With the expansion and exponential growth of the internet, almost every single business today likely has some level of online or digital presence.
A key component to an online commercial presence’s ultimate success is marketing – getting a product or service noticed in an increasingly noisy marketplace.
Here are some starting points to consider in structuring the online business owner’s right digital marketing campaign.
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Be prepared to measure your performance
The online world moves quickly – customers are digitally mobile and can move quickly between sites to view, compare and select goods and services. This is key to bear in mind when devising an online marketing campaign – customers can move quicker in the online world than in the physical world.
Before planning out a digital marketing strategy, ensure that you can track the metrics to gauge your campaign’s success. Monitoring progress and adjusting content and strategy is a vital first step to ultimate success.
Understand your objective
As simple as it sounds, your first step should ask the question: “What is the goal of the digital marketing campaign?”
The campaign is a means to an end – an action that will lead you toward a specific goal.
Typically a common end goal is increased revenue through increased sales. However, a digital marketing campaign may be utilized for other purposes – to increase your brand awareness and acceptance in the market or drive an increase in traffic to your website.
Just like a ship needs a rudder, spending some time clarifying and understanding the objective will set the tone for the campaign’s direction and style.
Understand who you are marketing to
Having clarified the objective or end goal of your proposed marketing campaign, consider the next question: “Who is the marketing campaign targeting?”
This is yet another seemingly simple question, but many campaigns typically fail to reap desired results because this basic point has not been properly considered.
The age bracket and demographics of the target audience set the tone for your marketing “style” – the language used and the type of presentation employed in your marketing content.
Knowing the target market will also directly determine the placement of your online marketing efforts. Perhaps social media platforms or specific groups and pages will best position your marketing message amongst the greatest potential audience.
Discovering your target market
In the case of new start-up businesses, perhaps the digital marketing campaign is being raised to “test the waters” and allow a better understanding of exactly who or what the target market is.
A range of online tools is available to raise awareness of the new start-up and enable the business owner to assess the market. This range of options include:
- Free or paid advertising on social media platforms for “broad reach.”
- Blog site articles and posts
- Webinars, podcasts, or multimedia items
- Creation of email campaigns
- Free giveaways in return for customer information – age, location, interests
In this case, the ability to analyze and gauge those marketing metrics becomes doubly important. A suite of web analytics tools can further identify potential customer location and demographics to enable a more concentrated future campaign.
The importance of an effective digital marketing campaign cannot be discounted when considering the ongoing success of any online enterprise.
Irrespective of the scale or business size, beginning with an understanding of these fundamentals will help build an effective campaign.
