How Should a Small Business Structure a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Business in almost every industry only becomes increasingly competitive year after year. It is critical to have a successful omnichannel marketing plan to become a leader in your field. A digital marketing strategy is essential to capture opportunities for customer acquisition, retention, and an increase in sales. It helps you identify and reach your customers and ultimately design their experiences of your business. 

Structure Your Digital Marketing Strategy In 5 Stages

You know that a digital marketing plan is critical to the success of your business and your online footprint. Here are the five streamlined stages of any successful digital strategy. 

1. Reviewing Old Methods & Planning Long-Term Strategies

Online competition is fierce – you are dead in the water without a solid plan! Starting with a data-driven approach, you must first review your current marketing strategies and evaluate their effectiveness. Only after a proper assessment can you see what works and what doesn’t – the problems and holes you need to solve. Taking the time to assess your current needs and future aspirations for your products and company is vital. 

The digital world is growing exponentially every year. There are always new channels to reach and engage with customers and an increasing customer base. You must identify the specific markets you wish to target. Using this framework to design your plan ensures you have complete digital integration, data-driven strategies, and a practical method and execution. Some excellent opportunities on the digital marketing stage include customizing analytics and deploying digital marketing media, technology, and data. 

2. Outreach & Engagement with Potential Customers

Once you have prepared the branded content you want to market online, you need to strengthen your marketing funnel. To reach more customers and build awareness, you must be up to date on the latest online marketing techniques and channels to drive traffic to your online sites and social media pages. 

You have identified your target markets and demographics in the planning stage. This stage – outreach – is when you figure out how to access them. Communication, presence, and brand awareness are essential to building relationships with your market. It is vital to find the best channels to engage with customers and build relationships. Reaching your audience by communicating with them on their preferred mediums is one of the most critical steps in this process.

why small business owners need digital marketing strategy

Online traffic changes constantly and significantly. Channels that might have once driven the bulk of your customers to your sight can diminish rapidly. It would be best if you vigilantly searched for opportunities by scouring structured data, SERP features, and changes to behaviors of keywords or social media algorithms. Monitoring the digital marketing channels and your flexibility in changing strategies due to the changes is critical to the long-term success of any digital marketing. 

3. Entertain, Inspire, Educate, or Convince

These days, the internet is all about interactions. Encouraging customers to interact on your website or social media channels helps keep you relevant and generates leads for the future. Once you reach your audience, you must influence them and their perceptions and actions regarding your brand. This generates sales as they move through the marketing funnel toward a purchase. 

One of the optimal ways to do this is through content marketing. Quality content marketing can significantly influence potential customers and sway them towards purchasing or retaining them. Your content must have several elements to engage customers – entertain, inspire, educate, or convince. Content marketing can do this in a wide range of forms, from quizzes to competitions, branded videos, events, webinars, guides, infographics, celebrity endorsements, case studies, articles, demo videos, or ratings. You can select which strategy works best for your business, target demographic, and the product or service you are trying to market. Remember, to be influential, it must appeal to one or two of the primary elements! 

Another significant influencer of customer behavior towards your company is user experience. Companies constantly innovate and create increasingly interactive web designs. A more interactive page boosts engagement with content and conversion rates. Try incorporating micro-interactions and immersive videos and optimizing your website for speed.

4. Convert Curiosity into Sales 

Persuading your customers to purchase your products is the ultimate goal of your marketing strategy. The internet is a 24-hour, accessible portal that works both ways – for your customers to reach you and for you to reach them. It is an ideal tool for implementing always-on marketing, where you can schedule your activities to contact customers at select times every day. Always-on marketing brings consistent awareness in the background by planning and optimizing marketing activities, so you remain at the top of consumers’ minds. 

Providing personalized content is becoming a key factor in consumer decision-making. Consumers are far more likely to shop with brands that invest in individualized content. Additionally, social media influences the overwhelming majority of consumers in their shopping decisions. Selling directly through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media should be a cornerstone of your digital strategy. If for nothing else, your social media content should focus on driving traffic to your website. 

5. Engage with Current Customers After the Sale

The last step in a digital marketing strategy is keeping your current customers engaged. Improving your personalized communications with past customers can increase sales after their initial purchase. You can utilize the data collected about these clients to create hyper-personalized marketing campaigns via the web, email, and social media. Use data from customer surveys, journeys, content mapping, path analysis, website intent surveys, and other forms to create a specialized strategy. Additionally, machine learning can analyze the best send times for an individual’s engagement, the best timing for follow-up communications, and the best future product or category combinations based on past data. These personalized details will help retain customers long-term and increase future sales! 

How Spotted Fox Digital Marketing Can Help your Marketing Strategy

It can be challenging for a small business to hone in on its personalized five-step digital marketing strategy. Let the professionals at Spotted Fox Digital Marketing handle it for you! We have years of experience, and our specialists have the knowledge and technology to help your business succeed online. We will get to know your small business and create an individualized digital marketing plan based on your strategic goals. Visit our website and contact us today to start your journey toward a new digital marketing plan!