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How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

by | Jul 31, 2023 | Digital Marketing

In the digital age, a well-crafted digital marketing strategy is not just a luxury but a necessity. This is especially true for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) that may not have an established marketing function.

In this first part of our three-part series, we will delve into the initial steps of creating a digital marketing strategy, focusing on defining your goals, understanding your target audience, and conducting a digital marketing audit. 

Don’t forget to get in touch with CREATIVE in TiME directly, and our marketing experts can handle your entire digital marketing strategy for you.

Step 1: Define Your Goals 

Understanding the Importance of Goal Setting 

The first step in creating a digital marketing strategy is to define your goals. These are the guiding lights of your strategy, the endpoints you aim to reach through your digital marketing efforts. Your goals could range from increasing brand awareness and driving more traffic to your website to generating leads and boosting online sales. 

Aligning Your Digital Marketing Goals with Business Objectives 

It’s crucial that your digital marketing goals align with your overall business goals. Whether these are related to sales, product development, operations, HR, etc., your digital marketing strategy should serve as a tool to help you achieve these objectives. This alignment ensures that your marketing efforts are not just creating noise but are contributing to the growth and success of your business. 

Step 2: Understand Your Target Audience 

The Role of Audience Analysis in Digital Marketing 

Knowing your target audience is a cornerstone of a successful digital marketing strategy. This involves understanding their demographics, preferences, online behaviour, and pain points. This information will help you create content and messages that resonate with your audience and meet their needs. 

Creating Buyer Personas 

One effective way to understand your target audience is by creating buyer personas. These are detailed profiles of your ideal customers, including their demographics, interests, challenges, and behaviours. Buyer personas can guide your marketing decisions and help you tailor your content and messaging to the needs and preferences of your audience. 

Step 3: Conduct a Digital Marketing Audit 

The Importance of a Digital Marketing Audit 

Before you start planning your strategy, it’s important to conduct a digital marketing audit. This involves assessing your current digital marketing efforts and identifying what’s working and what’s not. 

What to Include in Your Audit 

Your digital marketing audit should cover all your digital marketing channels, including your website, social media accounts, email marketing campaigns, SEO efforts, and more. It should evaluate the performance of each channel, identify areas for improvement, and highlight opportunities for growth. 

Using the Audit to Inform Your Strategy 

The insights gained from your digital marketing audit will serve as a foundation for your digital marketing strategy. They will give you a clear picture of where you stand and where you need to go, helping you make informed decisions about your marketing efforts. 

Step 4: Choose Your Digital Marketing Channels 

Understanding Different Digital Marketing Channels 

Digital marketing encompasses a variety of channels, each with its unique strengths and capabilities. These include Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, and more. 

Selecting the Right Channels for Your Business 

The choice of channels depends on your business goals, target audience, and resources. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness among a younger demographic, social media marketing might be a good fit. On the other hand, if you’re looking to drive immediate traffic to your website, PPC advertising could be a more effective strategy. 

Step 5: Create a Content Strategy 

The Role of Content in Digital Marketing 

Content is the fuel that drives digital marketing. It’s what attracts and engages your audience, builds trust and credibility, and ultimately converts prospects into customers. 

Developing a Content Strategy 

Your content strategy should outline what type of content you will create, how often you will publish it, and on which platforms. The content should be valuable and relevant to your audience, helping you build trust and engage with them. 

For more on content marketing strategies, click here.

Content Types and Platforms 

There are various types of content you can create, including blog posts, videos, infographics, webinars, and more. The choice of content type depends on your audience’s preferences and the platforms you’re using. For instance, if you’re focusing on Instagram, visual content like photos and videos would be more effective. 

Step 6: Implement Your Digital Marketing Strategy 

Putting Your Plan into Action

Once you have your digital marketing strategy in place, it’s time to put it into action. This involves creating and distributing content, managing your social media accounts, optimising your website for SEO, running PPC campaigns, and more. 

Coordinating Your Efforts 

It’s important to ensure that all your digital marketing efforts are coordinated and aligned with your overall strategy. This means that your SEO efforts should support your content marketing, your social media posts should promote your content, and your email marketing should drive traffic to your website. 

Step 7: Measure Your Digital Marketing Performance 

The Importance of Analytics in Digital Marketing 

One of the key advantages of digital marketing is that it’s highly measurable. Through analytics, you can track the performance of your digital marketing efforts, gain insights into your audience’s behaviour, and determine the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing activities. 

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 

To measure your performance, you need to define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with your digital marketing goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase website traffic, your KPIs could include the number of visitors, page views, and bounce rate. 

Step 8: Refine Your Digital Marketing Strategy 

Using Data to Drive Decision-Making

The data you gather from your analytics should inform your decision-making process. By understanding what’s working and what’s not, you can make data-driven decisions to refine your digital marketing strategy. 

Continuous Improvement 

Digital marketing is not a set-it-and-forget-it type of activity. It requires continuous monitoring, testing, and refining. By regularly reviewing your performance and making necessary adjustments, you can ensure that your digital marketing strategy remains effective and aligned with your business goals. 

Conclusion

Creating a digital marketing strategy is a crucial step for any business looking to succeed in the digital age. It involves defining your goals, understanding your target audience, conducting a digital marketing audit, choosing your marketing channels, creating a content strategy, implementing your strategy, and measuring its performance.

With a marketing partner like CREATIVE in TiME, you can ensure that your digital marketing strategy aligns with your overall business goals and drives your business forward. Get in touch today.

Why You Need Video Marketing in 2023

Why You Need Video Marketing in 2023

by | Jan 16, 2023 | Social Media

Last Updated: 13th March 2023

Ever wondered why people eagerly await the latest John Lewis advert right before Christmas? This is just one case of a successful video marketing strategy! 

Marketing is all about how you tell your story. Video marketing allows you to tell your story in a whole new way that engages and resonates with your audience. Videos not only grab your audience’s attention, but it holds onto it, lingering in the back of their mind until they convert.  

Did you know that 78% of marketers saw a direct increase in their business sales once implementing video marketing strategies? Who would want to miss out on that opportunity? 

In this article, you will find a comprehensive list of why CREATIVE in TiME think you need to implement video marketing in your marketing strategy in 2023. 

Rank Higher on Google   

Those who use video marketing in their strategy have noticed a significant improvement in their SEO rankings. By having SEO-optimised content and video marketing, you not only appeal to your audience but also to Google’s algorithm. YouTube video previews are a great example of how Google ranks video content for its users. 

YouTube itself allows you to add links to your website and blog in the description of your video whereas TikTok allows you to redirect viewers to your store or website when using paid advertisement on your video content. These backlinks can help to boost your SEO rankings through Off Page SEO.

Get Higher Engagement Rates 

Videos get far more views and engagement than still photo posts on your social platforms. In fact, social video generates 1200% more shares than written and image content together. But why? 

Video marketing has the power to engage your audience by using a variety of mediums including visual audio and text. Rather than relying just on one aspect, it combines multiple features into one format. It is a fully immersive experience which can capture your audience’s attention and retain it through to the conversion stage of your marketing funnel. 

User-generated video content is proven to have a direct impact on a brand’s success as they build trust that doesn’t directly come from the company.

Build Trusted Relationships 

A lot of users prefer to learn through video. So, let’s give them exactly that. 

One of the most effective ways to build a relationship with your audience is by using video marketing. Video marketing can help you build trust, which will make it easier for you to sell your products or services. It is much more personal as it provides the human element to your business – a key point in the selling process. With blog pieces such as these, you don’t get to meet the person behind the words but with video content, you can feel more connected to who you are talking to. 

Elevate Your Existing Marketing Channels 

You might have noticed that the public’s attention span is nothing like it used to be. Users switch off if something doesn’t strike them in the first few seconds. This just means that you have a few mere seconds to hook in your audience. Video content is able to do just that not only by being engaging but also by delivering information quickly and easily.  

By adding text or graphics at strategic points in your video, you’ll be able to draw attention where it matters most while keeping things interesting enough that people want to see more from you down the road. Video marketing also has great potential when it comes to other marketing strategies such as email marketing campaigns. It can help increase your click-through rate and decrease your unsubscribe rate by having a mix of content in forms that resonate with your audience more. The video element makes them stand out from other forms of promotion because they’re more personal.  

Video is one of the most powerful tools available at our disposal when it comes to reaching out to customers and potential customers. Why waste it? 

Create Highly Shareable Content 

Video content is highly shareable across any channel.  

Fully immersive video content allows your target audience to become fully engaged with your business. This leads to a higher chance of them actively connecting with your business and converting. Video allows you to stand out from the crowd and build your brand, especially on social media platforms. Social media is the perfect place for video marketing! It’s not just another form of online content but an entirely different way of communicating with people.   

A video on how to make the most out of your SEO and digital marketing for your business with Andrea Warner, co-founder of CREATIVE in TiME.

With the rise of TikTok, it’s easier than ever to create video content. All you need is a high-quality smartphone and some creativity. Video is a great way to get your message across in a compelling way as well as to help to increase brand awareness.  

By using video marketing on your social media platforms, you have created content that your target audience wants to share with others, helping to expand your reach even further. 

Repurpose Your Existing Content 

According to a survey conducted by ReferralRock, 94% of surveyed marketers repurpose their content, are you one of them? 

Say you have a blog post or a client testimonial in your case study, have you ever considered turning that into video content? You will be using the same informational content however by having it presented in video format, you can share this information across social channels and present it in a more digestible way for your audience.  

There will be members of your target audience who won’t necessarily have the time to read through your whole case study or blog but by having it shortened into a minute-long video, they will be able to consume this content in a way that works best for their needs. 

This also allows you to create one video that can be used across multiple channels, meaning businesses don’t just need to focus on one platform. A longer and informative YouTube video can be broken up into a shorter clip with a key moment that will drive your users to the YouTube video. Shorter videos can be repurposed and distributed across TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Short for maximum coverage. 

Getting the Most Out of Video Marketing  

Hopping On Current Trends   

Creating short yet engaging videos on your social channels can be an effective way to hop on trends in a cost-effective manner. When it comes to TikTok, trending filters and sounds can change within a matter of days, so it is vital to hop on this trend in a way that benefits your business as soon as possible. These same trending sounds and filters are also often seen repurposed on Instagram reels. 

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that can be consumed at any point in time, and it would still be relevant to the user. Instagram reels are an excellent home for evergreen content as they can be used for informative content. This will help keep your engagement up for a longer time period over trending topical content.  

The Right Social Channels

TikTok  

TikTok videos are trendy and short. They are often best for B2C businesses and to promote products such as clothing, home products etc. User-generated content thrives on this platform. 

LinkedIn 

Posting video content on LinkedIn is ideal for B2B businesses and is usually best for targeting companies over individuals. 

Instagram/Facebook 

Instagram videos are often best for B2C businesses with videos being uploaded in reels rather than on standard posts. Instagram and Facebook platforms can be linked and post the same content to both platforms. 

YouTube 

YouTube videos can be used by B2B and B2C businesses as the users on the platform vary. YouTube is known for long-form content which can often be informative.  

Twitter 

Video is not commonly used on Twitter but due to its short character limit for tweets, it can be an ideal way to show your message. Since video is not used much on this platform, it would be recommended to use the other platforms for your video content. 

So, Should You Use Video in Your Marketing Strategy?

 Absolutely!  

Video marketing is an extremely effective way to communicate with your audience and grow your brand. If you haven’t been using video marketing yet, why haven’t you? It is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies out there. Once you have your engaging video content, you can repurpose it for any online and offline platform with the power of video editing. 

What are you waiting for? Get in touch today to find out how CREATIVE in TiME can elevate your marketing strategy with video marketing.