How to create and convert leads through a digital marketing strategy
The rise and rise of digital marketing has coincided with a global surge in digital dependency. While traditional marketing tools still abound, digital rules.
We increasingly live our lives through our mobile devices. We communicate online. We shop, date and learn online. We entertain ourselves and solve problems online.
A business can no longer survive without following a top-notch digital marketing strategy.
An ideal way to connect with your ideal client
By occupying the online space in an intelligent, strategic way, you meet your ideal clients on their own journey, as they trawl the web and social media for ideas, solutions and stuff to buy.
Savvy digital marketing is an elegant process – and an opportunity to dramatically reduce advertising spend.
A combination of laser-targeted content and well-researched SEO gets your marketing material attracting and engaging the right prospects, converting them to solid leads, and nurturing them into customers you’ll keep.
There’s real value for money in investing in the steady return of a well-considered digital marketing strategy.
What are your digital marketing tools?
There are numerous digital marketing tools at your disposal. Choose the ones that chime with your ideal client and your digital marketing campaigns will fly.
Take the wrong approach and you could end up with a big dent in your bottom line and no new customers.
Here’s a selection:
- Website
- SEO
- Content (blogs)
- Social media
- Online ads (like pay per click)
- Landing pages
- Lead magnets
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Infographics.
What is a digital marketing strategy?
Your DMS is the overarching structure for all your digital marketing decisions. It’s tempting to dive straight into web design, blogging, social posting, pay per click advertising...
Everyone else is doing it, right? So you should be acting now and acting fast…
Slow down.
Taking time out to create a strategy, even a short one, which explains and justifies every action you take, is key to your success as digital marketer.
It’s a document you’ll constantly refer to.
You’ll use it as a benchmark to measure success. It will inform all your digital marketing activity.
And it will be your proof to management that there’s been method in all your decision-making.
What do you want your DMS to achieve?
A carefully constructed DMS will help you:
- attract prospects
- generate leads
- convert those leads into customers you’ll keep.
Your DMS will:
- keep you, your team, and any agency staff and freelancers you use, on track and accountable
- give focus and clarity to all your digital marketing activity
- keep your attention on your customers and their journey
- ensure your tools are aligned and working together
- set you clear, measurable goals
- make sure you’re measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns.
How do you create a DMS?
A few guiding principles.
Keep your DMS:
- Simple – a one-pager will often do.
- Customer-focused – this is all about customers, potential and existing.
- Flexible – build in the potential for change.
- Goal-based and actionable – set targets and delivery pathways.
- Deliverable – have the right people in place, in-house or agency.
- Affordable – budget carefully; the purpose is to add value.
- Measurable – set up the analytics tools to test success.
Four must-do’s for a successful DMS
The thought of creating a digital marketing strategy can seem overwhelming, even for the most strategic of thinkers.
It requires looking into the future, integrating multiple communication channels and platforms, putting numbers in to make it work financially…
It’s quite some undertaking.
So here are four essential actions you can take to kick-start your thinking and get your DMS off the ground.
1. Set goals.
What do you want all this digital marketing to achieve?
More business? Customers who are easy to work with and pay on time? Of course. But how are you going to get to that Nirvana state?
You need to set clear and achievable goals. Decent goals are the lynchpin of your DMS. They give your marketing team accountability and focus in their campaigns.
All your digital marketing needs to be intentional. It has to have an end goal in mind. You need to ensure those goals are there for all to see.
Aim for two or three key goals. If a blog, Tweet or ad isn’t shooting straight at one of the goals in your DMS, you’ll be able to pause and reflect on how to change your approach.
Whatever they relate to – web traffic, lead conversion, sales figures, brand awareness – your goals need to be achievable and easy to understand, and have management buy-in.
Everything flows from there.
2. Create a buyer persona
The customer is at the heart of your work. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, your communications need to be P2P – person to person.
You know the ideal customer you want to attract. Getting inside their head will keep your marketing campaigns focused on their motivations, needs, wants and problems.
It will inform you how best to communicate with them, what channels to find them on and how they like to receive messaging. Do they read? Do they watch? Do they scroll on the move? How much time do they have to engage with you?
Too often, we see campaigns that are a reflection of the awesome talent of the marketing team, but don’t really talk to the customer.
Create a strong persona or ‘avatar’ for the person making the purchasing decisions, and your marketing will stay on track.
You’ll shape your campaigns around their needs, and theirs alone.
3. Choose your digital marketing tools.
You’ve set your goals and created a crystal clear picture of the customer you’re targeting. Those two steps are key to helping you choose the right tools to attract, engage, convert and retain customers.
It’s all too easy to just list the channels you think you’ll be using, differentiate between paid and organic, and allocate budget.
But this is where strategic thinking comes in. All your tools should be part of an integrated step-by-step process.
They should create a seamless flow for customers, making it simple and enjoyable for them to engage with you and eventually purchase. And to become repeat customers and ambassadors for your brand.
Part of your DMS may allocate tools like this:
- Attract prospect:
- SEO – organic search
- Pay per click
- Social posts
- Video
- PR – local news and media.
- Convert to lead:
- Landing pages
- Gated content (white papers, e-books)
- Other lead magnets (newsletter sign-up, free trial, templates)
- Webinars
- Podcast channel
- Automated email – targeted
- Problem-solving blog content.
All of these are potentially useful and relevant ways of attracting prospects and converting them to leads. But remember to think about:
- Which stage of the journey each customer is on, from prospect through to existing customer. Your approach needs to be relevant and personalised. Nothing worse than an email selling you the very product you’ve just purchased.
- How you intend to use these tools to move your customer through the sales funnel.
- The seamlessness of the flow from one channel to another. Can your prospects find their way from an email through a landing page to the webinar you want them to sign up to?
- Your calls to action. Are you using the right CTA? A premature ‘Buy Now’ on your About Us page could mean a prospect clicks away and you lose them.
4. Build in testing and analysis.
It’s easy to get so stuck into the logistics of goal-setting, action-planning and delivery, that you forget your digital marketing has to deliver a financial benefit to the business.
If it’s not working, it needs to be changed, and fast.
Luckily, the power of the analytics offered by Google and the native platforms you’re using allows you to test minute-by-minute the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Using conversion rate optimization (CRO) or AB testing will give you deep insight into how your strategy is playing out.
You need to know if the customer journey you’ve envisaged is actually working. A prospect moved from email to landing page. Why aren’t they clicking on the CTA when they get there? Often changing one word can make all the difference. And CRO will tell you if it does.
Make sure your DMS caters for rigorous testing and anlaytics.
Creating a digital marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a headache. We can help you do it, and give you tips on loads of other online and digital stuff. From affordable web design packages to sorting your SEO and analytics, we’re only a click away. We’d love to get to know you.
