How to Design a Digital Marketing Strategy

As we talked about in our previous blog, following steps to design a digital marketing strategy will help your business or organization define goals and follow clear plans.

Plus, it will increase your credibility and build customer loyalty.

The bottom line is – YES, you need a digital marketing strategy.

But how do I create a digital marketing strategy? you ask.

We’re so glad you asked…

6 Steps to Design a Digital Marketing Strategy

We won’t sugar-coat it: this process will take time, effort, and patience. But, following these steps to design a digital marketing strategy will reap major rewards.

Get the gears turning, starting with this…

1. Set Business and Marketing Goals

Your marketing goals should be directly tied to your business goals. Make sure you are clear on these goals before you start preparing content calendars or posting on social media. 

For example, if you have a business goal to increase web traffic, set a marketing goal to raise brand awareness. Then, design related marketing tactics to indicate how you’ll take action. Tactics might involve PPC ad campaigns and social media marketing.

To set realistic goals, follow the SMART framework. Each goal should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

2. Define Your Audience

To connect with your audience, you need a deep understanding of their needs, preferences, habits, and more. First, develop a buyer persona, which will detail your target customer’s demographics, problems, desires, likes, dislikes, occupation, education, and more. 

Then, develop an empathy map. This helps you explore the motivations, emotions, struggles, and daily experiences of your buyer persona. Brainstorm what your buyer persona sees, hears, thinks, and says on a day-to-day basis. Consider their pain points and their opportunities. Ultimately, this will help you craft effective messages.

Miro offers excellent, free tools to help you define your target audience.

3. Analyze Your Market

Next, closely review your industry and your competitors. Take a look at trending services or products in your industry. Investigate consumer behavior and the ways that companies are responding. 

Then, look at your competitors. Examine their social media, websites, blogs, newsletters, and more. How do they message their audience? What does their engagement look like? How do they position themselves as a solution to a problem?

Then, decide how you fit into that picture. Conduct a SWOT analysis to illustrate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This will help you gain a clear picture of your positioning, how you should focus, and what opportunities you should take.

4. Identify Marketing Strategies and Tactics

Now comes the part you’ve been waiting for: your marketing strategy and tactics! This is where you get specific and design a plan for tackling your marketing and business goals.

Based on the information you’ve gained, decide what strategies and tactics will work best for your audience. For example, you might set a strategy to improve lead generation. Your tactics will be the actions you take to help you achieve that goal, such as offering a free downloadable ebook or designing social media ads.

5. Create a Calendar

Next, take your strategies and tactics and build them into a content calendar. We recommend planning out your content about 3 months at a time. Adding a monthly theme to each month’s content will help you create cohesive, engaging content.

Your content calendar should clearly address:

1. Type of content (blog, social media, e-newsletter…)
2. Topic and/or description
3. Channel for publication (Facebook, your website, email…)
4. Target audience
5. Owner (the person responsible for the content)
6. Date of publication
7. Status (working on it, ready for review, published…)

If you’re working solo, then you might feel comfortable using a simple excel spreadsheet or any type of downloadable template. Free and affordable content management software is also very helpful. We use (and love!) Monday.com. 

6. Analyze Results

This is a step you don’t want to forget! You’ve spent a lot of time carefully planning and executing your strategy. Make sure to dedicate time reviewing its performance, too!

Use tools like Google Analytics or social media Insights to examine how your audience interacts with your digital strategies. What does Google Analytics tell you about how many visitors look at your website? Where do they spend their time? How do they interact with your site?

What do social media Insights tell you about the type of content your audience likes most? What content gets zero engagement?

Use this information to adjust and focus your strategy as you move forward.