An effective digital marketing strategy helps you drive business growth by expanding and reinforcing your customer engagement in the most competitive online arenas. But every strategy has its own unique advantages, limitations, and ROI. In this article, we’ll look at some specific examples and explain how to build a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that delivers measurable results.
In this digital marketing strategy guide, you’ll discover:
- Understanding digital marketing strategy
- 11 types of digital marketing strategy
- How to build a digital marketing strategy
- Digital marketing strategy guidance
- Frequently asked questions
Understanding digital marketing strategy
Marketing strategy vs. marketing tactics
The term digital marketing strategy often is confused with other related concepts — a true marketing strategy is a comprehensive gameplan that outlines how you’ll reach your target audience and convert them into paying customers. It serves as a blueprint that guides you toward your organization’s unique marketing goals.
Marketing tactics are the specific actions you’ll take to implement your marketing strategy. These may include:
- Writing blog posts
- Responding to customers on social media
- Sending emails
- Designing advertisements.
Marketing strategy vs. marketing campaign
While a marketing campaign goes together with your marketing strategy, it’s important to understand the distinction between the two. A marketing strategy looks at the big picture.
It determines your overall business goals, your customers’ goals, and how you plan to achieve both. A marketing campaign is a promotion that’s designed to achieve one specific objective under your strategy, rather than your overall business goals.
A marketing campaign usually comes with a specific start and end date. You may launch a campaign to promote a new product, generate more traffic, or attract a new customer demographic.
11 types of digital marketing strategy
There are many digital marketing strategies out there. Some deliver better results than others, so we’ll examine the 11 most effective digital marketing strategies used in our current industry.
1. Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing refers to the whole ecosystem of strategies, tools, and tactics that a marketer uses to convert a website visitor into a paying customer. It includes:
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Lead nurturing
- SEO
- Marketing automation
- Website optimization
- Website analytics.
Inbound marketing is an overall approach to attracting, qualifying, nurturing, and delighting customers and prospects. It is not a one-off or something that is deployed quickly or temporarily; rather, it is focused on a long-term relationship with customers.
Why use inbound marketing?
- It’s affordable. Inbound marketing can save you money while leaving you with a higher ROI. You’ll target a specific group of people rather than anyone and everyone with the hope that you’ll be successful.
- Trust and credibility. When prospects and customers do their own research and discover that your content answers their questions, your business is positioned as a trustworthy industry expert rather than just a sales-hungry entity.
- Relationship focus. Through inbound marketing, you can build trusted relationships that not only turn into sales but create repeat customers. Inbound marketing content drives quality traffic to your website and provides visitors with valuable content that encourages them to convert in every phase of the marketing funnel.
2. Content marketing
Content marketing is focused on answering people’s questions and truly helping them through content rather than interrupting them with unsolicited promotions. It includes content such as blog posts, landing pages, videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers, eBooks, case studies, and more.
In most cases, content marketing has several goals. You may use it to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Improve brand loyalty
- Educate your target audience
- Convert and nurture leads.
Savvy marketers create content that’s ideal for multiple user personas in all stages of the sales funnel. For example, a user who is unaware of your brand and found your website through organic search needs different content than a prospect who is almost ready to buy. You’ll need to understand your buyers’ journeys and come up with unique content that addresses their needs every step of the way.
Why use content marketing?
- Strong relationships with customers. Content marketing gives you the chance to build a relationship with prospects and customers over time. It also nudges them toward the finish line, making it more likely that they’ll choose you over your competitors when they’re ready to purchase.
- Better SEO. Quality content will significantly improve your website SEO, so you can enjoy more organic website traffic that turns visitors into buyers.
- Increased brand authority. When you produce interesting, educational content, you’ll be able to position yourself as an authoritative source in your industry. Your target audience will then turn to you for solutions to any problems they may have.
3. ABM
Account based marketing (ABM) is a powerful B2B marketing strategy that targets specific accounts you select. It’s intended to help sales and marketing teams move prospects through the sales funnel quickly. With ABM, you target the accounts that are most important to you.
Why use account-based marketing?
- Personalization. ABM does not take a generic approach to marketing. Instead, it creates personalized messaging for target accounts. You use what you know about your customer and tailor your campaign to meet their particular needs.
- Collaboration. With ABM, sales and marketing teams work together to identify key accounts and design personalized campaigns for them. ABM encourages teamwork as teams focus on moving accounts through the sales pipeline.
- Shorter sales cycles. The B2B sales process is often slow because there are multiple stakeholders involved in making a final purchase decision. With ABM, the sales cycle is expedited because the primary decision maker, and all other relevant prospects, can be nurtured simultaneously with content created specifically for them.
4. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website and your content in order to achieve higher rankings in search engines and increase the amount of organic traffic to your site. It involves a variety of tactics, like:
- Creating high-quality content
- Optimizing content around keywords and user needs
- Incorporating meta information
- Ensuring your website is optimized for search engines.
Ultimately, SEO strives to bring in the right visitors organically to drive more leads and sales.
Why use search engine optimization?
- Higher conversion rates. An optimized website is fast, easy-to-use, and compatible with all devices. Which means it’s more likely to convert users and leave you with loyal customers.
- Increased brand awareness. If your content ranks highly in search results, you’ll be able to build brand awareness and trust with visitors. They’ll be more inclined to purchase your products and services than they would if you didn’t have a good web presence.
- Long-term cost savings. Once a piece of content is created, it should attract and build increasing traffic over time. You’ll still need to produce quality content on an ongoing basis, but you’ll be able to target users who are actively looking for your products and services without an ongoing monetary investment.
5. Social media marketing
Social media marketing uses social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to:
- Promote your content, products or services
- Build brand awareness and visibility
- Gain fans or followers
- Engage current and prospective customers
- Drive traffic to your website.
It requires an ongoing advertising spend and, most of the time, a website landing page designed specifically for users from that ad spend. As soon as your advertising spend ends, the website traffic, likes, and followers end as well.
Why use social media marketing?
- Cost-effective marketing. With a relatively low budget, you can use social media marketing to expose your audience to your brand even when they’re not thinking about it. You will, however, need to incorporate A/B testing, or some other form of optimization, in order to get the most out of your ad spend and achieve high conversion rates.
- Audience interaction. About 45% of the world’s population uses social media, and most of them use it about three hours per day. Choose the right channel(s), do some research on how the advertising platform works, and take advantage of the opportunity to interact directly with your audience.
- Improved brand loyalty. Research indicates that 71% of people who have a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend that brand to friends and family.
6. Email marketing
Email marketing is the practice of sending promotional and informational emails to build relationships with your audience, convert prospects into buyers, and turn one-time buyers into loyal fans of your brand.
These emails may discuss exclusive deals, promote website content, upcoming sales, or general messages on the behalf of your business.
Why use email marketing?
- Traffic to your website. Your emails should contain links to pages on your website. Key performance indicators include the open rate (how many recipients opened your email) and the click-through rate (the ratio of users who click on a link in the email to the number of users who opened the email).
- Cost effective. Compared to other marketing strategies like direct mail, SEM or SMM, email marketing usually is cost-effective. Your investment will include a subscription to email marketing software that sends thousands of emails simultaneously, and the cost of someone to administer the program.
- Delivers targeted messages. Everyone on an email list has opted-in to receive information. Which means: They want to hear from you! By further segmenting your list, you can deliver super-targeted information that is likely to be well-received.
7. PPC advertising
Pay-per-click advertising or PPC is a strategy in which you (the advertiser) pay every time a user clicks on one of your online ads. It’s often done through Google Ads, Bing Ads, or other search engines, and it can be an effective way to reach people who are searching for terms related to your business.
However, costs can range from relatively inexpensive, to thousands of dollars per month, depending on the size and scope of your campaign. And, when a campaign is discontinued, the traffic generated by that campaign is also discontinued.
When users click on pay-per-click ads, they are directed to dedicated landing pages that encourage them to take a certain action:
- Make a purchase
- Complete a form
- Download a report, or similar.
If you implement a PPC campaign, your primary goal will likely be to increase sales or leads.
Why use PPC?
- Easy tracking. With a PPC platform like Google Ads, you’ll be able to track how many people view your ads as well as how many click on them and what percentage of them convert. You’ll know instantly how your campaigns perform.
- Controlled spend. PPC advertising is pay as you go. You’ll be able to change or pause ad campaigns that are underperforming, and you don’t have to commit to a certain advertising spend.
- Instant results. Other marketing strategies like SEO and content marketing take time to work. PPC advertising, however, offers a fast way to set up a campaign and get results right away.
8. Video marketing
Video used to promote your products, services, and brand may include product demos, interviews with thought leaders in your industry, customer testimonials, or how-to videos.
You can add videos to your website, PPC landing pages, or social media outlets to encourage more conversions and sales.
KPIs may include:
- Engagement. Time spent watching the video.
- View count. How many times it was watched.
- Click-through rate. How many users clicked through to the website.
- Conversion rate. Number of leads, prospects, or customers content generates.