Building Your Digital Marketing Strategy: Beginner’s Tips & Main Channels

If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy, this is the process will help you in building a digital marketing strategy that works.

Building Your Digital Marketing Strategy: Beginner’s Tips & Main Channels

Digital marketing is the key to any business’s success. Building a digital marketing strategy is essential, but not always a clear path so keep reading.

Digital marketing is the force that pushes your business or personal brand forward. No matter if you are promoting yourself as an expert in a certain professional area, are selling something to the end consumers, or even advancing technology development in the B2B sphere, digital marketing is the key to success.

Of course, different digital marketing goals call for different digital marketing tools and strategies. Below, we will briefly discuss how you can get started, highlighting the most functional digital marketing trends and strategies that work.

Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy: First Steps

Before we even start listing digital marketing statistics and channels, let’s see how you can launch your own strategy. This process calls for some prep work and serious brainstorming. Sometimes, hiring a qualified digital marketing analyst is the safest choice. Still, even if you are going to delegate this important task to someone else, you should be aware of the main milestones in any digital marketing plan. To define the best strategy that works for your business, you will need to:

  • Define your selling points: the first thing to consider is your unique value proposition. Of course, very few products and services are 100% unique, but you will need some selling points to compete. Those could be higher quality, lower price, convenience, emphasis on innovation or ecology, etc.
  • Define your target audience: when you know what makes your product or service special, it will not be difficult to figure out what kind of people will find it as useful as you. So, the next point on your digital to-do list is to define your potential clients. Focus on every little detail, from age and gender to geolocation and lifestyle habits. You need to really know who your buyers are if you want to sell anything.
  • Set short- and long-term goals: no one can achieve anything overnight, so set realistic marketing goals. One of the best digital marketing strategies here is a S.M.A.R.T approach, meaning that all your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
  • Set marketing budget: now that you have set your digital goals, it is time to set an equally realistic budget. Just for reference, the latest digital marketing news shows that most businesses spend $2500-12,000 a month on marketing efforts. Of course, smaller companies and personal brands can start with smaller figures. 
  • Pick marketing channels: there are seven essential digital marketing tools, discussed in more detail in the following section.

Essential Digital Marketing Tools and Channels

Now that you have some general idea of the type of strategy you need, it is time to pick the right digital marketing services for your end goals. Often (especially when you are just getting started), you will not need all seven of the following tools. However, the right combination of digital channels listed below usually translates to the success of any business.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

When it comes to types of digital marketing, SEO is the king. Any business and personal brand can profit from a professional website, and this professional website can benefit from SEO. The higher your website ranking in the search result is, the better. After all, less than 10% of people get past the first search page of their browsers. And, around 30% of web users click on the first webpage result they see.

PPC: Pay Per Click

Important as SEO is, no website can quickly reach the first search page. Optimizing your website for the search engines takes time, effort, and money. PPC is a quicker and more affordable alternative. You can set up your digital ad camping and pay for every click on the ads, which ultimately gets visitors to your website. This approach only sounds expensive; in practice, PPC rates are usually affordable, and this digital marketing strategy quickly translates into measurable results.

Content Marketing

Content is another strong tool in any digital marketer’s arsenal. Content marketing can be used to promote your website. For example, if your website has a blog, quality content is a great tool to promote the entire website and get more traffic. Also, you can publish blog posts on other websites and include backlinks to your own site. Like SEO, digital content marketing takes tremendous amounts of time, effort, and — often, money (if you hire professional writers to create this content). Still, this type of effort almost always pays off.

Email Marketing

Email marketing may not work for everyone, but it is still vital in any business promotion. It can inform your existing and potential customers of any new and lucrative offers, promote discounts to regular customers, or include material on the best ways to use your product or service. Some believe that digital email marketing is counter-productive, but in practice, this is an effective and reasonably affordable type of digital marketing. According to some estimates, a polished-up email marketing strategy generates $44 ROI for every dollar spent.

SMM: Social Media Marketing

Practically everyone is on social media today, so choosing the right digital media marketing channel is crucial. Here, it is important to understand that you do not need to cover the entire vastness of social media — you only need to pick platforms where your target buyers are most active.

Facebook may seem an obviously universal choice for everyone. However, this universality makes it less cost-effective — there are too many people, and advertising to them gets ever more expensive. No doubt, you should still invest in FB campaigns, but your ROI will be higher with more narrow platforms. For example, when targeting women, Pinterest is the best choice.

Voice SEO

Voice search is a relatively new tech and an unexplored digital marketing ground for many. However, it looks like this digital marketing type is gaining momentum. According to recent marketing statistics, half of the adults use voice search with their smartphones. Half of those people are also interested in branded content. So, making sure your site is optimized for digital voice search is a must.

Video Marketing

Video is one of the most effective digital marketing tools, so if your product or service presupposes any instructional or educational videos (and most of them do), you really should consider it. Creating quality videos takes time, but once they are online, they are endless sources of traffic. The cherry on top? Almost 90% of buyers claim that video positively affected their buying decisions.

 

We hope that this quick guide has helped you learn digital marketing basics. Of course, mastering this subject is a way more time-consuming process, but these tips should prove helpful to point you in the right direction. Feel free to comment below if you have any questions or effective digital marketing tips for beginners.