Entrepreneurs know that they can make a big impact early on when they’re prepping their digital marketing strategies, but where should they start? From creating consumer personas to putting a focus on great writing everywhere from social media posts to guest articles, here’s a look at everything to cover on your starter guide for digital marketing.
Build your buyer personas
Who are your customers and why are you marketing to these individuals specifically? If you don’t know, it’s time to find out by creating buyer personas.
Utilize internal research that you already have about your customer base in order to build examples of buyer personas; both existing as well as future buyers that may be interested in what your business has to offer. When putting together your persona template, consider focusing on key demographics including age, location, profession and work-related goals and priorities, income levels, challenges that they are currently facing (and how your product or service can assist them), as well as what they like about your products or services.
Related: Tips for Constructing Your Digital Marketing Plan in 2018
Get serious about content creation
This is much more in-depth than creating a blog for your company site and writing the occasional post. You’ll need to position your brand as an expert within its industry and establish a content creation strategy. Your content should answer questions that your customers may have and provide them with useful, valuable information from an authentic brand voice, including a call to action. Blogging can help increase your search engine ranking, which in turn, drives traffic to your website.
However, content creation doesn’t begin and end with blogging alone. Consider all of the other ways that content can amp up your site’s conversion points.
You may want to create popups that encourage newsletter signups, design an infographic, write an eBook, host a webinar, or film a video. You can then share on your site and through promotional channels, like your social media platforms, in order to convert readers or site visitors into leads that will invest in your offerings. Conduct audits on a regular basis to ensure that you’re doing more of what works for your business, and at the same time, scaling back on any content initiatives that aren’t providing a significant return on investment.
Pay attention to your SEO efforts
Now that you’re in the process of revitalizing your content creation, it’s time to take a closer look at your overall site content using search engine optimization. Update your SEO regularly in order to reach your desired audience.
Make sure that your site is still using relevant keywords, and be sure that other websites backlinking to your site are credible. It’s also important to make sure your site is optimized for mobile use, and your pages use proper grammar, spelling and do not contain broken links.
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Have a thorough understanding of owned, earned and paid media
Not sure what any of these terms mean? Here’s a quick cheat sheet to all three.
- Owned media is essentially everything you already have and fully control, like your website, blog, and social media platforms.
- Earned media is the exposure your company receives elsewhere including press hits, reviews on sites like Yelp, posts written by influential bloggers, or social media shout outs.
- Paid media is where you wind up spending money in order to attract the attention of your target audience. A few places may include Facebook Advertising (or paid social media posts on any platform) and Google AdWords.
Now that you understand what these terms mean, you need to conduct an audit within your digital marketing strategy to see if these efforts have provided solid a return on investment back to your business. Much like the audits conducted on your content creation strategies, these will help determine what type of media has allowed you to best reach your goals. You may scale back on one or another, as necessary, in order to continue keep on the right track.
