simon Sinek’s seminal TED Talk, which I also blogged about last week, effectively explains how to use his golden circle methodology to discover the “why” in your organization. He makes the link between extraordinary leaders, outstanding brands, and the idea that customers buy your motives rather than your actions.

Once you can pinpoint the fundamental “Why?” of your business, creating a compelling brand narrative, genuine messages, and interesting content will become much easier.

2. Create Your Brand Story

Only 12 of the 20,000 companies that customers interact with daily leave an imprint, according to studies. The desire of 73% of customers is for brands to have a compelling brand story if they are to stand a chance of being one of the 12. Whether you work for a profit, a cause, or both, what gets people to pay attention are your fascinating tales, not your sales pitches.

Simply stating your brand promise to your audience, which outlines what they may anticipate from every interaction with your company, is another approach to conceive of your brand story.

3. Define Your Goals

If you want to know whether or not what you did was successful, your goals must be both attainable and measurable in the short and long terms.

Do you wish to raise donations received online by 25% more? Do you wish to increase the petition’s signature total by 10,000? Do you wish to expand your email distribution list in order to involve additional members?

Keep in mind that SMART stands for specified, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals.

Choose your top three objectives. Put them on paper. Keep saying them over and over. This will direct your plan of action.

4. Develop Audience Personas

Understanding your audience is the first step in crafting a tale that will appeal to them. It takes a little more than brainstorming to do this.

Based on the kinds of people you attract and want to target, you should try to develop three to four personalities. A comprehensive persona will include information on the person’s past, career, values, objectives, concerns, and habits while making decisions.

You don’t have to come up with this out of thin air, if that sounds too overwhelming. Interviewing your audience is a sometimes overlooked strategy for developing audience profiles. To gain a fairly accurate picture of who you are marketing to, this can include one-on-one interviews and online surveys.

Establish your personas. Your wall should contain them. Give the names of these made-up people. Like you know them, talk about them. since you do.

5. Create a Journey Map

The next step in the process is to create a path map if you are certain of your target audience. Your understanding of the online interactions you have previously had from people as well as the possibilities for additional or other types of interactions will improve with the aid of a trip map.

You should start by asking yourself these questions:

1. Where does a user first encounter your organization online (or offline)?
2. What touch-points are the most important when a user makes a decision?
3. What makes them leave and what makes them come back?

Your path map can be more specific the better your audience and their habits and behaviors are understood. Your digital strategy will be more adaptable the more specific your trip map is.

6. Identify Key Channels

We now begin to get into the specifics of digital strategy. There are countless social media and digital channels available, and more are launched weekly.

Many organizations believe that you must have a foot in each, but you should actually just be where your audience is. You can probably ignore Snapchat for the time being if they aren’t using it. If Facebook is the primary social media platform used by your target demographic, a portion of your plan should be centered on organic and sponsored reach on Facebook.

To put it simply, match each of your target audiences to the platforms that each of these groups uses the most. After that, overlay your route map with these engagement channels. It will make it seem nice and offer you clear instructions on the kinds of information you should write.

7. Develop a Content Strategy

Because users in the digital world interact with content that is beneficial to them most, we are firmly in the era of content marketing. Is your information helpful?

“We need to quit interfering with what people are interested in and be what people are interested in,” Brandkarma founder Craig Davis stated.

When it comes to content, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Find out what your audience wants and needs, then think of inventive ways to provide those needs. People spread positive messages, adhere to routines, and react appropriately to certain situations. You cannot go wrong if you consider quality, consistency, and customization.

Make a content strategy tapestry by outlining the types of content that would be appropriate for each of your target groups, then classifying them accordingly. There may be some overlaps, but that’s good because the end product will be a lovely content tapestry.

Based on the strength of your campaign and the resources you have, you can develop this for a certain month, quarter, or season.

8. Draft a Content Calendar

Calendars are timeless, even while the digital world develops quickly. The key takeaway from this is that strategic goals call for strategic means.

A successful digital strategy will probably include numerous branches, each with its own channels, content types, due dates, and deliverables. Half the struggle is keeping track of that, but you shouldn’t let it slow you down.

A helpful content calendar lists the staff members in charge of developing, approving, and releasing each piece of content, as well as benchmarks and significant industry events. Use project management software or a color-coded Google Spreadsheet to create a complete calendar in advance to prevent avoidable workflow issues during peak periods.

9. Plan Your Resources

Make plans based on the personnel and resources you have, not on those of others. Many businesses ignore this crucial idea, yet doing so will prevent you from creating a successful digital strategy.

Consider carefully how much time, money, and personnel you must devote to it, then plan your approach. Having such clarity will not only benefit the strategy, but it will also make the workforce happier and less stressed.

10. Simply Measure

Digital marketing has no shortage of data. There are numerous third party platforms that provide various types of data reporting, and all the major platforms provide analytics options.

But before making any of those decisions, think about your objectives (see #3 above). You’ll then be aware of which numbers to search for. And once you have data, you’ll know what’s working and what isn’t, giving you actionable insights.

Did the blog series bring in new readers? Has the email marketing effort generated any new donations? Did the Facebook marketing result in increased product sales?

What are the 4 Marketing Approaches?

The four Ps interact with one another in a dynamic way. When creating a strategic marketing plan, each is valued equally, rather than having a higher priority than the others.

Product

The good or service being marketed to the target market is called the product.

Successful goods typically meet a demand-generating unmet need in the market or offer a fresh client experience. For instance, the initial iPhone satisfied a market demand for a straightforward gadget that connected a phone and an iPod, and the Chia Pet offered consumers a hilarious experience that was completely original.

It is crucial to keep your target audience in mind as you work on your product and their specific requirements. When developing a product, the following considerations should be made:

• What is your product? 
• What does your product do? Does the product meet an unfilled need or provide a novel experience? 
• Who is your product’s target audience? 
• How is your product different from what others offer? 

Price 

The cost of a good or service is its price. When selling a good or service, it’s critical to choose a price that both appeals to the target market and supports the company’s objectives. Pricing can have a big impact on a product’s overall success.

For instance, relatively few of your target market’s members are likely to buy your goods if you price it too high. Similar to this, if you price your goods too low, some people may decide against buying it because they think it might be of worse quality and reduce your prospective profit margins.

You should have a solid understanding of your target market and their willingness to pay for your goods in order to determine a successful price. As you think about the cost of your product, you might ask yourself some questions like these:

• What is the price range of your product’s competitors? 
• What is the price range of your target audience? 
• What price is too high for your audience? What price is too low? 
• What price best fits your target market? 

Place

Place refers to the store where you sell your goods and the methods you employ to deliver them to your customers.

Finding the ideal location to market and sell your goods is crucial for reaching your target market, much like price. You won’t likely reach your sales goal if you place your product somewhere that your target client doesn’t go, whether that location is online or offline. To connect with your target audience and position yourself for success, find the proper location.

Take the sale of a pair of your original athletic shoes as an illustration. You choose to market your product in sports periodicals and sell it at specialty athletics stores since your target market is athletes in their early to late thirties. You are directing your efforts to a certain location that best matches your marketing mix by concentrating on sports stores rather than shoe stores in general.

You should think about conducting research on the physical or online locations where your target audience shops and consumes information before choosing the best venue to market and sell your goods. Consider the following issues:

• Where will you sell your product?
• Where does your target audience shop? 
• What distribution channels are best to reach your target market? 

Promotion

Your goods or service will be advertised through promotion. With the help of promotion and an engaging marketing strategy that appeals to your target market, you can spread the word about your product.

There are numerous strategies you can use to market your goods. Word of mouth, print ads, and television commercials are among traditional techniques. However, there are now even more marketing channels available in the digital era, including content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing.

When preparing to promote your goods, you should think about the following issues:

• What is the best time to reach your target audience? 
• What marketing channels are most effective for your target audience? 
• What advertising approaches are most persuasive to your target audience?

What are Examples of Marketing Approaches?

Businesses develop marketing plans to increase consumer awareness of their goods and services. A business can expedite product development and establish clear goals by developing a marketing plan.

Then, businesses may focus their efforts in a futuristic path that would draw customers most likely to buy their goods or services. When attempting to attract consumers, firms can use a variety of marketing tactics. Examples of several popular marketing techniques are shown below:

1. Bounty: Surprise Your Audience

The Bounty paper towel company uses guerilla marketing strategies to surprise consumers. Guerrilla marketing can be defined as unexpectedly putting your brand in front of consumers. Bounty placed life-size “spills” throughout New York’s bustling downtown neighborhoods.

Coffee mugs that have fallen over and enormous ice creams that are melting will undoubtedly draw attention. Bounty piled up stacks of paper towels next to the mess to visually but simply communicate their message. A billboard would have been an alternative, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact as this one.

2. Myfix Cycles: Retarget Consistently

On one point, marketers will all concur. Internet surfers today have limited attention spans. It’s nearly tough to persuade consumers to concentrate on one item because of chat apps, window switching, and “real world” responsibilities.

Retargeting is similar to a second chance to win over lost clients. It can also be used to upsell to current clients or to reactivate inactive users. This is accomplished through deliberately timed warnings being sent to targets via SMS, emails, advertising, and pop-up windows.

Myfix Cycles, a Canadian bicycle company, uses retargeting beautifully. They ran a Facebook retargeting campaign in collaboration with Webrunner Media. They added a tracking script called Facebook Pixel on their website so that it would tenaciously track visitors while they browsed the internet.

They focused on three groups of people: those who had visited their websites during the previous 14 days, those who had put products to their carts but abandoned them before checking out, and those who had made a purchase within the previous 180 days.

To inform their targets that the items in their abandoned carts had been marked down, they flashed advertisements. They added free shipping to sweeten the bargain.

3. GoPro: Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)

Adrenaline junkies who enjoy filming their daring feats are big fans of GoPro cameras. GoPro makes it incredibly simple for users to create and share professionally produced videos using their cameras.

The company’s logo and branding features are automatically added to each clip via their video editing application. Following that, GoPro posts this UGC to their social media networks. Other GoPro users are inspired to make sponsored videos as a result, creating a snowball effect.

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By holding the GoPro Awards, GoPro raises the stakes. They give away hardware, monetary awards, or “social stokes” (a name they invented for shoutouts and reshares on GoPro’s official social media accounts) to the creators of the greatest material. The outcomes? Genuine social evidence and customer loyalty at no further expense.

4. Warby Parker: Monetize Your Brand Story

With a purpose in mind, Warby Parker was started. The eyeglasses business wants to offer designer spectacles at competitive pricing. They are Gucci and Armani for the average person. But they do more than just market eyewear; they humanize their company’s brand.

On the History part of their website, it is mentioned that the owners of the company experienced eyesight problems but were unable to afford glasses. To end the stranglehold of luxury brands and offer high-quality glasses at reasonable costs, they established the brand. That is a compelling tale of a real company supporting a worthy cause.

Visit their Instagram account. They give away a pair of spectacles for each pair of glasses they sell to those in need. They include customers in their brand story in this way. People enjoy feeling like a part of a charitable organization.

5. Vogue: Power Your Loyalty Programs

Vogue Australia introduced Vogue VIP, a supercharged loyalty program that offers numerous benefits to devoted clients. A free membership to Vogue’s e-magazine is one of them. Other perks include magazine doorstep delivery, early access to premium content, time-limited deals, VIP invitations to Vogue events, and limited-time specials.

Even while many companies have some kind of client loyalty program, they don’t necessarily make it known. Customers are consequently unable to use their points or advertise the program. By creating a special website to monitor how well their clients are responding to the project, Vogue demonstrated their dedication.