The Anatomy of an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

gnooko’s new white paper, The Anatomy of an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy, outlines a number of steps that can be taken when using your digital presence to promote your company. The first of those steps is performing an audit, which we explore a bit in this blog post. If you want to know more about it, and learn about what happens after the audit, click the link at the end of this post to download the complete white paper.

In today’s world, most companies have at least some form of digital or online presence. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to use it effectively. Some organizations maintain a website, a blog, a Facebook page, etc. without really having any idea what to do with it, or any specific goals in mind.

Therefore, if you want to improve your digital marketing efforts, your first step is to perform an audit of your current digital tactics. This will help you understand what you’re doing, what you should be doing, and the path you’re currently on. Here’s a brief guide to performing a digital marketing audit.

Take Stock of Your Digital Marketing Presence

What digital tactics are you currently using, and how effective are they in generating leads, sales, and revenue? Take stock of everything. Maybe you have a Facebook page which has hardly any followers and very little engagement. Perhaps you have a blog that you haven’t posted on in six months. Maybe your website hasn’t been updated recently, and has broken links, outdated information, isn’t optimized for mobile users, etc.

Keep in mind, your digital presence includes more than just the content you create and release. Your company may be listed on Yelp or a similar website, where people can review your business and post comments about their experience with you. People may be posting reviews of your products or services on these sites. Are the reviews more positive, or more negative? Include this data in your audit.

Now crunch the numbers. How many people are you reaching with each of these digital tactics? How many people from, say, your social media channels, are ending up on your website and its landing pages? How many are clicking links, only to find them broken? How many are accessing your site via a mobile device?

Most importantly, of the people who do read your blog, follow you on social media, etc., how many have turned into qualified leads? How many of those leads have you in turn managed to nurture into sales? This will help tell you just how effective your current digital efforts are.

Gather Audience Data

You’ve gathered information on your own company and efforts. Now it’s time to look at your audience. It’s very important to know who your audience is and what they want. If you’re a B2B company, then look at the decision makers in the companies you target. What social media are they most likely to be found on? What content do they consume predominantly? Will they respond better to short bullet points and how-to’s, or in-depth analysis? How do they research a problem online?

With this information, you’ll be better equipped to target them more effectively with your digital content. If you’re writing long, in-depth blogs to an audience who would rather skim bullet points, then you’re wasting your efforts. If your audience spends its time on Twitter, but you’re concentrating most of your efforts on Facebook, then you’re not connecting with them as well as you could. The more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to reach them with your digital marketing.

Identify Issues

Now that you have your data, it’s time to figure out what it means. What are you doing right? Where could you improve? Which of your efforts aren’t working as well as they should? What areas are you not exploring, which could have potential if you did?

On the other hand, which of your efforts are yielding the results you want? Where are you seeing the best turnaround? Which content is the most effective? Which social media channels get the most interactions? Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses, based on your data findings.

Create a Strategy

You now have all of your data, it’s time to put it to use. Create a digital marketing strategy, using what you’ve learned. Put more focus on your strengths. Work on the areas where you’re lacking. Create the kind of content that your audience is most likely to respond to, and develop a social media presence on the channels where you’re most likely to connect with them. Redesign your website, to fix broken links, optimize for mobile traffic, and generally make it more aesthetic and more user friendly, based on your findings. Do what it takes to reach your audience where they are and increase your lead generation, sales conversion, and overall revenue.

Once you’ve performed your audit and created your strategy, your job isn’t done. It’s an ongoing process, which you’ll do regularly over time. When your strategy is in place, perform another audit to see where you’ve managed to improve, and where you still need work. As technology changes, marketing evolves, and even your own industry changes, it’s important to evaluate your marketing methods continually, so you can optimize your tactics and generate more sales and more revenue.

An audit is just one step in your digital marketing strategy. To learn more about implementing digital marketing in your organization, download our new white paper, The Anatomy of an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy.

Robert (Rob) Burns is a digital business development specialist in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Rob prefers to discuss a business strategy with his clients before talking about any technology, marketing or digital tactics.  Once Rob understands a client’s business objectives, he will then advise them about gnooko services and solutions: including Digital Marketing Strategy, Audience Segmentation and Persona Development, Website Design and Development, Search Marketing and SEO, Social Marketing and of course Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, and Marketing Technology.

DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER