It takes a lot of hard work and time to create a successful digital marketing strategy these days. Competition is fierce in the online environment, where every business in every industry is making great efforts to differentiate from the rest. That can pose a series of challenges for both startups and established businesses.
So, if you’ve already dipped your toes into the intricate world of digital marketing and you’ve managed to build a comprehensive strategy, but you’re still not getting the results you’d expected, you’re surely wondering what you’re doing wrong. You already have a professional website, you post on social media regularly, engage with your customers across all channels, provide great content, and yet your efforts seem to be in vain. The question you should really ask yourself is not what you’re doing wrong, but what you’re not doing at all.
You might think you’ve covered all your bases when in fact there are important links missing in your digital marketing strategy that you may not be aware of. This is a good time to take a step back and try to look at the bigger picture. While you’re analysing, you might want to check for the following pieces that might be missing from your digital marketing puzzle.
More data
What’s your digital marketing strategy based on? If the answer is not data, then your business is not on the right track. A digital marketing strategy that relies on creativity alone is standing on a feeble foundation. As experts at Passion Digital explain, a solid marketing strategy has to combine the power of data with the power of creativity in order to provide real results.
A big part of your research process for digital marketing purposes should concentrate on collecting and analysing data from your customers. Data provides valuable insights that can help you make smarter business decisions and thus optimise your digital marketing strategy.
Broad market analysis
In the business world, you can learn a lot from watching what other players in your industry are doing. Other people’s mistakes and successes can serve as a lesson and a source of inspiration. Keeping an eye on your competitors and analysing their every move is something you’re probably already used to.
But why stop your investigations there? While regular competitor reviews can help a lot when crafting your digital marketing strategy, a broader market analysis can provide a lot more benefits, allowing you to draw your inspiration from other sources as well. There are many companies out there that target the same audience as you do. Monitoring them and their marketing strategies can provide you with a fresh perspective on things, and help you come up with new solutions to old problems. Try to think outside of the box if you really want to stand out from the crowd.
Clear objectives
How do you measure the success of your digital marketing strategies? What benchmarks do you use to decide what a good marketing campaign looks like? If your aim is to improve engagement or sales over a year, your objective might be a little too broad, making it difficult for you to measure results.
You may want to redefine what success looks like to you by setting out clear objectives over specific periods of time, then using adequate metrics to analyse results. Having smaller, more targeted goals allows you to take things one step at a time and focus on each stage of the process, which also gives you a deeper understanding of your whole marketing journey.
SEO
It’s not a secret anymore that including search engine optimization in your digital marketing strategy can boost your online presence. However, a lot of businesses owners still shy away from investing in SEO because they’re not familiarised with this field and they fear the complexities it implies.
But without proper SEO, it’s going to be difficult for you to get on good terms with search engines and draw more traffic to your site. The good news is you don’t have to become an SEO expert to leverage SEO. you can always search for a reliable SEO agency in London and let an experienced professional do the work for you. When in doubt, outsource!
Offline aspects
You might believe tempted to look at digital marketing as a stand-alone strategy that has nothing to do with your offline marketing efforts, but that’s far from being true. When it comes to marketing, the online and the offline are not two separate worlds that never collide. In fact, they’re closely linked to each other.
You might find the answer to your questions if you look beyond the online landscape and pay more attention to what happens in the physical world. Analyse your business’ offline touchpoints and see how they could impact your online marketing strategy. When you have a bird’s-eye view over your business, it’s a lot easier to spot the gaps in your strategy.
Brand consistency
If your business has an offline presence that doesn’t align with your online presence, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that your digital marketing campaigns don’t perform well. Customers are looking for a unified experience when interacting with a brand. Having an online image that contradicts your offline image can make your business seem unprofessional and unreliable, and that’s more than enough to turn customers away.
Since you probably use multiple channels to reach your target audience, you should make sure you’re promoting the same values and sending the same message across all of them. You can do that by creating a set of brand guidelines that you can use when crafting your marketing campaigns.
The rapid expansion of the online environment and the increasing customer demands are making it harder for businesses to plan effective digital marketing strategies, as you can easily overlook crucial aspects in the process. We hope this list can serve as a guide to finding what’s missing from your current marketing strategy and help you make the necessary improvements.
