10 Reasons Why You need a Digital Marketing Strategy in 2024
1. You are not sure where to start
The digital world may appear daunting at times, and the overload of information, platforms, tips, and channels may create confusion, especially where digital marketing is concerned. What should a business consider when looking to position, create awareness, or promote their business online?
Without a plan of action or a strategy to move forward, this can be an overwhelming task.
Some businesses are choosing to go down Social media channels – and may end up paying considerable amounts on advertising spending, which may or may not yield results. Some businesses may consider selling on platforms like eBay, Etsy, or Amazon however these platforms may not be right for someone providing legal, accounting, or health services for example.
A good strategy can help you understand your buyer and marketplace – and can also look at channels (social media, eBay, etc) to sell your products or services.
2. Everyone’s opinion does not make a good strategy
A common practice in a business is that many stakeholders have thought about what they think will work in promoting a business or product/service. Although this can be a good thing in some cases it may not translate well across the digital arena. Why is this?
Firstly, it may well be the case that not all the stakeholders within the business are digital experts, or marketing experts or have limited experience in this area. Some of the opinions of stakeholders may be pure guesswork. Another might be replication – for example, A. ACCOUNTS did well on social media, so why don’t we do it?!. It may even be the case that some of the stakeholders are not that well versed in the digital landscape, and may not be across social media, shop online, or just generally surf the internet. Some stakeholders may not be interested in or have experience with digital technology such as mobiles, iPads, or even computers. However, they will still have an input in the overall business strategy. So, the Digital Strategy cocktail is born.
In our experience of working with a variety of companies, some have strategies in place others do not. We found that of those that did have a strategy in place – oftentimes they would not fully understand what they need within the strategy, and would include social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, and not have inclusion for a fundamental such as SEO, or the optimisation of their website. We found that unless they had an in-house marketing team – even then, there was no clear strategic goal, as to what they ultimately wanted to achieve. Usually, it was quite simple that they need to be online.
3. Watch out for the competition
It is essential to dedicate a reasonable resource to your digital marketing efforts to ensure that it is consistent so that momentum can be built. Carrying out digital marketing activities here or there is not enough especially if you take into consideration that your competitors may well be investing ongoing funds into their digital marketing efforts to keep their business visible and on the top pages of search engine results.
4. Authority and Trust
Consumers want a brand that they can trust and rely on. Remember back in the day, when our parents or grandparents, were off to buy a new thing, they would ask around to see if anyone has purchased it before – if they had – where was the shop? are they trustworthy? so on and so forth.
That still exists today in the online world – the only difference is that instead of asking the neighbors, family, and friends, you now have many businesses listing on Google Busines, or Yell – where customers can freely write about their experience of the brand or the product. Nowadays many consumers research online to find out more about a brand, credibility, products/services, value for money, and customer service.
That is only part of the puzzle that is building ‘trust and authority – you still need to consider SEO, and Payment gateways if you sell goods online to name a few.
5. Consistency is Key
Your brand and brand voice need to send the same message. What is that message?
Golden rule – if you are taking information with no hard sales approach to position your product offering, then you need to ensure that it follows through across your entire online initiative – including Website, Social, Blogs, Adverts, and more.
It is important that any updates made to any content, or new content published has your business voice and tone. If you have several stakeholders within a business updating content as they wish, without looking at the whole – this can paint a confusing picture of the brand and products or services.
6. Keep Moving
Marketing is changing and evolving. A trend that works today is replaced tomorrow. The beauty of online marketing is that you can try different approaches, campaigns, and channels, without incurring the costs of billboard or television advertising. Fundamentally marketing is about making noise.
Have you ever been down to an east-end market in London? An excellent example of marketing – the stall holders are often heard shouting out nice juicy lines to entice a punter. You may hear “nice juicy apples, a pound for a pound”. This is genius – the stall holder keeps the punters in the know about their stall and what it is offering. The stall holder will often change up the call “get your ripe bananas” and so on and so forth.
Just like that stall holder a business needs to continue to make noise about their business. Also just like the stall holder you need to change it up – if one approach is not working, then you need to try something else. That is where a good strategy can help.
7. Established or Unestablished
Another thing to remember is that you may have an established business in the physical world – however, if you have never had a website before, and you decide to create your first one. Then you will be effectively starting out from scratch in the online world. There is a number of things that need to be taken into consideration when you look to establish your online presence – from SEO, brand, target market, channels to create awareness, and more.
For those that have established businesses online – but are not seeing the results that they are looking for, it might be worth creating a strategy to see where you are currently positioned and how that positioning can be improved or if a complete digital transformation is required.
8. Content
Content Marketing should form part of a good digital marketing strategy. The reason that it is important is that the content will be used to engage the target market. Content on its own is not enough, this will still need to be presented to your target audience, and this could be through social media, blogs, SEO, PPC, or email marketing.
The content is your opportunity to talk about your services and how they are beneficial to your target buyer. In the instance of FMCG – price points will be competitive. Maybe you could offer 2-1 deals or discounts. For services, you could talk about the quality aspect that your service provides, or perhaps your industry knowledge and expertise.
9. Lead capture
The thing about traffic is that sometimes it just drives through. That does not mean that it won’t come your way again. I do not know about you – but I like to shop around and see where I can get the best deal, that obviously depends on what I am buying. Where do I resonate most? Does the seller look trustworthy? I like to think other buyers are doing the same thing.
But before they leave maybe you can entice them with an incentive to sign up for your newsletter. You may not have captured their interest this time around – however, you might be able to win them over with some type of promotional deal or maybe just remind them of your brand again.
I know that many times I have intended to buy something online – however, to be interrupted by some other thing, and then go back to a few days later or weeks dependent on how urgent the purchase is. By that time, I may have forgotten which website I visited, so decide to search again and end up at very different seller sites.
10. SEO
It surprises me how undervalued SEO (Search Engine optimization) is when discussing digital marketing with clients. Often clients are after immediate results – which by the way is impossible to predict, based purely on the emotive, and free will nature of human beings.
SEO is a long game and in my opinion a good game. Why?
You know when you go and search for things in search engines, and you see a list of results and then you click on things that look good on the first few pages before you try searching with some other keywords? Well to appear in the search listing for competitive keywords takes SEO.
SEO is an ongoing process, that can take anywhere between a few months to a year or more to show results. However the investment is definitely worthwhile as to be able to rank over time and start appearing higher in search results is potentially an untapped source of traffic, that irrespective of the number of searches a potential customer carries out – and irrespective of the number of times your URL is clicked. You will not be charged on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis like paid adverts or pay per impression basis. The only investment is the ongoing monthly fee to keep ongoing SEO efforts in the background. This is considered more cost-effective in the long run compared to paid adverts that can easily cost £2-£3 per click and can quickly rack up.
