Digital has rapidly become the most important part of the marketing mix for most businesses. If you want to get buy-in from your management team for new digital initiatives, it’s vital that you can demonstrate that your digital spend is moving the company forward.
We’ve unpacked three key questions we get asked all the time by managers wanting to get a better handle on their digital marketing.
1. Is digital actually working?
For those new to digital marketing, it can be difficult to tell whether a digital marketing campaign is working or not. Like anything in business, measuring success or failure depends on setting appropriate goals, and ensuring the results are being tracked accurately.
If you are unsure of your company’s online marketing goals, it’s really important to set a meeting with your management team and get agreement on what goals are right for your business.
Some examples of goals may include:
- We want to increase enquiries from our website by 15% compared to last year.
- We want to increase revenue from online purchases by 55%.
The second step is making sure the website is tracking the right data, and you are getting meaningful insights from it, so make sure Google Analytics tracking codes have been installed into the site. Read Matt’s article on Google Analytics for more details.
2. Are we spending our digital marketing budget as effectively as possible?
In digital, there is a huge number of things you *could* spend money on, but effective managers want to know what’s going to get the best bang for their buck.
Here are some questions and answers that might help:
- Where does your target market spend most of their time online? If they’re in Facebook then a Facebook strategy is probably a good use of your budget.
- Is there someone in your team who can write great content regularly for your website, email newsletters, and social media updates? Effective digital marketing relies on fresh, keyword rich content that is relevant, engaging, and informative.
- Do you appear on the first page of Google? If not, you might need a search strategy. Google Ads will drive traffic to your products immediately, and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will grow your free organic traffic over time.
3. Where are our competitors outsmarting us?
Successful businesses always have competitors desperate to gain an edge using digital marketing. They will try anything to get attention and draw your customers away.
The best way to outsmart them is to create a super-smart digital strategy, and that starts with knowing your customers better than they do.
- Listen to your customers,
- Understand what really motivates them, and;
- Observe how they interact with you throughout the entire lifetime of their relationship with you.
Your digital strategy, from the colours and fonts of your website, to your site navigation, tone of voice, whether you invest in a mobile app, what social media platforms you choose, how often you send email newsletters, and what sort of videos you post on YouTube, must all come back to what solves your customers’ problems.
If your digital marketing gives your customer a coherent, enjoyable experience that leads to a lifetime of satisfaction and brand loyalty, then your competitors will struggle to keep up with you.
For help with any of these suggestions please give us a call on 068777478, or email us at [email protected].