How to create a digital marketing strategy (Beginners guide)

Last Updated on February 17, 2023 by Tumto Siram

In order to succeed in the world of business, you need to be proactive and strategic with your marketing efforts. That means having a strong online presence.

But creating a digital marketing strategy can be overwhelming if you're not sure where to start. So, I've put together a comprehensive guide to help you get started.

In this post, I've laid down a 13-step process that will help you create a solid digital marketing strategy for your business.

But before we move ahead with the strategies, let's have a little grasp of what digital marketing is.

What is Digital marketing?

Digital marketing is the process of using digital channels to promote or market products and services.

This can be done through various digital mediums, such as social media, email, search engines, or websites.

A digital marketing strategy is an overall plan that businesses use to achieve their digital marketing goals. This may involve various digital marketing tactics.

Lets' have a look at them.

Types of Digital marketing strategies

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
2. content marketing.
3. Social media marketing.
4. Email marketing.
5. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
6. Affiliate marketing.
7. Video Marketing.
8. Mobile marketing.
9. Audio marketing.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website and its content to rank higher in search engine results. This will help you attract more organic (or free) traffic to your site.

To do this, you'll need to focus on keyword research, optimizing your website's title and meta tags, and creating high-quality content. You can also use backlinks to improve your website's ranking.

2. Content marketing

Content marketing is all about creating and sharing valuable content to attract and convert your target audience into customers or clients.

This may involve blog posts, infographics, ebooks, white papers, case studies, videos, or other types of content.

The goal is to provide your audience with useful information that will help them make a buying decision.

3. Social media marketing

Social media marketing is the process of using social media platforms to promote and market your products or services.

This can be done through various social media activities, such as posting content, running ads, or holding contests or giveaways.

4. Email marketing

Email marketing is the process of collecting email leads through various tactics like using lead magnets and later sending promotional or transactional emails to your customers or clients.

This may involve sending newsletters, announcements, or other types of email. The goal is the same which is to convert your leads into customers or clients.

5. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a form of online advertising where you pay for each click on your ad.

Although PPC costs you some money, It's one of the most effective and also the fastest way to drive traffic to your website, especially if you're targeting keywords with high commercial intent.

6. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing where you pay affiliates for each new customer they bring to your business.

This can be an effective way to grow your business, especially if you have a niche product or service. Most businesses nowadays use affiliate marketing as one of their digital marketing strategies

7. Video Marketing

Video marketing is the process of creating and sharing videos online. It's mostly done through various video-sharing platforms, such as YouTube or Vimeo.

With the growing popularity of video, this can be an effective way to engage your audience and promote your products or services.

8. Mobile marketing

In mobile marketing, businesses use SMS or MMS to send messages to their customers. This can be done through various mobile marketing platforms, such as SMS marketing, MMS marketing, or push notifications.

As the number of smartphone users is growing worldwide, mobile marketing has become one of the most effective digital marketing strategies used by businesses.

9. Audio marketing

Although it's not as popular as other types of digital marketing, audio marketing can be a great way to reach your target audience. This may involve creating podcasts, audio ads, or other types of audio content.

Now let's look at the importance of digital marketing in businesses.

Importance of digital marketing

• By developing and executing a digital marketing strategy, businesses can effectively reach their target audiences and promote their products or services.

• Additionally, digital marketing can help businesses build brand awareness and establish an online presence. Ultimately, digital marketing is an effective way to reach customers and grow a business.

Digital marketing strategies vary depending on the type of business and its goals.

To create an effective digital marketing strategy, businesses should first identify their digital marketing goals. They should then develop a plan that outlines how they will achieve these goals through various digital channels.

Once the plan is in place, businesses can begin executing their online marketing strategies. And by continuously monitoring and evaluating their results, they can adjust their strategy as needed to ensure maximum success.

Now Let's take a closer look at how a beginner can get started in digital marketing and put their plan into action.

How to create a digital marketing strategy?

Every digital marketer has their own method for putting their digital marketing strategy into action. But there is a basic structure that most digital marketing plans should include.

To make things easier, I've made it a 13 steps guide for beginners to follow in order to implement their digital marketing strategy.

1. Define your business's goals

Businesses need to define their goals before they can create a digital marketing strategy that will help them achieve those goals.

Once you know what your goals are, you can research your target audience to learn more about them. This will help you choose the right digital marketing channels to reach them.

For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you'll want to use channels like social media and content marketing.

And if your goal is to generate leads, you'll want to use email marketing and pay-per-click advertising.

2. Research your target audience

Once you know your business's goals, you need to research your target audience. This will help you understand who they are, what they're interested in, and how they prefer to consume information.

You can use demographic data like age, gender, location, and income to learn more about your target audience. You can also use psychographic data like interests, values, and lifestyles to understand them better.

Some places you can use for your research purpose are social media forums or groups, your followers and analytics from your website.

However, the fastest and best way to research your audience would be through surveys using paid advertising on Facebook and Google.

3. Create a budget for your digital marketing efforts

Once you have a good understanding of the digital marketing strategies you want to use, it's time to create a budget.

This will help you determine how much you can afford to spend on each strategy and tactic.

Keep in mind that some digital marketing tactics, such as paid advertising, can be quite expensive. Others, such as social media marketing, are relatively inexpensive.

The best way to maintain and keep track of your budget would be to use a tool like Quickbooks or Freshbook to manage and track your spending and profit/loss.

4. Set up your website

Your website is one of the most important assets for your business. It's where prospects go to learn more about your products and services. That's why it's important to make sure your website is set up for success.

Some things you'll need to do to set up your website include:

• A domain name: Namecheap and GoDaddy are one of the cheapest domain name providers around.
• Find a web hosting provider: You can either choose Bluehost for hosting as a beginner but if you would like managed hosting for a bit higher pricing I would recommend WPEngine or WPX.
• Create your website: Install WordPress in your hosting and start building your website. If you don't know how to install WordPress, check this post out.

5. Create compelling content

After you're done with your website, start creating compelling content as it is essential for any successful digital marketing strategy.

The content you create needs to be interesting and relevant to your target audience, and it must be optimized for search engines so that people can easily find it.

Which can be done by implementing an effective keyword strategy. it will also help bring organic traffic to your website.

Additionally, you need to use social media platforms to share your content with your customers, make a digital presence and build relationships with them.

Some important tools you can use that are best for creating content are:

• Frase io or Writesonic: These are artificial intelligence-powered online software that can help you create website content faster such as blog posts, marketing copy etc.
• Canva: One of the easiest yet best-designing tools for small businesses and large organisations alike. Best for creating content for social media platforms, ads etc.
• InVideo: This is yet another Ai tool that allows you to create videos from texts or articles with just a few clicks.
• Wondershare Filmora Pro: Additionally you can use this tool to edit your videos if you're creating content for YouTube.

6. Optimize your website for search engines

It's important to make sure your website is optimized for search engines so that your target audience can easily find your content.

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves using the right keywords and phrases in your content so that search engines will rank your website high in their search results. And tools like Frase or Surfer can help you with that.

Beginners tip to optimize your website for search engines:

• Connect Google Analytics.
• Submit your site to Google search console and Bing.
• Create an XML sitemap.
• Install the RankMath SEO plugin on your website. (You can do all the three using RankMath SEO plugin)

7. Choose the right digital marketing channels

When creating a digital marketing strategy, it's important to consider which digital marketing channels are the best fit for your business and your target audience.

Each channel has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to choose the ones that will reach your target audience most effectively.

Below are the most popular digital marketing channels most businesses and marketers use.

The most popular and effective digital marketing channels:

• Social media marketing: (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
• Content marketing: (blogs, articles, ebooks)
• Email marketing: (Newsletters, Short course)
• Pay-per-click advertising: (Google Ads, Bing Ads)

8. Convert website visitors into leads

Once you have the traffic coming to your website, the next step is to convert those visitors into leads.

A lead is someone who has shown interest in your product or service by filling out a form or subscribing to your email list.

To convert website visitors into leads, you need to have a lead capture form on your website and use tools like AWeber or GetResponse to automate your email marketing campaigns.

9. Analyze and adjust your strategy as needed

As you create your digital marketing strategy, it's important to keep your business goals in mind.

You should also research your target audience and choose the right digital marketing channels to reach them.

Additionally, creating compelling content is essential for any successful digital marketing strategy.

Once you have all of these elements in place, you can analyze and adjust your strategy as needed to ensure that you're achieving your desired results.

10. Set up tracking and reporting

You should continuously analyze and adjust your digital marketing strategy as needed based on your results.

Set up tracking and reporting so you can see how well your campaigns are performing and make changes accordingly.

Additionally, it's important to stay up-to-date on the latest digital marketing trends and experiment with new ideas and tactics.

11. Stay up-to-date on digital marketing trends

It's important to stay up-to-date on digital marketing trends in order to stay ahead of the competition.

By knowing what strategies and tactics are working, you can create a digital marketing strategy that will be successful for your business.

Some of the latest trends include:

• Using artificial intelligence: Digital marketing is becoming more and more reliant on artificial intelligence (AI). This technology can help you automate tasks, personalize content, and make better decisions about your marketing campaigns.
• Using chatbots: Chatbots are computer programs that can mimic human conversation. They can be used to answer customer questions, provide support, and even make sales. Chatbots are an important part of digital marketing because they offer a personalized experience that can scale to meet the needs of a large number of customers.
• Video marketing: As I've mentioned before video is one of the most popular types of content on the internet, and it's no surprise that it's also being used more and more for marketing purposes. Videos can be used to promote your product or service, show off your brand, and even educate your customers.

12. Experiment with new ideas and tactics

It's important to experiment with new ideas and tactics in order to find what works best for your business.

Try out different digital marketing strategies and see which ones generate the most leads and sales. Be sure to track your results so you can see which strategies are most effective.

Also, don't be afraid to change up your tactics if something isn't working. Sometimes all it takes is a little tweaking to make a big difference.

13. Have patience!

Creating a digital marketing strategy is not a quick or easy process, but it is worth it. By taking the time to create a well-thought-out plan, you will be able to set your business up for success.

Be patient and put in the work upfront and you will reap the rewards down the road.

Final Say

So there you have it, 13 steps that will help you create a successful digital marketing strategy for your business. I hope this guide was helpful and gave you some ideas on how to get started.

But remember, the most important thing is to be proactive and always experiment with new strategies.

The digital landscape is constantly changing, so make sure you're always up-to-date on the latest trends and changes in order to stay ahead of the competition. 

Please feel free to share this guide with your friends and colleagues, and don't forget to leave us a comment below letting us know what you think!