How To Design A Digital Marketing Strategy That Delivers Results
filed under: Digital Marketing
If you’ve ever run a digital marketing campaign, only to be left with questionable results, you’re not alone.
Paying for advertising on platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others can work well. However, if it’s not part of a deliberate strategy, spending money on these platforms can quickly lead to ineffective results.
While there’s usually a healthy dose of trial and error when it comes to marketing, we recommend four tips that we know help move the dial towards success in a more strategic way.
TIP #1: Create a Marketing Funnel
A marketing funnel is a simple way of characterizing your typical customer pathway. Every organization and business has a pathway by which people engage with their brand and ultimately become customers or clients. It can take some work to define your organization’s funnel, but having an idea of what this is and at what point along that pathway you’re trying to reach people with your advertising is essential.
- Top of funnel: Brand awareness. When defining the top of your business’s funnel, consider how your prospective customers are typically finding you online. This stage might require some guesswork at first, but eventually you’ll learn which marketing efforts are producing the most traction. Your best guess here is what’s important. When targeting the top of your funnel, you’ll likely be creating campaigns that focus on things like video views or website traffic.
- Middle of funnel: Consideration. In the middle of the funnel, people have had exposure to your brand. For example, they’ll have visited your website or may have joined your email list. At this phase, you want to communicate with them by providing value and positioning yourself as an expert in your field. This could be via paid ads, but will likely also include website content like blog posts, organic social posts, how-to videos on YouTube, etc.
- Bottom of funnel: Conversions. At this point, people are actively searching for a product or service like yours and you’ll want to put content in front of them that’s focused on sales. In this phase, you can target people with sales-related email messaging, use remarketing targeting on ad platforms (for example, targeting people who’ve visited certain pages on your site), and in keyword-based ads you can target keywords that show a high purchase intent (ie, “buy new refrigerator,” “lowest cost treadmill,” etc.).
Tip #2: Use Landing Pages
The goal of a landing page is to keep potential customers focused on a specific path. Landing pages are branded pages (either directly on your website or built using a 3rd party landing page tool) that are focused on the action that your digital marketing is encouraging.
Best practices for landing pages:
- One clear call to action: Landing pages should have one primary action that you want your users to take. So for example, rather than distracting people on a conversions-focused landing page with options to sign up for your email list or learn more about your team, just have one clear call to action: “Buy now!”
- Remove extra links from the page: Remove your website's main navigation from your landing pages, but keep your logo at the top for brand recognition. Again, the idea here is to keep people focused on the one specific action that you want them to take.
- High quality imagery of your product or service: For products, this could include both standalone product images, as well as images of people using the product.
- Social proof: This is usually testimonials from people who love your product or service. The idea is that by including quotes or video testimonials from existing customers, your prospective customers are able to understand the benefits that other people have received from your product.
- Focus: The copy on your landing page should be focused on a few key points about your product (product details, key benefits, etc.). Less is more with landing page copy.
- Keywords: For landing pages coming from keyword-driven ads, your top keywords should be integrated into the copy on the page, preferably above the fold on the page.
- Unique per campaign: Using one landing page per campaign will allow you to target different landing pages appropriately.
Tip #3: Include Keywords
Keywords are an essential part of advertising on some platforms and are also vital for SEO. Start with keyword research and then focus on incorporating your keywords into your marketing, wherever applicable.
Best practices for including keywords:
- Use a tool: There are many keyword research tools to choose from. Google Ads’ Keyword Planner is a great free option and there are a number of useful paid keyword research options as well.
- Be consistent: Conduct keyword research regularly. Look for terms that have a high search volume (ie, terms that people are actually using in searches) and that aren’t too competitive. You want to have a good chance of appearing in results.
- Integrate keywords: Integrate the best terms into your ad copy and your landing page copy wherever it’s appropriate.
Need help with keyword research? Our team can help! Get in touch.
Tip #4: Test, Test, Test Again
Digital marketing is a process of trial and error. Success requires ongoing testing, failing, learning from your failures and making changes based on what you've learned. It’s rare to have a digital marketing campaign that produces excellent results right off the bat. Testing is especially important early on in marketing campaigns.
What to test:
- Platforms: Test different platforms to see where you get the most traction. Through your testing, you may realize that certain advertising platforms that you thought would be a slam dunk actually aren’t, and instead you’re finding success on another platform altogether.
- Layouts and messaging: Try a handful of ad and landing page layouts with different messaging to see what gets you the best results.
- Targeting: Be sure to test ad targeting options to see what interest groups, geographic areas, etc. get you the best results.
A testing mindset:
- Outcomes will vary: Depending on what you’re testing, where you’re starting and how your results come in, testing will look different every time. The key is to stay curious and trust what the data is telling you.
- Keep an open mind: Think of yourself as a scientist. You’re collecting data and learning as you go. Stay open to what the data shows and try to remember to take the long view.
Employing a deliberate strategy with your digital marketing campaigns can be a game-changer. If you need help implementing any of the tips above, please get in touch!