You know you need digital marketing to increase your online and offline presence. However, getting started can be incredibly overwhelming because there are so many options. Organic and paid strategies. Multiple channels. Pressure to get an immediate return on investment. The good news is that you can start small and still make an oversized impact by following these seven steps.
1. Identify the goals of your digital marketing campaign.
While most businesses should use digital marketing to succeed, especially small- and medium-sized companies, you need a more specific goal than checking it off your marketing to-do list because marketing gurus say you should have a digital marketing campaign. Figuring out what you want to achieve with your digital marketing campaign is the first step to defining the elements required for success. Consider objectives such as:
- Collecting more sales leads
- Introducing a new product or service
- Raising brand awareness
- Driving more traffic to your website
Regardless of the goal of your digital marketing campaign, be sure to be specific about what you want to achieve. For example, you want to increase organic traffic to your website by 15%.
2. Who is your digital marketing campaign targeting?
Digital marketing campaigns should resonate with your target market. One campaign can’t be everything to everybody. Therefore, define the target audience you want to reach with each campaign. For example, you might develop a digital marketing campaign to reach technology directors at Fortune 500 companies.
If you haven’t developed detailed customer personas, research your target market. Key things you want to understand about who you want to reach are demographic data, their online behavior and pain points. You can review Google Analytics and social media reporting to get some of this. It’s also important to conduct surveys or complete customer interviews to better understand their challenges.
Reviewing what your competitors are doing is another way to gain valuable insight into reaching your target market.
3. Set a budget.
You don’t need a huge budget for a digital marketing campaign, but you do need to determine how many resources you will devote to the project. This includes marketing management, ad spend and any help you outsource. Not every digital marketing campaign requires paid advertising; however, several cost-effective options, such as social media advertising, Google and YouTube Ads, and programmatic advertising, can dramatically extend your reach and allow you to target your audience.
4. Develop messaging and content for your digital marketing campaign.
Once you have determined your goals and the target market, you can create a message for the digital marketing campaign that aligns with those. This is the stage to consider keywords and SEO content that can help you achieve your goals. If you create quality content your target market is searching for, Google and other search engines will move your content to the top search engine results.
5. Select the channels for your digital marketing campaign.
Along with determining what messaging and content you want to create, you must select the right digital marketing channels to distribute it. Whether it’s on LinkedIn or other social media platforms, through email, video or other channels, the options you choose impact the digital marketing activities and assets you must complete.
6. Determine who will do the work.
With a fairly good idea regarding the scope of your campaign, you can assess who will be responsible for completing it. To determine if you keep it in-house or need to outsource to a digital marketing firm, ask if your team has the:
- Skills required for the campaign? If you decide your campaign would include a 4-minute video, but there’s no one on staff with video expertise, you’ll need to outsource the video work.
- Time to complete the project? If you have a small marketing team or other pressing priorities, it may make sense to outsource the work so other deadlines aren’t jeopardized by putting too many projects on the team.
- Tools and software programs needed for the project?
7. Decide on your KPIs.
You must track your efforts against the goals you established to know if your digital marketing efforts are working. The digital marketing KPIs you should track depend on the digital marketing campaign. Some KPIs to monitor include:
- Conversion rates
- Click-through rates
- Leads, sign-ups and sales
When you monitor your digital marketing campaign KPIs, you can adjust your campaign by shifting tactics to make it more successful and stop doing what the data tells you isn’t working.
Start your digital marketing campaign
Digital marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You can begin a simple digital marketing campaign by following these seven steps to deliver real results for your business. If you hit a snag or are ready to scale your efforts to more complex plans, we’re here to help.
We’ve helped businesses like yours start a digital marketing campaign. Schedule a consultation with an expert from Campfire Digital today.
