For first-time business owners, it's only natural to focus on finding your first customers. It's one of your main goals, after all. But doing this takes perseverance, patience, and a ton of your resources. So, to make it all worth your while, you need to master digital marketing. Here's how to start your journey:
Understand What Digital Marketing Is
Commonly known as online marketing, digital marketing is the advertising and promoting of a brand using the internet and many other digital channels. These include web-based advertising, social media, text messaging, email, search engines, and many others. Digital marketing will help your business increase website traffic, build brand awareness, and generate leads.
Set SMART Goals
You need to set clear goals and objectives for your digital marketing journey. They can help you in many ways. Below are a few:
- It measures your success: setting goals will help you measure your success (or lack thereof) to determine if you're reaching them or if you need to make changes.
- It achieves business goals: achieving your marketing goals equals achieving your business goals.
- It helps with resource allocation: setting clear goals lets you allocate resources in your marketing strategies where it is most productive.
The best way to set your goals is through a method known as SMART. It is the acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused, and Timebound. Here are brief explanations of these:
- Specific: you need to focus on one metric, such as boosting website traffic, increasing sales, or building brand awareness.
- Measurable: this is your method of measuring your published content against this metric.
- Achievable: make sure to set goals that are achievable in a set timeframe with the resources you have.
- Relevant: your marketing goals should align with your business goals and objectives.
- Timebound: you need to set a deadline for your goal.
Know Your Target Audience
Ask any seasoned entrepreneur, and they'll tell you that knowing who your audience is is one of the most crucial tasks you need to do before starting with your digital marketing. This is what will set the direction of your marketing efforts, the type of content to publish, what platforms are the best to use, and many other factors.
To find your target audience, consider the following factors:
- Demographics: their age, location, gender
- Psychographics: values, interests, pain points
- Buying behaviors: habits, consumption tendencies
Here are a few ways to find them:
- Conduct market research
- Research your competition
- Identify product benefits
- Identify target market
- Segment your target market
- Use Google Analytics
Build a Strong Online Presence
To have an impactful online presence, you must do the following:
- Develop a user-friendly website: ensure that your website is easy to navigate and appealing.
- Use SEO best practices: optimize your website to rank it high on search engines.
- Establish your brand's presence on social media: use social media platforms where your audience stays longer and make yourself known there.
Craft High-Quality Content
The saying "Content is King" still rings true today. This means you need to craft content and add it to your website and all your online presence. You can do so via blogs, social media, and others. Create a content calendar to ensure that you post content regularly.
Make sure you create content that adds value to your readers. Otherwise, these will only go to waste. You may employ the best SEO practices, but if your content lacks value and quality, your efforts will not be worth much.
Leverage the Power of Social Media
Social media is where many of your target audience go, making it a powerful stage for broadcasting your brand. Once you identify your audience, you'll know which social media platforms to use. You don't need to use every platform, as this can waste your time and resources.
To effectively use social media, you can do the following:
- Use branded hashtags
- Create keywords and phrases that have your brand name in them
- Partner with influencers
- Run contests, surveys, or polls
- Advertise on social media
- Post relevant content regularly
- Engage with fans and followers
- Reply to negative feedback
Don't Forget Email Marketing
Many believe that email marketing is dead with the advent of social media and the many communication forms available. On the contrary, email marketing is probably stronger than ever. You need to leverage its power now.
Build a database of your customers' emails, craft compelling email campaigns, and send them newsletters that provide value. Give them updates, greetings, and discounts to engage and get their attention.
Measure and Analyze Your Performance
KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are vital to digital marketing. These measurable metrics will help you gauge your marketing campaigns and strategies effectiveness. Knowing your brand's KPIs will help you set goals, devise and adjust strategies, evaluate performance, and determine ROI. Below is a list of KPI examples:
- Customer lifetime value
- Cost per lead
- Conversion rates
- Organic traffic
- Customer retention
- Social media engagement
- Sales revenue
- Bounce rates
Once you understand your brand's KPIs, you'll be able to pinpoint what campaigns work and what needs improvement. You can then adjust, edit, or delete strategies that aren't worth your efforts. This will also tell you when and what to experiment on and open opportunities to explore new strategies.
Stay Updated
Always be on the lookout for industry updates and trends. Follow thought leaders, marketing gurus, or the news to get the latest. The marketing landscape is ever-evolving, if you don't stay updated, you may be left behind.
This means to remain competitive, you always need to improve your strategies. Find ways to get better even if you're enjoying success with your campaigns. Digital marketing is an iterative process, and you need to work continuously to improve if you want long-term success for your business.
Wrapping Up
For new business owners, knowing how to start developing their digital marketing strategies is a necessity. Delegating them will help you, but you still need to be aware to ensure that what strategies you have are working and taking your business to new heights.
