How to create a winning digital strategy

Many people talk about digital marketing strategies, but what are they really? In short, they are a set of marketing actions that help you achieve your company's business objectives. Simple? Well, not quite.

Let me give you a real-life example: for the last quarter of the year, you plan to increase visits to your website by 50% compared to the last three months of last year.

Now you have a specific and clear objective; how do you achieve it? With a digital marketing strategy.

The hard part starts here. How do you begin? What actions will generate the best return according to your company? In digital marketing, there are dozens of possible scenarios or paths you can take. We have SEO, Facebook ads, Google ads, email marketing, automation, growth hacking, inbound marketing, analytics, content marketing, among others.

It all depends on the size of your company, the resources available, and also the team you have. Although it may seem complicated, we have summarized the most important points to start building the digital strategy to grow your business online.

Who is your ideal customer?

The first step and one of the most important is defining a buyer persona or ideal customer profile. What does this mean? You need to know the person who is most willing to pay for your products and services.

This is essential for online sales and also offline. The best way to get to know them is through interviews, research, surveys, social listening, etc. Here’s what you need to know:

Geographic location: Data is valuable. To know the most common locations of your website users, you can use some analytics tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, or both at the same time.
Age: Identifying the most common age of your audience is important to know what tone of voice and style you should convey in your strategy.
Interests: Does your potential customer like to travel or love sports? It’s important to know. The more you know them, the easier it will be to create content and understand what they need from you.

Knowing your potential customer is like knowing a good friend. When you know what they like, what they don’t like, and you get to know them well, over time the friendship can become closer, and you might even consider them part of your family.

It works the same way with your buyer persona; focus your efforts on getting to know them well and act accordingly.

Set goals and define strategies

At the beginning of the article, we talked a bit about objectives; now it’s time to explain it in more depth. When your goal is to increase sales by 10% this year compared to last year, there are a series of other objectives you need to set.

To increase sales by 10%, you need to grow the number of leads, and to do that, visits to your website must also increase. Every small action matters to reach the final goal, in this case, sales.

The most effective channels

Now that you know your ideal customer and have specific goals, it’s easier to identify which channels are most effective for launching your digital marketing strategy.

It’s important to understand the big picture so you don’t feel overwhelmed; that’s why research is crucial at this stage. There are many channels available, some of which are: Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, among others. Where is your ideal customer? That’s where you need to be.

Owned, earned, and paid media. Do you have them in mind?

Owned media are just that, digital materials that belong to you. Your website, social media profiles, blog articles, graphic design. In short, the channels or media that your company controls.

Now, earned media can be, for example, word-of-mouth recommendations you receive from your customers, mentions of your business on other websites, among others.

And finally, paid media. What are they? They refer to all the advertising you pay for to promote your products and services. Facebook Ads, Google Ads, ads on other websites. All related paid media.

Summarize and classify each of them in a spreadsheet. This way, you can decide which ones to keep and which ones to discard.

Put it all together and execute

By now you should have:

Buyer persona profile
Specific objectives
Digital channels
Owned, earned, and paid media.

Two very important factors are still missing: content and final execution.

Content is king. What does this mean? You can and should build everything with the best possible content for your audience; this will be responsible for converting your potential customers into true promoters of your brand.

What do you think about all this? A good digital strategy consists of several essential factors for it to be successful. Do you have any doubts? At Mintec, we specialize in creating, optimizing, and scaling your company’s digital efforts. Contact us if you need a hand.