According to Gartner Inc, in 2022, large organizations failed to unify engagement channels, leading to disorganized and siloed customer experiences that negatively impacted revenue, retention rates, and more. More and more businesses are starting to realize the importance of developing a robust digital strategy and building a team capable of getting their brand message out there and capturing the attention of their target audience.
In today’s era, more than being online is needed; big and small brands must be active, engaged, and strategic in getting their name heard. That’s why I’m writing this blog to give you some critical tips for building a well-oiled digital marketing team and developing an effective strategy.
Getting to the Roots of Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing strategy starts by getting to know your business and its potential audience, then looking into where they might be spending time on the internet, the tools you can use to grab their attention, and the overarching goals you’ve set for your brand.
Developing Your Brand & Brand Message
What does your brand represent? What are its values? These should all be the foundation of your digital strategy. A brand that focuses on wellness should promote healthy living and craft messaging that gets this point across. The same goes for a brand selling sports equipment and catering to an audience passionate about athletics and sporting events.
To do this, you will need the help of a digital marketing agency and partners that can write the messaging, grow your brand awareness, and lead campaigns that get eyeballs on your products or services.
If you are a business that is ready to scale, you need to be getting quantitative data from your customers to use in your brand and messaging. You’d be surprised to see the results when this is done right and used for your marketing channels.
Setting Clear Goals and KPIs
The first recommendation is to be clear in your goals and KPIs. Key performance indicators are the way in which your business measures its successes in comparing different objectives you’ve set out to achieve. For example, a KPI might be financially motivated and read something along the lines of reaching 10k in revenue by the end of the first quarter. Nonetheless, KPIs will vary based on your business model and overall goals.
It’s important to go deep and detailed when it comes to goal setting for your business. “I want to make $250,000 a year,” might be a great target but it doesn’t provide much actionable motivation. Instead, consider setting a goal like “I want to reach $250,000 a year by the end of Q2 through spending more time crafting emails and CTAs that connect with our newsletter subscribers.”
Taking it one step further, you would reverse engineer what it would take to get to your $250,000 a year goal.
20 leads a month
25% close rate = 5 leads closed
Average customer value of $4000.
5 leads * 4000 = $20000 at 12 = $240k a year
So you would need to set your KPI’s to 20 leads a month for your marketing engine.
Identifying Your Target Audiences & Buyer Personas
Developing a digital strategy and brand messaging is difficult when you don’t understand your audience. Building personas helps you enter into your target customers’ mindset and craft marketing materials and digital strategies to engage their interests. Here are some beginner tips for creating your first buyer personas:
- Fill in information about their demographics (age, income, race)
- What are their identifiers? (communication preferences, social media channels being used)
- What challenges do they face?
- What can your company offer that makes these challenges easier to face?
Choosing the RIGHT Digital Channels
Choosing the best digital channels can take some trial and error, but reaching the buyers you’ve created from the step above is crucial. For example, If you’re targeting business professionals or high-level CEOs, you might focus on channels like LinkedIn or Twitter. In contrast, younger audiences and teenagers are likelier to frequent Instagram and TikTok.
Though platforms are constantly changing and it’s important to know when to shift strategies. Tiktok may be for the younger crowd initially, but that has changed.
Key Responsibilities & Roles of Digital Marketing
Alright, you’ve started to build your digital strategy by focusing on some goals and outlining some of the key value-points that represent your brand. Now, it’s time to start growing your team and partnering with experts. Here’s a list of some of the positions that may need to be filled when building your digital marketing team:
Digital Marketing Manager
A digital marketing manager is responsible for overseeing and managing all the moving parts that go into your overall digital marketing strategy. They will help you to set goals and KPIs, develop a plan, launch campaigns, and coordinate between the other members of your team. Some other skills of a talented digital marketing manager might be in analyzing market trends, identifying target audiences, managing a budget, and possessing strong overall leadership qualities.
Content Marketer or Strategist
Content strategists have the responsibility of crafting and managing all the content that will be posted across the channels your brand uses. For example, a LinkedIn carousel, tweet chain, or Instagram reel will likely be created and posted by your content team. In doing so, they will conduct research on your target audience’s preferences and pain points to help develop content that matters to them. They will work to ensure that the content being produced fits your brand’s values and adopts a good brand voice.
SEO Strategist
SEO Strategists specialize in optimizing websites to improve organic visibility and search engine rankings. Some of the duties and responsibilities of SEO strategists on your digital marketing team include:
- Conducting thorough keyword research
- Optimize website content and pages
- Staying up to date on the best SEO practices
- Building quality backlinks.
Overall, their goal is to enhance your website’s visibility, drive relevant traffic, and improve the user experience for any visiting customers or prospects.
Social Media Manager
Much like a digital marketing manager, your social media manager may play a leadership role in your digital marketing team. They will be responsible for coordinating the work of the content and SEO team to be posted across social channels. They will help to develop strategies and campaigns through identifying trends, consistently engaging with your community, and doing outreach to foster relationships with new and potential customers.
PPC Strategist
PPC Strategists are responsible for pay-per-click (PPC) ads on platforms like Google Ads, Facebook ads, and other networks. In doing so, they will focus on keyword research, create targeted ads, set up bidding strategies, and optimize campaigns for maximum ROI. Generally, a good PPC strategist should have strong analytical thinking skills and make data-driven decisions.
Analytics & Data Strategist
Data analytics or data scientists are experts at interpreting data and using data to make educated decisions on your business’s decisions regarding digital strategies. They’ll use tools like Google Analytics and SQL, among other platforms, to track key metrics, gather reports, and scope out any trends or patterns in the results being collected. Nonetheless, they are invaluable members of your digital marketing team and play a crucial role in ensuring that the decisions being made reflect the data being collected on your target audience.
How to Find a Digital Marketing Agency
In delegating responsibilities and creating your business’s digital marketing strategy, you may be considering hiring full-time for an in-house team, working with a collection of freelancers and agencies, or a mixture of both options.
At CJAM Marketing, our team has vetted 625+ agencies and partners to determine which one has what it takes to deliver on their promises and help businesses like yours reach the following levels of success. Book a free call to get started!
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