Digital Marketing Strategy

A lot of businesses claim to work on Digital Marketing Strategy, but what exactly is it and how is it different from just Marketing Strategy?

The short answer is that Digital Marketing Strategy is simply a part of your overall Strategy. If you would like to know details and see how our agency think then, please read on (you might need some time).

Digital is part of Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing strategy is part of a traditional marketing strategy development and implementation. A classic view on marketing is based on 3 Cs, STP, and 4 Ps. Decisions on digital marketing need to be made at every level of this marketing framework. Your digital budget and allocation should flow out of your overall marketing goals.

Digital Marketing is Channel Strategy

Digital strategy can be boiled down to deciding on which digital channel to invest in to reach overall company goals. It is imperative to know:

• Digital Marketing channels
• Pros and cons of each channel
• How channels integrate with each other

Choosing Digital Marketing Channel

It is tempting to jump on the latest marketing trend thinking it will bring you the competitive advantage. Before choosing your digital channel, you need to know or to be in a position to track key metrics for your business. These sets of questions is a starting point for most businesses, but every business is unique, and the list needs to be supplemented with their key performance indicators.

• Is campaign sales or branding oriented?
• Length of the campaign (short or long term)
• For Sales Oriented campaigns:
  • Lifetime value of a customer (original purchase, future purchases, and referrals)
  • Lead to customer closing ration
  • Acceptable cost per client acquisition

• For Branding Oriented campaigns:
  • Decide what metrics are important to measure the brand, typically we look at:
    • Branded Searches Traffic
    • New vs. Returning Users
    • Share of search as compared to competitor brands
  • Perform primary and secondary market research offline

Digital Marketing Channels

Email Marketing

Best Uses:

• Keep in contact with existing customers to maintain emotional availability (increases retention and lifetime value)
• Promote flash sales to targetted audience
• Convert prospects that are on a fence to customers through Email drip campaign

Challenges:

• Spam laws in US/Canada are stringent. Obtaining proper opt-in is difficult and requires existing traffic
• The frequency of emails is the key. Too few emails and campaign won’t generate results, too many and users will unsubscribe
• The best email campaigns are with a granular audience. This puts a budget strain on content creation and staff management time.

Search Engine Optimization

Best Uses:

• Reach highly motivated prospects, as a result, achieve one of the highest conversion ratios.
• Increase the reach of the campaign
• Due to volume and high conversion ratio, in a long a run results in the lowest cost per client acquisition.
• Protect market share by keeping competitors away from Search Engine Results Pages
• Protect Brand by occupying more space in Search Results for Branded Searches

Challenges:

• SEO has a delayed effect of 3-6 months. This is a long term investment with long term results. SEO is not suitable for short run campaigns.
• Due to delay effect finding the correlation between marketing and sales is more challenging.
• Factors regularly change that can influence SEO (New Search Algorithms, New Competitors, Prices for other marketing Channels)

Paid Campaigns

Best Uses:

• Immediate feedback from marketing strategy
• Flash Sales
• Maintaining market share by keeping competitors away
• Broad Reach

Challenges:

• Takes time to fine tune the campaign to be profitable
• With limited budget, campaign can be ineffective
• Myriad of options that all need to fit into the marketing mix

Owned and Operated Properties

Best Uses:

• Control your brand messaging
• Maintain emotional availability threw owned social channels

Challenges:

• Content costs
• Time intensive

These are board digital marketing channels that can be broken down into tens of sub groups. The goal of the agency is put all of the pieces together under your business and marketing goals.

Got a Digital Marketing Challenge For Us?

If you want an agency for a long term that is reliable, makes an effort to understand your business and will consistently generate results give us a call at 416-830-0464 or fill out the form