A Custom Digital Marketing Strategy Is No Longer a Nice-to-Have

In times of trouble and during economic downturns, digital marketing can provide your brand with much-needed cost-effective strategies to stay relevant and competitive. Digital marketing relies on digital channels like social media and search engine optimization (SEO), which carry a greater likelihood of conversion. In fact, studies have found that businesses that invest in SEO see an average of $14 in ROI for every dollar spent.

Digital marketing also allows businesses to precisely target specific audiences, which helps reduce the cost of advertising. With digital marketing, you can use video to make posts more compelling and personalize your strategies based on data. These capabilities also help digital marketing drive results and profit, as 64% of people who watch a brand video online are more likely to go on to make a purchase.

Digital marketing also offers marketers the ability to measure, track, and analyze results in real time. This capability, coupled with digital marketing’s inherent flexibility, allows you to shape your strategies according to what works for your industry or brand without shelling out big chunks of your marketing budget in advance.

All of these benefits together help digital marketing stand out in the traditional marketing vs. digital marketing debate. While many of us were already convinced of the benefits of developing a digital marketing strategy, those advantages have become even more prominent in uncertain economic times. Now is the best time to begin developing custom digital marketing strategies that meet your business and audience’s needs.

Most of us realize that digital marketing is a good idea for brand awareness, and around half of marketers are increasing their content marketing budgets this year. However, we’ve found in conversations with business leaders that many are still unsure about how custom digital marketing strategies work.

For example, some leaders believe digital marketing efforts are a one-time investment. In reality, however, digital marketing is more of an ongoing iterative process. As such, achieving long-term success takes consistent monitoring, testing, and optimization. There isn’t one single strategy that will suit all businesses, either. Every brand and every audience is unique; a successful strategy is one that can react to environmental and individual shifts and provide consistently positive results.

We’ve also spoken to business leaders that fear digital marketing could never work for them because they lack an online presence. Fortunately, digital marketing can benefit brands that have never even created a website, and local businesses can leverage custom digital marketing strategies like local SEO to improve their visibility and attract more customers.

With a custom marketing strategy, you can stay one step ahead of your competitors and ensure your efforts are effectively engaging your target audience. But how can you build a flexible, custom marketing strategy focused on your specific goals that responds to industry trends as you work? The following three steps will help you get started on the right track.

1. Establish your target audience.

Understanding your target audience is a critical component of any digital marketing strategy. It involves identifying your ideal customer, including their demographics, behavior patterns, pain points, and interests. You can gather this information through market research, customer surveys, website analytics, and social media insights. Once you have a picture of your ideal customer, you can start speaking directly to them.

2. Define your goals.

A custom digital marketing strategy should have specific, measurable goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help you track your progress. What do you want to achieve with your strategy? If your goal is to increase website traffic and make leads warmer as they travel through your pages, you could track click-through rates and bounce rates. If your goal is to cut costs and increase your budget, your chosen KPI might be customer acquisition costs instead.

3. Explore digital marketing’s playground.

Once you know who you’re trying to attract and what your aims are, you can start picking out channels and tactics that are most likely to help. These tactics could include a combination of social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, paid advertising, and content marketing. Also, take time to consider certain tactics that will amplify the others. For example, employ video marketing tactics to boost messages, as well as educate and engage audience members who are exploring digital channels.

Digital marketing has become an essential tool for businesses to stay competitive and relevant amid today’s global crises. As a cost-effective solution, custom digital marketing strategies offer endless possibilities through experimentation, video content, and personalized targeting to generate increased growth and revenue.

To truly reap all of the benefits associated with a digital marketing approach, you need industry experts leading and executing that strategy. At Intero Digital, we can help you navigate every step of the process and exceed your marketing goals, whether that’s brand awareness, lead generation, improved SEO, or any other success metric. Let us partner with you to take your business to the next level with a custom marketing strategy.