How to create your digital marketing strategy
If you are a small business owner and you want to talk to more warm leads who already know, like and trust you, influence, convert them to clients and start a relationship, it’s time to initiate your digital marketing strategy.
Why is your Digital Marketing Strategy important?
Before the internet the old rule of thumb was: 7 steps to “Yes”.
So “back in the day” sales teams spent hours and hours on the phone, cold calling people who had very little interest in buying anything, to achieve their 7 points of contact.
Now, according to Jay Conrad Levinson, with the vast increase in the information that is available, you will need 21 touches to get to yes.
This means you need to communicate considerably more, and making all these cold calls is highly impractical and to be honest, utterly soul destroying. So the power of digital media is essential to save you time and wasted effort by warming up your leads before you talk to them.
That’s why you will want to create your own digital marketing strategy.
This is more than a few random pictures of cats, dogs or your aunty Ethel on Facebook.
Your strategy needs to be systematically thought through, step – by – step.
Here’s How!
Create Your Digital Marketing Strategy…
Step 1 : Create An Inventory Of Your Marketing Assets.
What content have you already created?
Make a list of your:
Videos
Photographs
Audios
Articles
Interviews
Blog Posts
Landing Pages
Email Campaigns
Check what you already have on your phone, on your web site, in your CRM, on your social media platforms. These are your marketing assets.
If you haven’t created any assets yet, no problem, we can help you.
Step 2 : Create Your Content Plan
You can use your marketing assets as information to help your clients get to know, like and trust you and help them make a good decision.
Now, you need to organize your content to make it easy to digest, and take your reader through a step-by-step process to engage his or her interest, and identify what he or she is interested in.
You will need to look out for what is missing and what extra marketing assets you need to create.
I generally work on a 90 day plan and test sequencing text, video and audio content and measure which content engages most viewers.
This can be very surprising as what one would expect intuitively is often not borne out by experience.
For example, one client in the relationships space had a 30% to 40% higher click through rate to a blog than to an audio recording.
Step 3 : Create Your Avatar
Next step is to “Find Your Gillian”, or create an “avatar” which is a bit like an imaginary customer. If you already have customers, pick your best ones and imagine a single person with all their best qualities.
Answer these questions, write 3,4 or 5 paragraphs and be as
specific as you can, the more detail the better …
What is your ideal customer called ?
How old are they ?
Are they male or female ? Does he or she have children? Does he or she have pets?
What are their interests, hobbies and passions ? What bands or style of music do they like? What car do they drive? Where do they live? Where do they go on holiday?
What are their needs, hopes and desires ?
Here’s one I prepared earlier:
Bob Smith is in his early 40’s and lives in Brighton. He is married with three children and runs a successful business. His passion is ecology and he has a burning desire to make a difference and do something positive for the planet. He likes Coldplay. He drives a Nissan Qashqai. He goes on holiday in the New Forest or to the Lake District.
He wants to plan his current business so that it is sustainable and will enable him to focus on his vision.
He needs someone who knows how to run a growing business, create more structure and build a strong team. He wants somebody that has already done it to hold his hand and show him what to do, build a plan, mentor and strategise with him, come up with ideas from a different perspective and implement his marketing strategies, collaboratively.
You can verify your conclusions by checking the Facebook or Linkedin profile of one of a few of your clients!
Step 4 : Drill Down Into Your Avatar
Now, it’s time to dig down deeper into your avatar, until you have enough information to discover where they hang out and what their motivations and objections are.
Here are the questions I recommend you answer:
What are your avatar’s goals?
What are your avatar’s values?
What are your avatar’s challenges and pain points?
What are your avatar’s trigger points to reach out for help?
What are your avatar’s sources of information?
What are your avatar’s objections?
Now, you’re ready to…
Step 5 : Define Your Problem – Solution Path and Create Your Detailed Plan
Now you can plan and construct your message, tell your story, get it out there using various media, including face-to-face, networking, web site, blog, You Tube channel, Linked-in blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
You can often re-purpose and re-use your content in different contexts.
Finally, if you’ve done the ground work, you will be able to answer these key questions:
What problem do you solve?
What solution do you provide?
I recommend a weekly content plan, such as:
Week 1 – Video
Week 2 – Blog
Week 3 – Audio
Week 4 – Video
Now, all that remains is to setup your email campaign in your CRM/marketing automation with trackable links to each of your marketing assets, in sequence.
I tend to test to see what results I am getting after the first month, and adjust the plan according to how the list/market responds.
Want to create your digital marketing strategy…
Graham
Chief Creator, Digital Freelance
Small Business Marketing With Guaranteed Results
