How to triumph on your next digital marketing campaign

According to research, 50% of brands don’t have a solid marketing strategy which they can build their marketing campaign on. However, despite our efforts, the unpredictable nature of any project development prevents us from keeping each and every step under control.  Building a clearly defined marketing strategy is the foundation of any project development and should, therefore, be an integral part of any digital marketing campaign. A marketing strategy gives you an ability to see what you can expect along the road and have a clear overview of the lessons learned from your past campaigns.  Most importantly, it gives you an opportunity to measure your progress and evaluate your results. In this blog post, discover how to triumph on your next digital marketing campaign. Due to the ever-increasing demands of the market, the face of the digital marketing has changed immensely and is still evolving. That’s why it is essential to keep track of all current trends and become accustomed to the latest techniques and the most effective tools that can take your next digital marketing campaign to a whole new level. Here is our take on what you need to do to become an absolute champion in next digital marketing adventure. [clickToTweet tweet="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock" quote="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock"]

How to triumph on your next digital marketing campaign

Identify your goals ( know what you want)

The first and the most important step you need to take is to clearly define your ultimate goals and be specific about the things you are trying to achieve with your marketing efforts. Are you trying to increase your brand’s awareness and get more traffic? Are you trying to attract more visitors to convert, buy your product or a service and, finally, create a strong customer base? Whatever your goals are, you need to focus your attention on them and keep them in mind whatever you do. Also, you need to analyse your previous digital marketing campaign, determine your KPI’s and choose the right project management methodology (such as critical path method) to manage your project.

Do a customer research and identify your target audience

Instead of spending a nickel and dime to make your brand visible to a large audience out there, think about who your buyer persona is. Think about what your audience’s interests, attitudes, age, gender and geographical location are and focus on the channels they visit most frequently. For example, if you are selling dog’s food, your target audience will most certainly be animal lovers, more specifically dog lovers. Also, in order to gather valuable customer data, find qualified survey takers and invest in a thorough research. Make sure you start with a smaller audience, and then, as the project progresses, expand to more channels and engage more people who are not directly connected to your product.

Create cross-channel brand consistency

After you have carefully determined your target audience, the next step is social media marketing. Social media has become an integral part of every aspect of our lives and it’s almost unimaginable to run a digital marketing campaign without using social media platforms. Although there are a number of social channels available on today’s market like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, choose the ones where your potential clients are and invest in them. For instance, if your users are mostly visiting Facebook, set up a Facebook ad campaign and see how many conversions it will bring. [clickToTweet tweet="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock" quote="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock"]

Choose and categorize  the right content

Long are the days when poor quality of the content and the right keywords were enough to ensure your presence in the digital sphere. Apart from the fact that you can create content in a variety of different forms like blog posts, videos, infographics, research, case studies and others, you need to focus your efforts on producing a high-quality, vibrant and powerful content that your audience would really want to read. Give your audience what they want and help them solve the problems they encounter on regular basis. Also, plan your future blog content and prevent any shortage of ideas or blog posts.

Create a customer journey map

Once you established your content marketing strategy and assigned tasks to your content writers you are ready to start working on creating a customer journey map. A customer journey map gives you a clear overview of your customer experience and the road they need to take from interacting with the product for the first time and buying it to accessing customer service and making comments on social media. Most importantly, it gives you the ability to identify key interactions between the customer and the organization and an insight into customer’s feelings and motivation to use this specific product. Finally, it helps you understand what exactly you are trying to achieve and what your customer’s expectations are. [clickToTweet tweet="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock" quote="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock"]

Manage your content distribution

Besides blogging, there are many other types of content that will help you drive more traffic and secure your place high in the top ranks. For example, if you want to provide people with some actionable tips or give statistical data go for an infographic. On the other hand, if you want to give people useful information and a reason to laugh at the same time, use memes. They are easy to make and can instantly go viral. Video is also becoming increasingly popular as it allows you to convey your message quickly and efficiently in no time. Also, by investing more of your time, energy and resources into managing digital projects you can produce e-books, case studies, and research results and give your audience some valuable and original data they can hugely benefit from.

Repurpose evergreen content

Review how your audience reacted to your old content and try upgrading it by producing topics related to that specific subject matter or match it with an appropriate infographic or a list and make it even more visible to the general public. Evergreen content is the hype in the world of marketing these days. Here are the most common tricks you can do to refresh your old content:

• Provide industry tips, such as “how to” articles
• Feature testimonials and product reviews
• Explaining common concepts to your industry readers

Make sure you identify winning keywords and optimize your old posts for a bigger search engine traffic. [clickToTweet tweet="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock" quote="How to triumph on your next #digitalmarketing campaign by @rachel_fyi via @lilachbullock"]

Measure your campaign

Finally, whether your digital marketing efforts have been effective or not depends heavily on the number of users that decided to convert. However, there is a wide range of factors that can make or break your marketing campaign - your audience, the tone of voice, quality of content, media channels. The only way to see if you are making any progress or not is simply by measuring your success. You can do that by using analytics tools such as Google Analytics and measure organic search traffic, referral traffic, and general traffic. Also, you will need to measure your Return on Investment to see that your money is well-spent. By measuring your marketing campaign you will be able to answer the questions such as: How many people have seen your ad? How much money have you spent? How did people react to your ad? Don’t forget to remind your customers to give you feedback. Both positive and negative feedback is a valuable source of information as it gives you an insight how your team and the entire marketing campaign are performing. While positive comments can help you promote yourself and increase your brand’s visibility through testimonials, negative comment or even criticism can help you realize what aspects of your campaign you should be working on. Steve Jobs once said:

“You’ve got to start with customer experience, and work back towards technology.”

To wrap up, whether you are an owner of a small business or you are an experienced businessman or woman who owns a huge multinational corporation, there are always a number of challenges you will need to face when running a digital marketing campaign. To avoid such scenario, invest your time and energy into building an effective marketing strategy that will really work.   Rachel is currently working as the vice president of communications at ActiveCollab. After finishing her master's degree in Communications she pursued a career in the digital industry, most notably in marketing and public relations.

Related reading: How Experiential Marketing Enhances Digital Campaign ROI.

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