Trying to execute a digital marketing plan without a strategy is like driving blindfolded, hoping to reach your destination.
Developing a well-planned strategy before executing a campaign helps align your efforts, reduce the risk of wasted resources and stay consistent.
What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
It’s a game plan that explains how you’ll achieve your business goals by outlining tactical implementation. A digital marketing strategy should include the “what” and the “why” of your marketing plan. Conversely, execution is the “how” and must define the tactics you'll use to implement your strategy.
Benefits of Leading with Strategy
Aligned marketing efforts: Ensuring everyone understands their role and why it's important supports cohesion. Whether you’re generating website content or writing ad copy, you’re less likely to produce conflicting messaging that could disrupt the buyer journey.
Defined audience: Having a clear understanding of who you’re trying to reach allows you to cater your content to that audience's unique needs and pain points. Without a digital marketing strategy, you could waste time and money reaching out to people who don't want what you're selling.
Optimized channels: A digital marketing strategy should factor in user research and past performance data, so you can decide which types of content and channels will deliver the best results.
Clear tactics: A strategy helps you identify which actions will help you reach your business goals. Defining intentional, specific tactics allows you to avoid wasting resources and optimize your budget.
The Risks of Execution Without Strategy
Cohesion is essential when it comes to building brand recognition. Failing to align your brand tone with your goals and audience can generate mixed signals that confuse customers. That makes it more difficult to establish yourself as an industry or thought leader.
Jumping headfirst into execution also makes it tougher to track key performance indicators, especially if you don’t take time to set them.
What to Include in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Goals: Each goal should be linked to a business goal and outline what you hope to achieve. For example, increasing revenue 15% year-over-year by implementing targeted social media campaigns and email blasts.
Target audience: Create a buyer persona of the ideal customer, including their age, gender, location, interests and buying behaviors. That information forces you to consider specific audience members when creating content and then publish it to the channels most likely to appeal to those people.
Channels: Decide where you want to deliver your messaging based on your target audience’s preferences. Not every platform is suitable for all campaigns and content, so focusing your efforts on where they’ll be most impactful will give you the best bang for your buck.
Messaging: Maintain consistent brand tone when creating digital content. That prevents your campaigns from becoming disjointed, especially if you’re working with multiple channels.
Key performance indicators (KPI): Establishing benchmarks is essential when monitoring the effectiveness of your strategy. Examples of KPIs include ad clicks, conversion rates, cost per acquisition, website traffic and email open rates.
Timeline: Create a schedule to outline the execution and duration of each part of your campaign. That promotes timely content delivery and consistency in tracking and reporting.
Turn Strategies into Effective Results at MadAveGroup
The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving. Working with industry experts to create a custom strategy can help you define and achieve your business goals.
As an agency of MadAveGroup, TouchStone Digital provides digital marketing services based on your needs so you can establish yourself in your industry. Learn more about our services and contact us to schedule a consultation.
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