What is digital marketing strategy and its process?

The digital marketing strategy involves an evaluation of specific objectives that can be achieved through online channels. In an era where many consumers transact business on their mobile devices, a well-executed digital marketing strategy can be crucial to the success of the organization. A digital marketing strategy is a set of planned actions that are taken online to achieve specific business objectives. In simple terms, this means taking consistent actions at the right time through the most appropriate online channels to increase revenue and improve relationships with your audience.

A digital marketing strategy describes a series of actions that online marketing channels use to achieve various objectives. Channels can include own, paid and earned media. Achieving marketing objectives through the application of digital technologies and media. The algorithms used to boost Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn and publishers control your visibility and how much you pay, so to gain visibility, digital marketers need to familiarize themselves with the latest techniques.

That's why my professional marketing books are over 500 pages long, but they can only address the best practices that we detail in Smart Insights. Before reviewing the different channels that make up digital marketing, it's helpful to simplify, as business managers, such as owners, chief financial officers or operations managers, ultimately want to know what they need to invest in at the highest level and the benefits they will reap. For most professionals, even seasoned pros, a great digital marketing course like the free one from MECLABS can be a game changer in updating their skillset. A limited budget will be allocated to online marketing for the year and they want to make sure that their team devotes time to the right activities and invests in the right types of media to achieve a positive return. It's important to focus on each of them, regardless of the size of the company.

The pillars help demonstrate that success in digital marketing isn't just about digital media and platforms, no matter how important they are. Creating an effective digital experience, messaging and quality content to drive your digital strategy are also vital. Many of the biggest brands in the world today, including digital platforms such as Facebook (Meta) and Google (Alphabet), are consumer brands, but when considering how best to use digital strategies, it's important to consider business-to-business brands as well. There are many B2B companies that often serve B2C brands.

Smart Insights developed our RACE marketing planning framework to work equally across B2B and B2C markets. This is the case, as it integrates the digital experiences of its customers by interacting with brands through Reach, Act, Convert and Engage, the complete customer journey. As I mentioned, success in digital marketing requires mastering the details. In my book I explain how these 16 examples of different types of marketing technologies cover 6 digital media channels, as well as a range of paid media, own media and earned media options.

A simple measure of the importance of digital marketing is how much money is spent on digital media. IAB's latest research on advertising spending and revenue shows that in the United States, more than three-quarters of media budgets will go to digital media. We see similar IABS numbers in the UK and Europe, so this is happening globally. The IAB also gives an indication of the budget breakdown in digital channels.

This is useful, as it suggests a combination of the type of marketing activities we should invest in. However, keep in mind that IAB data is based on data from larger publishers and platforms, making it less representative of smaller companies and downplaying organic search (search engine optimization), digital PR, and influencer marketing. The data shows that, as you might expect, social media marketing and search marketing are important investments in digital marketing. However, the data also shows that digital display and digital video are important.

Remember that this is more representative of the spending of larger companies that now use these channels to replace investment in television and print advertising. One in two of the main marketing jobs featured on LinkedIn belongs to the digital or media space. The fastest growing roles in the last six months, from the highest to the lowest growth rates, are media coordinators, search managers, social media coordinators, search engine marketing managers, media managers, marketing analysts, email marketers, search engine optimization analysts and digital media managers. LinkedIn reports that, among other highly requested roles, are digital account executives, social media managers, digital marketing managers, copywriters and digital strategists.

Not sure where to start? Access our dedicated marketing strategy solutions for business members and get all the tools you need to optimize your marketing strategy across 10 of the most popular marketing channels and strategies. Your plan doesn't need to be a huge report, a strategy can best be summarized in two or three sides of A4 in a table that links digital strategies to SMART objectives within our OSA Framework: Opportunity, Strategy, Action. As a business member, we can help you get it right the first time. I am sure that many of the companies in this category use digital media effectively and could certainly do great with their search, email, or social media marketing.

Incredibly, I originally suggested these 10 reasons to invest in digital marketing twenty years ago, but they are still important, which is why I have continued to evolve approaches to developing digital strategies in line with the latest digital marketing trends. So, if you don't have a strategy yet, or perhaps want to review what business topics are important to include in a strategic review, we've established the 10 most common problems that, in our experience, arise if you don't have a strategy. We recommend a 90-day (template) planning approach to prioritizing your activities through the RACE growth process, which identifies 25 key digital activities that you must continually refine by prioritizing the ones that matter most. As part of defining the scope of the opportunity when using a strategic approach to digital marketing, it's helpful to think about how digital experiences can improve the appeal of your brand.

This involves improving online services, interactive tools, and digital audience interactions to improve customer service. Every company with a website will have analytics. However, many senior managers don't make sure their teams have time to review and act on them. Once your digital channel strategy allows you to understand the basics well, you can move towards continuous improvement of key aspects, such as branding, site user experience, and lead promotion.

Boost your results with this toolkit containing 13 resources. The term digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels to market products and services in order to reach consumers. This type of marketing involves the use of websites, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other similar channels. Digital marketing became popular with the advent of the Internet in the 1990s.

An effective digital marketing strategy will help you make the right decisions for a company to succeed. A strategic process model provides a framework that provides a logical sequence to follow to ensure the inclusion of all key strategy development and implementation activities. Whatever your overall digital marketing goal, you need to be able to measure the success of your strategy along the way with the right digital marketing tools. Audio marketing has been on the rise, all you have to do is look at the ways Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces have clashed to gain market share.

There's nothing wrong with being optimistic about your digital marketing campaigns, but you need to create goals that are realistically achievable. A web marketing strategy will help you grow your business by generating more valuable traffic to your page and getting more leads that convert into conversions. Digital marketing can be interactive and is often used to target specific segments of the customer base. As a Smart Insights member, you'll have access to strategy and planning tools, including performance and digital maturity tests, and regular marketing data reports, so you can track your position in a competitive landscape.

It seems to me that companies without a digital strategy (and many that do) don't have a clear strategic objective for what they want to achieve online in terms of winning new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones. It's different from digital marketing, which includes Internet marketing, as well as marketing on social media sites and mobile apps.

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Stephanie Givhan
Stephanie Givhan

Typical web evangelist. Total student. Freelance beer expert. Avid coffee trailblazer. Professional travel practitioner. Avid social media trailblazer.