Have you ever started a big project without having specific plans laid out?
On a scale of 1-10, how difficult was it for you? An 8? 9? maybe even a 10.
It’s natural to feel frustrated and to hit a lot of roadblocks when your actions are not backed up by a plan.
When you decide to begin promotions for your business without a properly laid out plan, no matter how much effort you put into it, you just might be disappointed by the end result. This is why you need a digital strategy plan.
What Is A Digital Strategy Plan?
A digital strategy plan is a carefully mapped out plan and structure which you can use to achieve specific goals for your brand and business.
It is a defined system for all of your marketing goals and the different steps to successfully implement them.
A digital strategy is, honestly, the bedrock of any successful business.
Without a successful digital strategy in place, it will be difficult for you to reach your business goal. You are able to use new and modern technology to promote your business.
It is important for every business and brand to have a digital marketing strategy in place.
Your business can experience an outstanding difference with a good digital strategy plan in a short period of time.
For a digital strategy to be carried out successfully and offer good ROI, your team must be completely invested in every part of their expertise.
You have to be consumer oriented in every way possible to carry it out well because your strategies have to resonate with your target audience or it will not yield you the results you want it to.
Now you know what a digital strategy is, lets dive into the next step, shall we?
Creating A Digital Strategy Plan In 7 Steps
The first thing you should do before beginning your digital strategy plan is having an in-depth analysis of what you want to do and hope to achieve. From the moment you create your content, you should also clearly define what you’re hoping to achieve and who exactly you’re hoping to attract in the content you create.
1. Over all In-depth Analysis
When you’re marketing, you should also develop a plan for your buyer personae. You should know their age, geographical location, gender, needs, problems and solutions to their problems.
You should know everything about your customers in general. When you are able to identify them, then you can move on to other strategies.
2. What are your consumers asking for?
What are they searching for? You do not want to create a service or product that no one really wants or one one is actively searching for one for.
This might come as a surprise to you but a lot of businesses do that. They create digital products and services that have a really small market. You have to make sure that you’re creating a product that your consumers will actually want. A product or service that when they are exposed to the content, they want to get it so bad.
So, it’s important to identify clearly what exactly they want, then curate contents and marketing plans to give them exactly that. A good way to do that is by first identifying the importance or value of what you’re giving them.
For example; Selling easy- to-detach bras will be much more valuable to nursing mothers as opposed to normal females. No doubt, it’s a great option for females who do not enjoy the pressure of a bra, but for a woman still breastfeeding her baby, it is much more valuable.
Secondly, you should identify the character traits of your customers.
What are they most likely to do?
Are they frugal when it comes to spending?
Do they want lavish products?
Do they make enough money?
All these are vital information that will help you tailor the message you send out to them.
Then lastly you should identify the platforms they are on. Where are your ideal customers? Are they on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. Where a majority of them spend their time is where you’re most likely to market to them.
It would of course be completely unwise to market your products and services on a platform where your target audience do not spend a lot of time.
If your audience is spending their time on Facebook, then you should focus on Facebook marketing. You can also market in other platforms, but the platforms that they frequent the most, should be the major one you spend your time on.
3. Build A Content plan
You have to identify how you will be delivering content to your target audience. You can deliver content through videos, audios, blog posts and even infographics.
What particular format do you hope to deliver content in?
What type of content do they like?
For example, Older people would much rather listen to an audio as opposed to reading a blog post and business men will want to scan through a blog post as quickly as they can as opposed to playing an audio or video.
You should identify your content plan and develop it.
4. What Is Your USP?
Hear me out! Having a value proposition that promises your consumers real value is a great idea but it doesn’t make you any different from similar companies and brands just like yours.
You have to find out what your Unique selling proposition is.
What makes you stand out from the rest? What is the tiny bit you’re offering them that no other person is offering them?
Offering them what everyone is already selling to them just puts you in a fiercer competition zone. You have a thousand and one other brands to contend with and your chances of generating the traffic you might like is not a lot.
When you have identified your USP, you can then proceed to move on to the next stage of your digital strategy plans.
5. Establish objectives and KPIs
What are your goals for your business? Both long and short term goals. Define them.
You should always make sure you are setting goals that are achievable so that you do not set yourself up for disappointment.
You need to know where your company or business is at the moment and how you can improve it too. You also need to know how you can come in to solve the problems of your target audience.
Always pay attention to the number of audience you want to reach out to, the number that visits your website and how your content should be.
6. Map out a Plan
This is the major and most important part of a digital strategy. When and how should you put out your content?
From the content to your goals to your USP, you have to identify what the structures should look like. For every stage in this list, you must have a plan for each one.
Ask yourself “What’s the next step” after each action you require your customers to take.
You should do consumer surveys and research to better help you in mapping out a defined plan. This way, you know what your consumers are most willing to like or the next action they are most willing to perform after a specific action.
When drawing out a plan, it is best if you establish a long term goal as opposed to a short term goal. A short term goal should only be for a test run.
This means that you want to check what works for your brand and target audience and what doesn’t. Then you can adjust your short term goal accordingly after your test run to work on your long term goal.
7. Join In On the Trends
When creating a digital marketing strategy or a digital marketing plan, you should occasionally tap into recent trends. Your strategies should always be up to date and not redundant.
You do not want to be using an outdated strategy to market and promote your brands and services when there are new trendy strategies.
Always make sure you’re up to date and up to par with new updates in the digital space and the world at large so that you can quickly include it in your strategy.
A digital strategy is the most important part of your digital marketing process. It is the gum that holds everything together. It is the vehicle that will convey all your digital marketing efforts and projects.
What are the benefits of a digital strategy plan?
1. You can analyze your business properly
Before you can begin to grow and develop your brand, you first of all have to have a good grasp of what exactly you’re hoping to achieve in your business.
You have to set a goal, a timeline, a buyer personae etc. All of these will be the building blocks for successful digital marketing.
2. Gets You to A Massive Online Audience
A digital strategy allows you to target people who are online. A majority of people today are online. They’re on social media platforms, or shopping platforms or just surfing the net for information.
It’s important that you market and promote your brand to people who are online. Having a digital marketing strategy makes the process an easy one.
You need digital strategy to get to your target audience more effectively and in a way that is non-invasive.
3. Personalize Your Brand
The truth is for whatever business you want to venture into, there are already over a thousand brands similar to it that exist.
Think of a business venture, type it into google and you’re guaranteed to see something exactly like what you typed in or something very similar.
It will be pretty rare for you to start up a business that no other person has already ventured into and also very risky since you have to start creating a market for it which will not be cost effective starting it up.
When you personalize your band, you make it stand out from those other companies that are similar to yours. You want to give your target audience a different feel from the rest.
It is your digital strategies that help you achieve this. What new things do you want to do differently? What are you offering them that no other person is offering? What is your USP? How can you make the buying process much easier for them?
All these are extremely important questions to ask yourself before you can develop any products or services for consumers.
4. Limits Your Business Failure
Even the best companies with the best strategies still sometimes get their ideas totally wrong.
It’s normal. Oftentimes there are some circumstances beyond our control that we just can’t decipher.
Having a digital strategy, however, just always makes everything better. You’re less likely to fail on the project when you have pre-existing digital strategies.
If you do fail, having a digital strategy that you can look over and tweak and arrange makes it so much easier and better for you.
If you do not have a digital strategy that already exists before embarking on a project, when the project fails, you will be unable to find out easily what really went wrong and how to improve it.
A digital strategy makes the occurrences of failing on a project smaller and makes the pathway easier in identifying the reasons for a project failure.
5. Greater ROI
Nobody wants to blindly spend money, time and effort on things that do not work or yield results. But sometimes, we do anyway.
When you have a digital strategy in place, you can easily gauge all money spent and know the profit you’ve gotten out of the money spent.
You do not want to keep blindly putting in your energy and funds on a project that will never yield you high returns in the long run.
With a digital strategy, you know when your business is costing you more money than you’re making or when it’s flourishing and your efforts are worth it.
6. Builds A Consistent Brand
With a digital strategy in place, you will be able to monitor brand consistency better and more easily.
Brand consistency is one of the major ways to establish your brand as a trustworthy business with authority. It’s the only way to get the loyalty of customers.
A good digital strategy creates a brand message that everyone in your company can stick to so there are no deviations when creating and marketing your products or services.
7. Increase Your Business Leads
If you are particular about generating more leads to your website then you should have a digital strategy in place.
Those strategies and secret tips when implemented can cause you to experience more brand visibility which eventually turns into a high conversion rate and then finally generates leads.
No matter how good you think your business and brand is already, having a digital strategy will always be the better option
Deciding on a digital strategy plan for you business can be a bit tricky because you want to chose plans that are specifically unique to your business.
It is so easy to get overwhelmed with all the numerous digital strategies available, but, your focus should always be aligned towards your business story. Your strategies should cater to the narrative of your brand.
For more digital strategy tips and insights that will completely transform your business, Click the link below!
www.Bingreachdigital.com