How to Create A Digital Marketing Strategy: The Complete Guide

I find it heart breaking when I realize that even though a number of brands are acing their business and breaking barriers using digital marketing, millions of other brands have failed to do so because they can’t find ways to create a digital marketing strategy that works.

As a marketing practitioner, I have seen situations where brands invested a lot in online marketing but failed to make headways because they couldn’t find a realistic plan that works.

I have also witnessed instances where brands come up with very promising strategies that ended up flopping because it just couldn’t develop on expected outcomes in the real world. And I’ve found a few successful strategies as well.

As a brand trying to create a digital marketing campaign that delivers a decent result. There are some key things you’ll have to look into if you really want to deliver on your campaign goals. And in this guide, I’ll be sharing with you some of these things in the following paragraphs.

Define Your Campaign Goals

It’s not possible to create a digital marketing strategy that delivers results without finding and identifying your marketing goals.

So, the first step you want to start with is to clearly identify your campaign goal. Find out the key things you want to achieve with your digital marketing campaign. This is the first step.

This goal can be any of this: Increasing brand visibility, generating leads, boosting sales, getting more traffic, improving on audience engagement or anything else.

Whatever it is, you need to clearly define it at this stage.

Remember, your campaign goal can be anything. It can also be more than one specific objective but the most important thing is that you have to figure it out before getting started.

Identify Your Audience

Now that you already have a clear goal or campaign objectives, its time to pick out the kind of people that will get you to achieve those goals.

Taking out time to figure out your audience is a crucial aspect of your digital marketing strategy set up because without a clearly defined audience, it’s nearly impossible to create a strategy that will meet their needs.

And when you can’t meet the needs of your audience, it’s impossible to create a strong realistic marketing strategy. So, identify your audience first.

Pick out who they are and their demographics. Pay attention to details like their age, gender, location, income etc.

Get in deeper to find out their interests, values, lifestyle, their pain points, the problems they have (which your product or services intends to solve) their buying behaviors etc. the more detailed you can get, the more well-tailored you’ll make your strategy.

As a new brand, you might find it a bit difficult getting started since you rarely have a decent data on your target audience. If you find yourself in this situation, you can go ahead and research your audience by taking a look at your competition.

Find out who they are targeting, get some details about these people and use this to streamline your audience.

In addition to that, consider using audience research tools like Google Keyword Tools, Wordstream, Ubersuggest etc. to find your audience by looking out using niche keywords and other related keyword derivatives.

Evaluate your Strength & Weaknesses

Take steps to conduct a SWOT analysis by evaluating your Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

This is going to be one of the most boring aspects but if you want to create a digital marketing strategy that delivers successfully, you want to take out steps to identify this and find out how your current standing in the market, in comparison to your competition in the following sub heads.

• Strengths: What are your natural strengths as a new brand? Or put differently, what are the things that make you stand out?
• Weaknesses: Where do you think you’ll be struggling? Is it lack of resources, inadequate brand visibility? What are the things you feel are weaknesses that can limit your chances in the niche?
• Opportunities: Opportunities are external factors you can leverage to your advantage in the industry. Find out, what are these factors and how can you leverage them effectively?
• Threats: These are factors that can impact your strategy negatively. You want to identify them at this stage and find ways to nip it the threat in the bud before it happens or even create a recovery plan.

Evaluating your standing and chances of success is oftentimes overlooked by new business but taking these steps will open your eyes to insights that will get you to build a marketing strategy that works.

Create a Budget

I’ll assume you’re not running a completely free digital marketing campaign because if you do, that might take you a little bit of time to create and deliver on results.

However if you are, you’ll still have to budget things like the amount of time you’ll spend on each aspects of the marketing strategies, the resources you can expend etc.

Doing this is crucial because your budget is a critical part of your online marketing campaign that can literally decide on its success.

Where you have some resources in place to finance your campaign, you have to decide on your budget and how much you’re willing to spend.

When this is done, you’ll get to decide on the marketing options that best fits your budget.

For example, if you’re on a shoestring budget, you can consider interest based or social media advertising over intent based advertising.

On the other hand, where you have the money to spend to deliver faster results, you can consider a combination of both, alongside other important marketing options that will ensure a more realistic outcome.

However the case maybe, create a budget for your campaign. Even if it’s for budgeting your time spent on content creation, posting, promotion etc. create a realistic budget and find ways to stick with it.

Choose Your Digital Marketing Options

As far as digital marketing is concerned, there are many options for brands. You don’t have to use all of the available digital marketing options. That’d be a serious mistake.

All you want to do is to identify a digital marketing option that works best, based on your own goals and marketing objectives.

This can be two or three marketing options or a combination of more than that number. Whatever the case may be, choose a marketing option you think will most likely deliver on your outcomes, based on your budget etc.

That said, the following are some of the key marketing channels used by the majority of brands. And you can opt to use any or combinations of these, as you create a digital marketing strategy:

• Website: This is a must have for all brands. Although it might not be a short term channel priority for very small businesses with shoestring budget, to create solid visibility, thought leadership and show seriousness, you want to keep this channel as part of your long term marketing plans by all means so it can house other marketing channels.
• Social Media: This is one of the top digital marketing channels that cannot be ignored in any digital marketing strategy. Whether you’re creating a strategy for an established or upcoming business, incorporating social media as part of your campaign gives you the chance to leverage both organic and paid strategies for a larger visibility. To get the best out of this, choose only the platforms that have the largest number of your target audience. 
• Email Marketing: email marketing is an important part of every digital marketing campaign especially where your goal is to build a long term relationship with your audience. To create a more effective outcome, you want to prioritize sending personalized and useful content to your audience to build a rapport. And then you can add a few promotions without making it too much.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing is the livewire of any digital marketing campaign. Be it on social media, website, emails etc. you need content to push out your marketing campaign. Remember there are different kind of content from videos to blog posts, audio, Infographis, and there are also long form and short form content etc. To get the most of any digital marketing endeavor, take out time to identify the kind of content that works for your audience, based on their preferred platforms. Create and share these kind of content for them, consistently.
• Paid Advertising: For beginners, it may take a while to generate adequate results a digital marketing plan focused only on organic marketing strategies. Using a sprinkle of paid strategies here and there can get you to create a faster outcomes. And depending on your budget, you can consider using either of Google ADS, Social Media Ads, Sponsored Advertising etc., Yur choice of advertising option should depend on your campaign objectives, budget and audience preferred platforms.

Create a Content Strategy

Like we mentioned earlier, content marketing is central to your digital marketing campaign.

What this means is that having a solid content plan is one of the important aspects of planning that can get you to create a digital marketing strategy that works.

So, since you already have been able to identify the kind of content that will be valuable to your audience in the other steps above, its now time to take this knowledge further by breaking it down using the following steps:

• Identify Content Types: Based on your findings above, what are your audience preferences in terms of content types? Is it video, blog posts, Infographics, Ebooks? Or is it a combination of different content types? Find out what it is and make plans on how to create them.
• Short or Long Form: Long form content are always good for SEO especially if you’re creating written content however depending on your content platform, this may not be the best type of content for you. Find out the best form of content that works for your audience and if you’re going to create a mix, identify how you can create a balance here.
• Content Calendar: Consistency is important if you have plans to build a campaign strategy that works. Here you’ll attempt to create a content calendar based on your niche, content topic, and platform and posting schedule. Keep in mind that this can be changed, based on your audience’s preferences.

Implement Your Strategy

After creating your digital marketing campaign, it’s now time to marshal and put it into implementation to create actual results.

Using your content ideas, begin to create and schedule content based on your content calendar.

Where you’re going for paid promotions, using the data you’ve already created about your audience, begin to create and host the kind of marketing that resonates with them.

Without implementation, your strategy is as good as useless. So, pay attention to finding ways to show up on schedule to drive your campaign and get it to deliver for your brand.

As part of your implementation, pay attention to the results you’re generating from your marketing campaign and use the insights to iterate for better results.

Optimize for Visibility

It is not enough to set up an online marketing campaign.

To get the most from your campaign you have to optimize for maximum visibility, regardless of whether you’re creating a paid campaign or free campaign, without specific optimization, your campaign might just become another wasted effort. So, pay attention.

To get started on campaign optimizations, consider doing the following:

Use the right Keywords: Use keyowrds, phrases and words relevant to your target audience in your content.

Title Optimization: Optimize your content titles by using captivating phrases and storylines that will appeal to your audience.

Leverage Hashtags: Where you’re creating for a social media platform, leverage relevant hashtags to create better visibility.

Use Relevant Images: Use relevant images in your content to create a better connection with your audience.

Optimize your website: Whether you’re leveraging search engine optimization as your preferred marketing strategy or not, take steps to optimize your articles, blog posts and website for better visibility. This is very crucial.

As far as online marketing is concerned, taking steps to create a recognized digital footprint on the web is a very important strategy that cannot be ignored, regardless of your digital marketing options.

Monitor & Analyze Performance

Using insights from digital marketing tools and results delivered from your campaign efforts, take steps to monitor your performance at intervals.

Identify what’s working and find ways to create even better outcomes from that. Additionally, find out aspects of your marketing campaign that’s not delivering on expected outcomes and use the available data to iterate.

Monitoring and analyzing your performance is an ongoing process that must be well entrenched as part of your digital marketing strategy.

And of course, pay attention to insights gathered from data. Do not fail to leverage this data to refine your strategy, optimize, make adjustments or iterate to improve your overall outcomes.

Final Words

Creating a digital marketing strategy can set you on the path to success with your brand but to arrive at this destination, you must pay attention to creating a realistic plan, using the steps and tips outlined in this guide.

Furthermore you must stay flexible. Remember, digital marketing is very dynamic. You’ll experience a lot of changes but paying attention to insights generated from data will guide you on the right direction.

Also, be consistent and flexible. Keep creating high value content, promote, share and engage with your audience and you’ll soon get them to become your biggest fans.

That said, you can learn a lot more about digital marketing and even find the mentorship to become a stellar digital marketing expert when you join our digital marketing school here. So, why not join right now.

It’s over to you now. What are your biggest struggles when it comes to creating a successful digital marketing strategy? Drop your comments below.