Why Your Company Needs a Digital Marketing Strategy

May 10, 2022

With the growing popularity of the internet, businesses that have a robust digital marketing strategy are setting themselves up for success. Strand360 explains why.

What is Digital Marketing? The Six Pillars.

Digital marketing, often referred to as online marketing, occurs when a business utilises the internet to connect with existing and prospective customers. The digital channels that are harnessed for digital marketing include social media, search engines, emails, websites and more. There are six pillars of digital activities that a business should focus on for a successful digital marketing strategy. These are:

1. Planning and governance: This includes the development of strategic initiatives, budgets and ROI, market integration, resources and skills and more.
2. Goals and measurement: It is important to analyse how well your digital strategy is working through forecasts, KPIs and digital dashboards.
3. Media: Understanding the various types of media you can utilise to conduct your digital marketing is essential. These include paid media, earned media, always-on and campaign investment.
4. Content: It is said that content is king and producing the right type of content can give you the edge over competitors. Begin with developing a strong content marketing strategy that includes top-of-funnel (TOFU), middle-of-funnel (MOFU) and bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content.
5. Experience: Online users who connect with you must have an enjoyable experience to convert them to paying customers. This can be done through building the right kind of website journey, landing pages and personalised content.
6. Conversation messaging: Build relationships with your customers through email marketing, mobile messaging, human-assisted chats and automation.

Why is Digital Marketing Essential to Your Business?

To Understand Your Online Market

The online market as well as customer behaviours and profiles are different from ;traditional marketing channels, like printing services. Therefore, having a structured digital marketing strategy can help you better understand the online market and your position in it.

To Understand Your Businesses' Direction

Without a digital marketing strategy, your business may not have a clear direction and goals. Without these, it is near-impossible to find success in the online market.

To Understand Your Online Customers and Their Needs

As mentioned previously, online customer behaviour is different from traditional customers you can meet in person. With a digital marketing strategy, you can analyse what online customers are looking for and give them what they need.

To Stay Ahead of Your Competitor(s)

Your competitors may already be excelling in their digital marketing. Thus, you need to keep an eye out on their strategies and build on them. Do not copy them, but instead, find gaps in their online journeys that you can fill for better customer experience.

How Important is Digital Marketing Today?

The best way to understand the importance of digital marketing is to read the numbers.

1. In 2019, internet advertising revenue reached $8.76 billion in Canada.
2. 40% of the global spend on digital marketing is credited to Canada and the US.

Businesses must remember that digital marketing is more important than ever before due to the rising number of customers who shop and connect online. With the advent of smartphones and other digital devices as well as the pandemic, people prefer shopping, working and networking on the internet. 

According to reports, over two billion people shopped online in 2020 and e-commerce sales doubled due to the pandemic. With such persuasive statistics, it is vital that businesses tap into this resource to meet their business goals.

For more information on how to develop your own digital marketing strategy, contact Strand360.