8 steps to creating a strong digital strategy
Whether it’s building a website, running an SEO campaign, or implementing a marketing CRM, the temptation is to launch right in and start “doing”. However, in data-driven marketing, developing a clear strategy first is crucial. Our 8 steps to creating a strong digital strategy are outlined below.
Step 1. Create your SMART goals
The first thing you should do is ask, “what do I want to achieve?” and then create SMART goals (Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound).
Step 2. Create your buyer persona
A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience.
Next, create your buyer personas, which is a model of your ideal customer. It is very important to get this step right. Take your time with creating a good buyer persona.
Step 3. Choose your optimal marketing channels
Decide which are the most relevant marketing channels to promote to your buyer. This means finding out where your buyer personas spend their time.
Your ideal customers could be hanging out on Facebook, networking on LinkedIn, visiting your competitor’s websites, or watching YouTube.
Step 4. Audit your existing business, sales and marketing situation
You will then need to completely audit your existing business, sales and marketing situation to understand where your gaps are.
In other words, “what is stopping you from achieving your goals?”
Step 5. Identify solutions
Once you’ve figured out where the gaps are, you can then identify where more attention is needed.
For example, you may find that the biggest thing stopping you from achieving your goals are online conversion rates. In this case, you will need to focus on developing a website strategy to improve your conversion rates.
Step 6. Conversions
Using maths, you can then work backwards from your goals. If the goal is to reach 20 sales per month by month 6, then this means you will need to achieve per month by month 6:
- 100 landing page conversions (based on 20% lead to sales conversion rate)
- 10,000 clicks to your landing page (based on 1% visitor hit to lead conversion rate)
- 200,000 impressions (based on 0.5% click through rate)
- $10,000 per month PPC media budget (based on $1 cost per click)
Step 7. Bring it all together
The final step is to bring that all together – to put actions into your planning. Create a document that maps out the steps you need to take to execute your campaign.
In other words, define your strategy.
Step 8. Data-driven branding
Your brand is not just defined by your products or services, it’s made up of so much more. It has its own personality, mission statement, goals, ethos and even its own humour.
While you can influence some aspects of how your brand is perceived, it’s ultimately up to the customer to decide how they see and feel it.
A clever brand will spend time understanding how its messaging alters brand perception, and much of this is done via communication with its customers.
Data-driven branding is about making brand decisions based on customer data. And one of the first steps in this approach is to engage in brand market research.
Methods
- Customer surveys, which may include perception maps
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- Product surveys
- Social media listening
- Focus groups
- CRM analytics
- Google Analytics
- YouTube Analytics