Digital Marketing Strategy — 5 Reasons Why You Need One

This article will tell you the importance of a digital marketing strategy.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, without a digital marketing strategy, doomsday is just around the corner — and it’s waiting for you. According to Ahrefs, 90.63% of web pages that don’t have a strategy get zero organic traffic.

Don’t want the same fate?

Then let’s not beat around the bush.

Highly targeted

Through digital marketing, you can target the right audience. And reaching the right people gives you a competitive advantage.

Let’s say you’ll be running an ad for a fitness magazine. And the people who read the newspaper — fitness enthusiasts — are your target audience.

If copies of the magazine are published then distributed around the world, you get to reach millions of fitness enthusiasts. But while it’s good to have millions of readers, a digital marketing strategy can offer you a better deal:

It can help you narrow down an already targeted audience.

Millions of readers check out your fitness magazine, right? Well, a digital marketing strategy can resize this number to:

Hundreds of thousands of fitness enthusiasts. And get this, they’re the hundreds of thousands of fitness enthusiasts who matter more for your business.

The reason? They’re the ones who have the highest chances of buying your product or service.

Compared to targeting a generic audience, targeting at a higher level is more effective.

That’s because you’re creating a highly relevant ad to your target. And with a highly relevant ad, you can establish a meaningful connection that general advertising cannot do.

As discussed in Lead Magnet Ideas, this connection is meaningful because it comes with the ability to influence buying decisions.

A brand that knows this is Trek. It’s a manufacturer of cycling products with multiple physical stores in different locations.

Trek is known for hosting annual bike rides. And during one of its annual festivities, it launched a retargeting campaign with the help of Facebook advertising.

The goal of its campaign was simple. The manufacturer wanted to increase brand awareness and wanted more people to check out its products.

So what it did was target people who have shown interest in its products. It also aimed to get through to people who purchased cycling products in the past.

And that’s not all. But it also charmed these people with an irresistible offer.

People can buy Trek products with a slash on the prices.

Here’s an image of one of its mobile ads:

In the end, its campaign was a success. Among the significant results are an 85% retailer engagement and a 2.4% clickthrough rate.

Hyper-personalized

Let’s say you want to accommodate consumers on an individual level. Using the same situation above, think of it as if you’re reaching out to the specific fitness enthusiast who’s going over a fitness magazine.

If your ad pops up in the middle of their reading spree, they may get angered by your interruption. Or not.

Either way, you got their attention.

At this point, there are two possibilities:

1. That specific fitness enthusiast will get angry at you
2. They will let you off the hook

Wondering why they might get angry at you? Well, the cause of the interruption — the ad — isn’t even directed at them. To put it bluntly, you wasted their precious time.

But if your ad is directed at them, things might be fine. And the odds are, they might even thank you for the interruption.

If you want the second possibility to have a better shot at happening, hyper-personalize your approach.

That’s what personalization can do. And with a digital marketing strategy, you can implement personalization — and get the attention you need.

If you often play media on Spotify and Netflix, you probably know how this goes already. Those sites create recommendations based on your history.

The same is true if you’re a frequent shopper on Amazon.

But here’s a case study of a less popular brand, Johnny Cupcakes. It’s a clothing brand founded in 2001 that sells t-shirts with designs of baked goods.

I decided to go with a relatively small brand to show you that personalization can help your business make it big. The key is to make your operations more effective, just like Johnny Cupcakes.

You see, Johnny Cupcakes used personalization to strategically send emails to the brand’s subscribers. It segmented its list based on a person’s gender, media habits, brand preferences, and interests.

The result was a whopping 141% improvement in revenue and a 123% increase in its conversion rate. Plus, its clickthrough rate rose by 42%!

Measurable and scalable

In digital marketing, you need to invest resources to achieve heights for your business.

Time, money, effort, and other resources? You can use them on measuring and then scaling your business.

For example, if you want to improve brand awareness for a small business, you need to launch a campaign. And to do that, you need to:

• Spend time designing a good marketing strategy
• Invest money in paid campaigns
• Put in an effort by evaluating the results regularly

Do you think you can make all that happen with newspaper ads and other types of traditional marketing?

With two of the items on the checklist, sure, you can!

Yes, you can spend time designing a marketing strategy. And yes, you can launch paid campaigns.

But we’re not going to see eye to eye if you think you can evaluate the results regularly with traditional marketing.

How can you evaluate results regularly when there are no tools out there that can tell you what’s going on? Once you paid for an ad’s space in a newspaper, that’s about it.

If you see some people on the street and they praise you for your ad, that’s good news. It means they saw and liked it.

But as I’ve said, that’s about it.

Want an accurate measurement of how your ad performed? Want an estimate of the number of people who saw your ad?

Sad to say, you can’t have that.

That’s not the case in digital marketing, though.

Digital marketing is unique because it allows you to see what’s happening with a campaign or even with your business or site. And because you can see what’s happening, you can get in front of it.

Let’s say you check in on your site’s performance using Ahrefs. And as the image below can reveal, you can gather a plethora of information from the tool.

This includes information about your backlink profile, referring domains, and traffic value. You can even analyze pages based on top content.

(Source)

If your business performs well in certain areas, you can use these areas to scale your business. And if your business sucks in some areas, then find ways on how to improve these areas.

Maximize ROI

If you’re a small business, it’s important to effectively use your finances. Because you don’t have the luxury of having unlimited resources at your disposal, you might not survive if you’re not wise financially.

A solution is to only invest money in cheap products and services. It will work, sure.

But here’s a piece of realistic advice.

Don’t focus on the affordability of a product or service. Instead, focus on quality.

You need to think about cost-effectiveness.

And you’ll be glad to know this:

By going into digital marketing, what awaits you are cost-effective money-making strategies. That’s because of the tools that can give you a boost.

Some of these tools are free. And they’re yours for the taking.

Other tools, however, can be yours for a price. But even if they’re going to cost you, what matters is they’re useful.

And if you play your cards well, you can leverage them and profit big.

ClickFunnels, for instance, is a useful tool that can help you streamline and automate different processes.

Here’s an article that can tell you more about it: What Is ClickFunnels?

And apart from a tool that can automate processes, there’s also Google Analytics. It can reveal traffic sources.

And as the image below shows, you can tell whether you’re getting site visits directly, from organic or paid search, and more.

(Source)

How you can use this information to maximize your ROI is to put more money on the traffic sources that are giving you more hits.

You can even put up a digital marketing venture with limited capital. A solid idea is to start a blog.

Great if you have exceptional writing skills and knowledge about your chosen topic. This means you don’t need to hire a writer.

And if you already know your way around SEO, you simply have to invest in domain and hosting. Then be patient as you build your blog.

Look at Web Growth Boss. The blog now makes seven figures after years of being in the industry.

You can delve into email marketing if you don’t want to start a blog.

Email marketing can offer a sweet deal with a 3,800% ROI (Return On Investment). And compared to any marketing method, email marketing has the highest ROI.

Then there’s social media marketing’s ROI, too. And between businesses that use social media and businesses that don’t, the former outsells the latter.

Aligns with consumer habits and trends

Did you know that 82% of consumers think an “immediate” response is very important when they ask businesses some questions?

In a time when people’s attention span is declining, you can understand why they don’t like to wait. And in an age where it’s all about automation and instant gratification, can you blame them?

That said, a way to get an immediate response is also one of the rising consumer habits and trends today.

Enter conversational marketing.

Conversational marketing is said to be the future of digital marketing. People prefer businesses that market to their customers through a series of conversations.

The reason why this is is no mystery.

After all, conversational marketing is just like talking to a person. And consumers dig that it’s just like talking because it keeps matters simple and easier to understand.

So yes, what makes marketing in the digital age so effective is its ability to stay in line with conversational marketing and other trends. Digital marketing points out the waves that are worth chasing.

Sure, nothing’s wrong with being content with your situation. Nothing’s wrong with wanting to stay where you are.

But sometimes, you need to take a different route and look past comfort.

That is if you want to grow. And that is, if you want to be successful — or remain that way.

Look at what happened to Xerox. Because its product, the copying machine, was praiseworthy during its time, it got complacent.

Not only did it fail to exploit new opportunities because it didn’t want to step out of its comfort zone. But it was also convinced its future was in copy machines.

And by that statement, Xerox thought that it was exactly where it should be.

So it remained where it is. The company’s CEO, David Kearns, believed that Xerox could keep making money on their technology.

It wasn’t on the right track, though. The introduction of office printers and scanners rendered the copying machine useless.

Frequently asked questions

Digital marketing is a broad subject. So below let’s shed light on some questions that people frequently ask.

Which digital marketing is best?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best way that can make your business stand out. It’s a process of optimizing your site to generate organic traffic from Google and other search engines.

From that description, you’d think it focuses only on the quantity of traffic involved. But no.

While the objective is to reel in lots of traffic, SEO is also about gearing you up for a quality site. It’s about modifying on-site elements such as your site’s content.

Add to that the need to optimize off-site elements, too. This includes fixing your meta description, titles, and URLs.

The goal? Make your site perform at its best.

And as you make your site easier for search engines to navigate, you are also satisfying the expectations of your potential customers.

What are the strategies of digital marketing?

Apart from SEO, other digital marketing strategies include:

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

This refers to the practice of directing traffic to your site using SEO and paid ad campaigns. The idea is to be on top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

This is an example of a paid ad:

When I searched for “landscaping business in ohio”, that’s what Google gave me.

Content Marketing

This refers to the creation of blogs, infographics, case studies, and other informational pieces. Regardless of the specific type of content, it’s geared towards providing useful information.

Social Media Marketing

It’s about using the power of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other networks to amplify your business.

Email marketing

This refers to marketing through a preferred channel of communication between professionals. You can use email as a tool to help you segment your audience based on their behavior.

What should a digital strategy include?

Any digital strategy should always include the ability to help your business grow. It should encourage you to see things clearly from the start so you can play for the long haul.

Looking to follow the footsteps of the successful ones?

That’s a great idea. But only if you modify other people’s strategies based on your own business model.

If you’re after a secret formula that can help you in the digital age, there’s no cookie-cutter approach, you’ll be disappointed.

Remember, each business is unique. And with unique strengths and weaknesses, results come differently.

A strategy that helped catapult one business to success might be ineffective for your own business.

What is the biggest trend in online marketing today?

Optimizing your site for voice search is favorable to you. Of all the biggest trends in online marketing today, it’s worth looking into because it makes life easy for the users of your website.

One of the famous names that adopted this trend is Walmart. It teamed up with Google to bring life to voice-enabled shopping.

So when users shop for groceries through Walmart, for example, they can simply talk to a Google Assistant-powered smart speaker. Using their voice, they can command the Google Assistant to add items to their shopping carts.

And here’s a nice deal.

Hundreds of Walmart stores allow online deliveries. And if they shop at one of those, their purchased items will be delivered to their homes.

Conclusion

Decades ago, you may think marketing through digital means won’t be as helpful to you as a marketer. Considering we got around with wired telephones and other traditional devices back then, I get where you’re coming from.

But times have changed. Nowadays, we get around life digitally.

The best way to go is to adapt.

If you don’t want to adapt to a new approach, it’s your choice. Remember, though, that it’s also your choice to get left behind.

As for other people, why not give them a chance to make a choice, too? You can do that by sharing this post on social media.