10 steps to developing a great digital marketing strategy

The truth is that today brands and marketing people dont’ spend enough time on their digital marketing to ensure a great ROI but the problem is deeper than that.  Too many people have been sold on the fairy tale that you need a great digital marketing presence to really drive conversion.  That’s just not true for a lot of product categories.  So how much should you invest in digital marketing and what can you do to ensure your digital marketing adds substantial value to you and your customers ?  Here are some of the steps…

One of the questions that I am usually asked is “what makes a great digital marketing strategy?”.   The answer to that is pretty straight forward but here are some of the things that I believe lead to a great digital marketing program as opposed to just a website.

1ne: Have a deep understanding of your target audience including what criteria they use to evaluate your product/brand.

There are some products that warrant a deeper digital marketing strategy but there are also a lot of products where digital marketing is not that important (yes, I really said that).   Look in your pantry and tell me how many of those products or brands you researched online or want to have a relationship with ?

2wo: Have a deep understanding of how consumers are using the Internet, especially when it comes to evaluating your product or brand.

Could you spend $200,000 on a game to engage users ?  Sure but why should you if you’re not sure it’s going to lead to conversion ?  Consumers are overwhelmed with too much information and frankly they don’t have the time to do what you think they want to do on your website.

3hree: You can spend a lot of money to develop great engaging content but there is still a chance that people will use your content and still purchase your competitors products.

While the belief is that content is king you need to understand what having great engaging content means to your brand and the bottom line.

4our: You should never, ever launch a website without doing a usability study if you believe your product website is important in conversion.

While you may think that it looks great users have a different opinion and they can turn off your message with the click of a mouse.

5ive: Always be testing home pages and have different homepages tied into different keywords.

6ix: Never have more than 2-3 calls to action on any page.

7even: The longer your page the less chance that people are going to read it.

There is direct correlation between content length and people disengaging from your content.

8ight: Never let your IT department dictate what your website can and cannot do.

They are there to serve your customers not do what is best for their staffing and processes.

9ine: Nothing can provide more insights than some good market research with your target audience.

Ask them what they want and what would get their attention. Believe it or not they are willing to share what they want and if you give them what they want they will be back again and again and isn’t that one of the objectives of great marketing ?

10en: Digital marketing is changing so much but there is a lot of hype out there (i.e. social media and mobile apps).  Stay on top of trends but be able to understand which ones are bull and which ones have legitimate business value.