Digital Marketing Strategy

Why go Digital?

Most of us are aware of the fact that in today’s world, a vast majority of the potential customers are online. In such a scenario, it is inevitable for any business, whether small-scale, medium or large to metamorphose into the world of digital against the traditional methods of marketing.

One of the reasons why digital marketing is taking over traditional marketing channels is the ability of Internet marketing tools to interact with targeted audiences in real time. Engagement in any form is what your customers expect to receive when interacting with your brand or business.

Additionally, it is essential to keep a tab on your target customers’ behavior and keep formulating strategies to cater to the mass audience on the internet platform.

What is Digital marketing?

Digital marketing is promoting or creating brand awareness using Internet through the following mediums:

Search Engines
Websites
Social Media
Mobile Apps
Email
Inbound

What exactly is a Digital Marketing Strategy?

A digital strategy is simply put together a series of actions that you take to be visible on the digital platform, create awareness about your product/business, observe consumer/audience behavior, reach out to them and create an interest in them by triggering them to take some Call-to-Action (CTA).

In short, a digital marketing strategy can be well-understood with the following three simple points:

Digital: Under the digital platform, marketing is done through various devices that can be connected online like computer, mobile, laptop, tab etc.

Marketing: Like any conventional marketing, this includes understanding the market for your product or service, targeting the right audience, generating awareness, creating packages & offers to attract them to opt for your product.

Strategy: Although sounds like a complicated term, it is as simple as a conjunction of just two ingredients- Ideas & Goal.

All this perfect combination can make perfect business & it is imperative to say that every business needs right direction of marketing especially when it comes to Digital Marketing.

Now, let’s talk in detail about the strategies that come under Digital platform..

We make strategy for Digital marketing for almost all the industries for example, Education, Information Technology, Healthcare & Pharma, Real Estate, etc. Which means the marketing strategies may vary from an industry to industry.

There are five important factors that play vital role to make the strategy successful:

1. Customers
2. Content
3. Channels
4. Analysis
5. Implementation

Whether it is business-to-business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C), both kinds of customers are very particular about the product or service they desire.

Customers nowadays are smarter and more demanding than ever. They have higher expectations than ever before. Before taking any decision to buy or opt for your product or service, they will search all the information about it, compare it with your best competitors in the market and then decide whether to go for it or not.

Here is one good example –

Just few weeks back, one of my friends wanted to buy a headphone online… For this, he first opened Google and punched in a search term which read ‘Top 10 brands of headphone’.

From the search results, he visited sites like Amazon, Flipkart and many other websites which were displayed under the top 10 results on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) of Google. When he researched more he found that the headphones range from Rs 400 to Rs 4000 online with different features and this created more confusion.

He went to ask his friends on social media for suggestions and to further satisfy his query, he read up many articles that included user ratings and reviews.

And, finally after all the research work and gathering of positive reviews he finally selected and ordered a headphone that cost him around 1000 rupees.

The purpose of giving this long example here is to convey that this is the mentality of 90% of users who want to buy any product or service today.

Internet is a landscape of a vast pool of resources. Once any prospective customer lands up on your website, he/she can get complete information about your product/service, list of clientele, testimonials, case studies, reviews etc.

Let’s know in brief about the five vital points of a digital marketing strategy that we listed above in the article.

Customer

Targeting right customer at the right time and right place is the key. So you have to understand the small difference between Target Market & Target Customer.Defining your target is essential before you set out to chalk your digital marketing strategy.The target market includes a bunch of potential audience that can be categorized by several factors such as demographics, location, interest, or behavior. For example, the target market for your business might be people in the age group ranging from 18 to 35 or people whose interest is mostly related to lifestyle apparels & accessories.Whereas, a target customer is a more definitive and niche term that includes only those potential customers who are most likely to buy the product or service your business has to offer.Consumer behavior is the peg of any marketing plan. A thorough analysis of the trends of the consumer behavior can go a long way in creating a win-win situation.In today’s digital age where the consumer is pretty fast and smart, you need to understand that whatever your business or service may be, you cannot impose it on the consumer, you can only present it in the best competitive manner. It is, therefore rightly said that it is the consumer who is the king and it is but obvious for the marketers to act accordingly.For any industry, changing market scenario is inevitable. When we see Google trends data, we can have a better understanding of this that all 12 months of a year are not equal for any product or business.
The e-commerce industry is the best example of this as we all see there is a sharp rise in e-commerce business in India during the festival months of the year especially from October to December.

Similarly, the pre-monsoon time is a favorable one for businesses into home renovation and designing services like painting or interior designing. The same season can be a profitable one for another industry like the leakage seal waterproofing providers or pest control services.

Travel and tourism has several specific months which earn them business as not all places can be visited at all times of the year like during monsoon season.

Thus, every situation has pros and cons and it applies to the all marketing strategies as well. ‘Time’ is the most important key factor for a successful digital marketing strategy.

Content

Whenever we think of digital marketing platform, content plays a crucial role. Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts insist on having keyword rich content but more than that it is essential to curate content that speaks about your brand in the most effective manner. Like we read in our earlier example of a customer doing extensive research before buying a mobile phone online, today for every small enquiry or need we rush to the internet. To better explain this, if someone is searching for ‘Top 15 dental clinics in India’ and your dental clinic website does not have enough content relevant to the search, you will surely not be on the list and not be able to reach your target customer.

Channels

Selecting the right digital marketing channel is extremely essential to run a successful campaign. As a digital marketing agency, we always focus on understanding all digital channels well and which of them can benefit your business in the best manner.Supposedly, if someone is running a small tour and travel company with a low budget, Facebook would be the best channel since Facebook marketing can be done with a menial budget and also as we know we can target customers in less numbers as well, depending on our requirements.Since, for any business, the market is already dominated by the existing big players, it is inevitable for the new entrants to choose their digital marketing channels carefully and use them effectively.

Analysis

Digital medium has an obvious advantage over the traditional mediums of marketing and that is the ‘DATA’. But if you are not smart enough to analyse, interpret and pull insights from your data, then you are eventually failing to explore the full potential of your business.Analysis is important to know how prospective the future of your business is. After you’re done with a complete analysis of your own business, the next task to focus is on competitive analysis. Knowing your competitor’s business in and out can only give you an edge over them and that can happen when you engage in doing an end-to-end analysis.As we move further into our analysis process, we end up doing technical analysis which involves our and our competitors’ organic presence or paid presence.

Implementation

It’s crucial to understand the importance of implementing a digital marketing strategy. Implementation happens at two levels. First is when we put all the above steps i.e. understanding the client’s business or service, studying the consumer behavior, observing marketing trends, ensuring effective content, selecting right digital channel and doing an analysis of the competitors together.Second is when we have implemented all of these and we are evaluating how successful our implementation has been. Both the ways, implementation is the conclusive step to a digital marketing strategy and thus it is rightly said that idea has zero value until it is successfully implemented.Digital Marketing helps you make use of proven strategies and techniques that attract not necessarily more traffic – but highly targeted traffic that delivers results. Targeting the right kind of people that delivers the right kind of results using the right strategies is what Digital Marketing is all about – ensuring survival for your business.