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The presence of your company on the web is essential, whatever its size, your sector of activity or your offer. For entrepreneurs who have not yet taken this step, digital transformation becomes a must.
Above all, digital is an almost unlimited source of opportunities! It even gives meaning to your marketing strategy as a whole, allowing you to be closer than ever to your consumers.
1. Analyze your competitors’ digital strategy
Before building your own digital marketing strategy, you must start by analyzing those of your competitors.
On what channels do they communicate? On social networks, which publications are the most successful and which are less so? How is their website built? What about their editorial line ? etc
This benchmark of your competitors can be added to an audit of your current digital presence , if you are already active on the web. You can thus compare and identify your strengths and possible areas for improvement, compared to what your competitors are doing. The goal is not to copy, but to inspire you (to do even better!).
This analysis work can also be part of a more global approach. This is relevant if you are creating a new activity. You can then use tools like the SWOT method .
2. List SMART goals
As soon as you start thinking about your digital marketing strategy, you already have goals in mind. It is, for example, to increase traffic on your website, to generate more leads, or to retain your customers. To measure the relevance and effectiveness of your strategy, it is best to list SMART objectives.
A SMART objective is therefore:
Let’s take an example: you want to increase the traffic of your website. Your SMART goal would be to increase your website traffic by 25% over one year by improving SEO and running Google Ads ads.
3. Define your marketing personas
The performance of your marketing actions depends on your ability to deliver the right message, at the right time and above all to the right target .
A marketing persona, also called a buyer persona, is a semi-fictional character that represents a segment of your customers. In short, it is the representation of an ideal client . As a result, you have as many personas as target segments (you can start by creating three or four).
The personality, consumption habits, and all the other information you compile about your personas is based on real data . The better you know your personas, the easier it will be to deploy an effective digital marketing strategy. This reflection work should help you identify which media to focus on, which messages to put forward or even at what times to communicate.
4. Choose your communication channels
The definition of your marketing personas is inseparable from the choice of your communication channels. This is especially evident when working on your social media strategy.
Given the identified profiles, you can choose the most suitable media. Logically, these are the ones your personas use the most. Therefore, if you are targeting teenagers, it’s a safe bet that TikTok will be one of your preferred communication channels. On the other hand, if you are targeting retirees, this is not the most relevant choice.
You choose as many communication channels as necessary, as long as they are consistent with what your marketing personas expect and the objectives you have set for yourself. Above all, you must keep in mind that these channels must be regularly fed . For example, if you launch a newsletter, you must be able to manage frequent mailings, with content that has added value for your target.
5. Work on your content marketing
A digital strategy cannot be improvised. Once you know who you are addressing (your personas), through what (your communication channels), you now need to define your message. This is how you work on your content marketing.
Your e-books, your blog articles, your publications on social networks, your newsletters: each communication medium that you develop must bring added value to your target . You must therefore carefully think about editorial and visual content (computer graphics, photos, videos). You need to create quality and original content. Copying what your competitors are doing would be penalizing for your brand image (but also for your SEO ranking).
Your content strategy must be consistent from one medium to another. This is why it is interesting to think about a clear editorial line . It will give you a guideline to follow regardless of the media or the person who writes.
All of these elements help build your brand in the minds of your target audience. This is therefore part of an Inbound marketing strategy, which consists of cultivating a relationship with your prospects and customers to, little by little, make them progress in the sales funnel .
6. Evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns
Digital is constantly changing, so your strategy should be too. It is important to regularly evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns.
To measure the effectiveness of your digital marketing actions, you can, for each of your communication channels, list relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
They allow you to identify the blocking points encountered by your Internet users and which therefore penalize your growth. In your newsletters, you can analyze the click-through rate. For your Google Ads campaigns, the latter is also relevant, to be compared with the cost per click (CPC). If you have an online store, you can, for example, analyze the conversion rate or the evolution of the average shopping cart. There are many more! Discover 9 e-commerce KPIs to analyze absolutely .
Building a digital marketing strategy takes time. However, once you have laid these foundations, it will be easier for you to define the actions to be taken. To save time, you can also call on a digital marketing expert ! He can help you build your strategy, step by step, and optimize it to ensure consistently better results.
