Every business wants to establish their digital marketing presence. Regardless of the size, location and type of business, businesses are actively and inactively promoting using the digital means, via social media, their own website, or through blogs.
And once these businesses discover the means to measure their efforts – successful or not, they sure would want to discover ways to improve their efforts and actively engage in the digital marketing world. But, it takes more knowledge than knowing what metrics to use because your business should have its own standards and way to measure your digital marketing efforts’ success.
Step 1: Know your Business Objectives
Why would you want to spend time on digital marketing efforts?
This should be your first question. If your brick and mortar business is doing well and if you’re above the line marketing efforts are working well, why would you want to be here? If your answer to any of the following is, “Yes”, then you are on the right track:
a. Lead generation
b. Brand awareness
c. Business expansion or transition (brick and mortar to click and order or brick and mortar + click and order)
d. Customer service platform
Where do I want to be?
Basically, any business can use any type of digital marketing platform they prefer but each platform has its strengths and weaknesses. Check out which one works best for you:
1. Social media
If you want to increase brand awareness, then social media is your business’ buddy. This is where everything viral happens. If you think you have a killer and engaging content and you have plenty of time to do it, then go social!
2. Email marketing
If you want to keep your clients up to date with your business and future promotions and personalize it based on your previous transactions and encourage retention, then email marketing is the best tool for you. This time-saving and environment-friendly strategy is highly-measurable and gives you a lot of room for flexibility.
3. Internet Marketing (Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing)
If you feel like there is a high demand for your products or brand and you have established a generous amount of information to answer your online customers’ questions, then go live with a website and website content. But never, ever go live empty handed or you will lose them. You may choose between organically growing your traffic and growing it by paid search.
Answering these questions can help you get started on strategizing your campaigns and understanding the results you want to get.
Step 2: Set Targets and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your Business Objectives
This is the tricky part, most people think that whatever standard metrics are set by other companies for themselves, it should also apply to their businesses. That is not always the case. Digital marketing is a series of trial and testing to arrive at your own key performance indicators or KPIs.
Setting your targets and KPIs can actually come hand in hand with identifying your business objectives. If you have established your digital presence, check out your social media first. Are you happy with the number of engagements your posts are getting?
How many Likes, Comments and Shares are there? Are their interactions that would likely translate to business? Where is your audience from? What can you offer them in the future?
If you have a website, which pages did they visit? How many clicked after they reached the Home Page? Did you get email sign-ups? How may be checked your website from their mobile device? What effects did these searches give your website in terms of ranking?
What is your conversion rate? These are the statistics you may want to improve on, making sure that every visit on your website will eventually lead them to sign-up to your mailing list, subscribing to your social platforms, reading the rest of your content and ends up with a purchase.
Clearly, knowing your numbers should challenge you to improve your numbers and setting a benchmark for your brand.
Step 3: Know your Target Audience
If you are a fashion brand for kids, who is your target segment? Which platforms are they likely present? This is your brand’s key to success in digital marketing. A fashion brand cannot reach a segment of teenagers, nor young professionals.
Your target is the segment a. women age 25-60, b. located within 20 kilometres from your store or broader if you have a delivery service and c. note that they normally have access to the internet, social media, emails – lunch break and after dinner. Knowing your target audience helps you devise campaigns they would be interested in and in which platforms you can best reach them.
Step 4: Choose an Analytics Tool or Platform and Set Periodic Evaluation
Knowing your analytics means being hands-on and active in your digital marketing efforts. But the level of understanding of these numbers depends on how simple or complex your digital analytics tool is.
Choosing the most user-friendly ones like Google Analytics for your website, HootSuite or SocialPilot for your social media accounts and MailChimp for your email marketing, are basic, free, yet helpful tools that will help any business owner get started.
It is also important to set an evaluation period for your digital marketing campaigns. Since you decide on consistently make content available to your audience, reviewing your analytics on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis can help you strategize your future steps.
Step 5: Implement Improvements Based on Your Assessments
Analytics and data are useless if these will not be put to use for improvement of your digital marketing processes. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses for various campaigns can help you decide which ones to pursue and which ones to try some other time.
If your data says that most of your website traffic comes from your social media, then your website must be optimized, content must be relevant and interesting and it must have means to let them opt-in for other promotions like email marketing. It will definitely create a domino effect on the rest of your digital marketing efforts.
Summary
Whether you’re a start-up or established business, the same rules apply. Clearly understanding your objectives, setting your targets, knowing your audience, interpreting your data and improving on it are vital for your digital marketing success. And make it a habit to “always begin with the end in mind”.
Author:
Usman Raza is a freelance writer, marketing specialist at Crawford and O’Brien and co-founder of Usman Digital Media. When not working, he’s probably spending time with his family. Follow him on Facebook @usmanraza40 and Twitter @usmanintrotech.