Running a business in the 21^st century is quite difficult and demanding. Why? Simply because we’re experiencing the “entrepreneurship era”, a time in which every person who owns a PC and has access to an internet connection can become successful.

The internet is providing unlimited opportunities, mainly because it is full of educational information and business advice. Of course, out of all the people that try to succeed in business, extremely few are pulling it through. 

The competition is high, and the marketing standards are constantly growing. If you’re about to start promoting your business in the digital environment, you’ll need to focus on developing a truly effective online marketing strategy. 

There are so many guides, tips, and tricks out there, that you may find it truly difficult to choose what’s best for you. 

For that reason, in today’s post, I’m offering you 8 insightful tips on how to design an effective online marketing strategy that will take your unique business to the top of the ladder. Make sure that you pay close attention and do your very best to implement what you’re about to learn today.

Define Your Campaign’s Objectives

The first and most important part of your digital marketing strategy is planning. Start by defining your online marketing objectives, just like you’ve defined your business goals.

What do you want to achieve?

When do you want to achieve it?

How are you going to achieve it?

In digital marketing, there are several main objectives that you can set:

Position your brand in the niche marketplace (why are you unique?)

Improve your brand’s awareness (let them know that you exist)

Acquire leads (emails, phones, etc.)

Improve social media presence (more traffic and brand recognition)

Make sales (profit)

To be successful in digital marketing, you’ll need to work on all of these objectives. However, you must prioritize them and take them step-by-step.

When you create an objective, make sure that you’re specific: “I will acquire 500 email subscribers and 1000 social media followers by the end of October, using this and that strategy”

Study & Understand Your Future Customer Base

Who are you targeting? What are your ideal future customer’s characteristics? Where will you find them online?

Developing your target audience (future customer base) is one of the first steps you must take in order to set the foundation of a successful online marketing campaign. 

Gather your team and start a brainstorming session. Focus to define the following aspects:

The gender of your audience

The average age of your customers

Their location

Their occupation and the average level of income

Their needs and desires

The most preferred social media networks and other places where they spend time online

Their beliefs and principles 

Their biggest problems, challenges, and setbacks

That is the first process. The second process involves surveys. Start leveraging survey networks or survey tools (if you already have an audience that can be surveyed) and acquire objective answers. 

Compile the subjective with the objective and you’ll immediately have a great understanding of your target audience. If your future customer base is made of many types of people, create more “target personas”. 

Analyze Your Direct Competition

Pay close attention to your competitors. If they’re successful, it means that some of their strategies can be copied and then improved. Use competitor analysis tools and pay attention to the following aspects:

Their target audience

Their blog and social media content

Their email marketing strategy (sign-up to their list)

The sales process they use to convert prospects into buyers (become one of their buyers)

The way they handle complaints and returns

Their SEO strategy (use SEO competitor analysis tools)

Their brand’s mentions and backlinking strategies

Study your competitors until you figure out their biggest PROs and CONs. Learn from each of them and use the data you gather to improve your own digital marketing campaigns.

Create a Content Marketing Plan

Content is absolutely necessary for every type of online marketing campaign. There are many types of content and a lot of distribution channels that you can choose to focus on.

Depending on your target audience, establish priorities. First of all, where do your future customers spend most of their time? Social media? Forums? News sites? Certain mobile apps?

Then…what content do they consume? Do they prefer text? Videos? Graphics? Podcasts?

What can you create? Are you a great writer? A good video developer? What are your content development resources?

What about copywriting? Are you able to craft professional sales copies that will make your products and services look great? 

Mainly, you need to figure out what your target audience wants, where they want it, and how they want it. Then, you must do your best to create high-quality content that will capture their attention. I’d highly suggest you outsource professional content writing services in case you or your team do not have experiences with content development.

Back when I first started, I used to leverage an that provided me with excellent writers that did an amazing job:

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Indeed, these are mainly academic writers that are barely making any mistakes, and they can also handle numerous topics and requirements.

Develop an Email Marketing Strategy

Developing an email list is probably the best long-term investment that modern businesses can make. Online traffic comes and goes. If you pay $100 on paid ads and all of those people leave your website without making a single purchase, you’ve just lost $100.

However, if you own an email list, maybe 20% of those random visitors will become your email subscribers (leads).

Leads are extremely important to any business because they represent undecided customers. If they’ve subscribed, it means they need just a little more pushing before they decide to buy from you.

You should focus on developing an email marketing strategy as soon as possible. This is the tactic that every successful business uses to “warm-up” their prospective customers. Throughout your email campaigns, you should send free and often exclusive information that will make your leads trust you and value your involvement. 

Build a Strong Social Presence

A contemporary business can hardly thrive without a social presence. If an employee applies to a job without providing a CV, he’ll immediately get rejected, same as a business will not be able to establish its position in the marketplace without a social media presence.

Start by defining the most relevant channels for your online strategy. Where does your target audience spend its time? If you target young individuals, Instagram and Facebook are great choices. If your audience is made of professional B2B businesses, LinkedIn is the way to go.

Create a social media posting plan. You need to post content consistently. Create a combination between your own content and curated content. Make sure you only post relevant things, otherwise you risk your brand’s reputation.

Leverage Digital Marketing Tools

You can skyrocket the productivity and results of your online marketing strategy by leveraging various digital tools. Paid or free, it doesn’t matter. Don’t be afraid to invest, as most of these tools will bring really specific solutions that will save your time, attention, and money.

Here’s a comprehensive list of digital marketing tools. Check them out and see which one resonates with your online marketing needs.

Establish Your KPIs and Gather Data

As you start taking action, you need to figure out the key performance metrics (KPIs) that must be tracked in order to realize whether your digital marketing campaign is going in the right direction. Some of the main KPIs that you’ll need to pay attention to are:

CTR (click-through-rate)

CPC (cost-per-click)

Email open rates and Email CTR

Acquired leads per month

Conversion rate (how many random visitors turn into leads and how many prospects turn into customers)

ROI (return on investment)

CAC (customer acquisition cost)

CLV (customer lifetime value)

Of course, you won’t have to track all of these KPIs at once. However, you do need to figure out what you want to constantly analyze and measure in order to keep your campaigns on track. Once again, I’d highly advise you to leverage digital marketing analytics tools in order to be able to acquire all this important data.

Final Words

Running a successful digital marketing campaign is 20% about knowledge and 80% about action. Start taking small steps and begin implementing the tips and tricks that you’ve just digested. 

Start by planning out your future actions. Begin with your campaign’s objectives and continue with your target audience selection. Study your competition, develop a content marketing plan that resonates with your brands’ value proposition and your audience’s preferences and build that social presence!

Leverage influencers, share valuable information on forums, use the best digital marketing tools for your business, and gather the necessary data. Analyze, measure, and optimize your digital marketing campaign and never stop learning and acting. Remember: digital marketing success is a journey, not a result!

Author Bio:

Sharon is a marketing specialist and resume writer in uk dissertation She loves to share her ideas and knowledge about marketing, writing and blogging with her followers through her blog. Currently, she is working as a marketer at assignment writing service and grade miners review, and offer an and essay help.