8 Digital Marketing Strategies Every Business Should Implement

Your digital marketing strategies all starts with establishing your brand. Although technically it’s not “digital”, I cant’ exclude branding from the list when I advise a business owner how to create a digital marketing strategy.  If you skip this step, you’re doing yourself a major disservice and will most likely be all over the map in your efforts and approach. Establishing your brand identity is a critical step in connecting with your target audience and positioning your business effectively in the market. But what is a brand? I love Forbes’ definition:

“Put simply, your “brand” is what your prospect thinks of when he or she hears your brand name.  It’s everything the public thinks it knows about your name brand offering—both factual (e.g. It comes in a robin’s-egg-blue box), and emotional (e.g. It’s romantic).  Your brand name exists objectively; people can see it.  It’s fixed.  But your brand exists only in someone’s mind.” -Jerry McLaughlin, Forbes.com, 2011

Now that we have an idea of what branding means, here are 6 components of a brand that your business needs to think about:

1. Brand Purpose

This is the reason for your business’ existence. Although your company is in business to make money, it should be much more than that. To truly resonate, your business should have a clear purpose that rings loudly for your target customers.

2. Brand Positioning

Brand positioning means the place a brand occupies or wants to occupy, relative to the competition, in the mind of a customer. Brand positioning takes into account the target audience, competition, and any outside market factors.

3. Brand Promise

A brand promise is what your customers can expect from purchasing your product(s) or the process of purchasing your products.

4. Brand Beliefs

Brand beliefs define how your business makes its decisions. These are your business’ core values and what you stand on.

5. Brand Personality

Brand personality are the characteristics associated with a brand. It’s something that the consumer can relate to. It includes characterstics such as humor, conservative, innovative, inspirational, and many more.

6. Brand Book Cover

A Brand’s Book Cover are all of the visual characteristics derived from the above 6 components. Things like color scheme, logo, typography, tagline, and brand guidelines are important in visually representing a brand’s purpose, positioning, promise, identity, beliefs, and personality.

Want more information on establishing your brand with examples? Check out my Components of a Brand Strategy post. Your brand strategy will help steer the digital marketing strategies I’ve outlined below.

Digital Marketing Strategy #2: Building a Strong Website Strategy

The second digital marketing strategy every business should invest in is building a strong website strategy. I cannot understate the importance of having a great website for your organization and/or brand. In marketing, perception is reality. A flat, static online presence that only communicates in one direction without segmentation does not reflect well for a brand. I have seen so many organizations with no website or a TERRIBLE website, even organizations with thousands of employees making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue! A website is the anchor for your digital marketing efforts. For this reason, one of the first steps I always take with a potential client is to assess their website. Here are some key statistics to put things into perspective for both business-to-consumers (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) companies:

• 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive. (Adobe, 2015)
• 81% of shoppers conduct online research before making big purchases. (Retailing Today, 2014)
• 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their smartphone. (Google, 2015)
• 71% of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search. (Google, 2015)
• 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles. (WordStream, 2016)
• 50% of local searches lead mobile visitors to visit stores within one day. (Google, 2014)
• 78% of local-mobile searches result in offline purchases. (Search Engine Land, 2014)

These statistics scream to the point that having a strong website is fundamental to establishing strong digital marketing strategies.

Digital Marketing Strategy #3: Data Analytics Strategy

The third digital marketing strategy every business should invest in is a web analytics strategy.  Ask yourself these questions:

1. Can I track all my digital marketing campaigns?
2. Do I know where my leads came from?
3. Do I know which digital marketing strategies attributed to someone making a purchase on my website?
4. Do I have strategic goals set up on my website?
5. Do I know which digital marketing strategies to invest more money in and which ones to retool?

If you said no to any (or all) of these questions, I’d recommend either doing research on setting up and using an analytics platform (Google Analytics is free and effective) or hiring an employee/consultant who can assist you.

Digital Marketing Strategy #4: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The fourth digital marketing strategy every business should invest in is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I have spoken to companies large and small who put a lot of effort into writing their website copy and blog copy, but do not have an on-page SEO strategy. Even if the content is amazing and you are the best writer in the world, not optimizing your content is a timely mistake. It’s like writing a book and keeping it hidden in your house. There are many strategies companies can incorporate to get better search engine rankings, both on-page and off-page. I will touch on some of these in future articles.

Digital Marketing Strategy #5: Content Mapping Strategy

The fifth digital marketing strategy every business should invest in is having a well-thought out, timely content strategy across all touch points. The goal is to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time.

1. I typically start by creating a spreadsheet with 1 product/service per tab. For each product/service, I list out each persona (customer segment) on the first column of my document.
2. The second step is to use the next 5 columns to define the lifecycle stages. Many marketers will use only 3 stages of the lifecycle stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. I like to add a fourth, brand advocacy. These are your customers who engage with you and boldly express how much they love your products. They are willing to go the extra mile because they love your products and what your brand stands for. The fifth stage, recurring purchases, is the customer who now trusts your brand and buys your products repeatedly.
3. The third step is to define a problem or opportunity your persona(s) need help with. You can list these under each persona respectively.
4. The fourth step is to create content ideas for each problem/opportunity corresponding to each of the 5 stages in the customer lifecycle.
5. The fifth step is to define which mediums your content ideas should be found. These can include specific social media channels, email, blog, videos, and many more types.
6. The sixth and final step is to create your marketing content for each stage and assigning a date to publish or post. This is by far the most time-consuming aspect of the content mapping strategy.

A content mapping strategy is a great way to build the right content for the right customer at the right time. But content creation shouldn’t stop here. After creating a content mapping strategy, I typically incorporate high level goals for each product/service to build out a high level yearlong content plan. To accomplish goals, custom campaigns are typically needed throughout the year. After establishing campaigns that I think will accomplish the goals, it’s very important to define all the channels that your campaign will be on, the types of content that needs to be created, and the tone of that content. This content plan can also include relevant industry events, seasonal activities, and much more. During the planning stage, it’s vital to make sure technology, content creation, and labor resources are accounted for to stay under budget.

Content creation is a MASSIVE job to do properly, but it’s an important part of any digital marketing strategy. From my experience, successful campaigns need to be well thought out, clearly defined, and measurable. Data is so vital in determining successful aspects of each campaign and the success of the overall campaign.

Digital Marketing Strategy #6: Social Media Strategy

The sixth digital marketing strategy every business should invest in is a social media strategy. Where your customers are, you should be too. Social media is no exception. Determining which channels to be on is important, you don’t have the resources to be everywhere and do everything. In general, the essential channels I recommend my clients to be on are:

• Facebook: 2 billion monthly users, 79% of all American internet users use Facebook
• Twitter: 328 million monthly users
• Instagram: 700 million monthly users
• LinkedIn: 500 million monthly users
• YouTube: 1.5 billion monthly users
• And sometimes Pinterest: 175 million monthly users

For more information, check out some amazing social media usage and demographic statistics that can help you determine which platform your business should be on.

After determining which channels to be on based on who your target customers are, determine the tone and style of your business’ communication on social media. A financial institution should probably not use the same tone and language style as an ice cream parlor.

Here Are 12 Social Media Tips I recommend:

1. Don’t hard sell.
2. Don’t delete negative comments unless they violate the social site’s terms of service.
3. Post 1 time per day on Facebook, 2 maximum.
4. Post at least 3 times per week on your channels, preferably once a day, depending on the channel.
5. Respond to customers in a timely manner, always.
6. Use hashtags strategically.
7. Utilize your key partners and employees to get organic growth.
8. Content themes can make writing content easier.
9. Social media is not a standalone strategy, combine it with all of your other strategies online.
10. Be timely and relevant.
11. Determine which posting times are most effective for your business.
12. Create posts monthly via a content calendar. It’s much easier to carve out a block of time once a month than to write something new every day.

Digital Marketing Strategy #7: Advertising Strategy

The seventh digital marketing strategy every business should invest in is an advertising strategy. Having said that, BE CAREFUL. Before you even think about advertising, your website strategy better be near flawless. I have spoken to business owners who aren’t interested in fixing their websites yet spend thousands of dollars a month advertising to a site that is not mobile responsive, has no keyword strategy on their website landing pages, and has little knowledge of copy-writing and/or non-professionally designed graphics. All of these factors, among many others, can drastically reduce an ad campaigns effectiveness, causing you to lose a lot of money. Also, make sure the landing page where traffic is being sent is highly optimized and has all necessary tracking set up.

Okay, so what if your business has all the above implemented?

Here Are 3 Advertising Channels I Recommend Getting Started On:

1. Google AdWords – If you’re having trouble ranking on Google organically, advertising using Google AdWords is a good strategy. With over 78% of searches being performed worldwide on Google, it’s a no brainer to try to reach your potential customers here.
2. Facebook Advertising – A platform with many types of advertising campaigns to help you accomplish your goals. Facebook is useful for advertising when you have very specific segment information for your audience. You’ll be able to target these potential customers of yours using a plethora of targeting methods.
3. Remarketing Campaigns – One of my favorite strategies to use across the web and on Facebook. If set up correctly, you can target people who have visited specific pages or areas of your website, such as a product landing page. You can also dissect your audience of visitors and target just the right type of person who has visited your site.

These 3 are only a few of the many digital advertising platforms businesses can use, but I’ve had success with these 3 over the years. I’ll mention it again, be careful with advertising. I like to say that advertising online is like playing the stock market. Many people (including myself) have lost a lot of money in the stock market underestimating the vast knowledge needed to compete at a high level. The same can be said of digital advertising. Digital advertising can be a very fruitful part of businesses’ digital marketing strategies,  just be careful.

Digital Marketing Strategy #8: Email Strategy

The eighth digital marketing strategy every business should invest in is an email marketing strategy. There are many types of email marketing campaigns and all kinds of platforms to use.

Here Are 10 Email Marketing Campaign Types:

1. Cart-abandonment emails – emails sent to persons who placed items in their shopping cart yet did not follow through with the purchase.
2. Cross-marketing emails – emails sent to current customers who may have one of your products but you think may also like other products you provide.
3. Lead nurturing emails – emails that are typically automated and start at the time someone fills out your lead forms. The goal of these emails is to move your lead through the stages of your predefined sales cycle.
4. Newsletter style emails – Many smaller organizations like to send a basic newsletter to let their customers know what is going on with their business. I’d be careful with investing too much time in these although they can still serve a purpose.
5. New content announcement emails – A great type of email that can be sent out automatically after things like, for example, a blog is posted.
6. Product updates – I’d use this one sparingly as most users don’t like too many of these. An example of these would be when Apple or Samsung launch a new product, such as their new phone.
7. Event Invitations – Emails that are sent to invite guests to live events or webinars.
8. Welcome emails – Emails that are sent to invoke a sense of community to a new client or customer. An example would be after someone signs up to bank with a new bank.
9. Social engagement emails – Emails that encourage social engagement, such as following your brand on social channels. I’d recommend providing incentives if you use this email campaign.
10. Confirmation emails – Typically the first email that goes out after someone completes an action. You can be strategic with these and get your users to accomplish additional tasks, such as submitting a review for a product they just purchased (super important for ecommerce).

Each of these email types can provide value for your business, if done correctly.

Many providers have the ability to automate emails as well so that the right email creations can be sent to the right people at the right time. There are email service providers (ESP) for all sized businesses and I recommend doing some research on which platform best fits your organization’s needs.

Here Are 7 Tips for Email Strategy I Recommend No Matter Which Email Campaign Type Your Business Chooses to Create Next:

1. Just like a website, make sure your emails are responsive (having the ability to be viewed properly on all devices).
2. Use professional graphics
3. Write in the tone your audience wants
4. Get to the point. Don’t write massive blocks of copy.
5. Use creative subjects
6. Test, test, test: Perform A/B tests with small segments of your list.
7. Follow can-spam act best practices

So that’s that! My top 7 digital marketing strategies businesses should be using.

How are your digital marketing strategies coming? Have any other digital marketing strategies that you’d recommend for other business owners? Leave your comments below!

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