It’s a holiday week so I thought I’d keep us focused today with a little simplicity. Please enjoy my short, sweet guide to digital marketing:
- Know your goal
- Be realistic about your goal
- Stay true to your goal
For a little more guidance, let’s consider an example scenario.
Situation: I have a “young” company/product. I need to educate the public about it and get as much exposure as possible to begin to build my following and ultimately grow my customer base and sales.
Know your goal Brand awareness.
Be realistic You won’t make much of a splash with a pebble, and you won’t gain much exposure by telling one person about your business. Gaining the desired exposure will take time and budget. Open yourself up to a mix of digital marketing tactics speaking to a wide (but, of course, targeted) audience—think paid display advertising, PR pushes, new content on your website for search engine users, etc. Leverage your existing following through email and social media, consider contests, referral incentives, etc.
Stay true This isn’t easy when it comes to your own business, but when the sales don’t necessarily come flooding in, remind yourself of the goal. Right now you’re proving your offering and credibility in order to build a future loyal fan base. You can’t measure your success against sales or cost per acquisition; that wasn’t what this was about. Be fair to yourself and take the time early on to establish a reasonable measurement for success, and then stick to it. If it’s web traffic and on-site engagement metrics, allow time to achieve those goals. Soon enough, you’ll have gained your desired attention AND have the valuable data and insights to be able to start optimizing your marketing tactics. Then you efficiently turn those engaged web visitors into the ultimate customers–buying ones.
Voila! Your digital marketing strategy in brief: it’s all about your goal.
