No matter what sector you are based in, or the size of your business, if you want to grow your business in 2022 and beyond, you need to invest in a digital marketing strategy. In 2019, e-commerce sales made up 13.8% of total retail sales worldwide according to Statista. In 2021, this figure jumped to 19.6% and by 2025, it is expected that this figure will grow to 24.5% meaning that nearly a quarter of all retail sales worldwide will be made online.
If your business has not yet shifted its model to support online sales, then you are potentially missing out on a quarter of all your potential sales by 2025.
The increasing availability of smartphones around the world, coupled with improved internet access, especially in developing countries, is also contributing to the growth in online sales.
Now is the time to shift your focus to digital and whilst physical stores are still an important part of many business models, it is crucial that you are also prioritizing your digital marketing strategy in order to maximize your potential sales and revenue and grow your business.
Digital marketing strategy
A digital marketing strategy is an important part of growing your business online. Whilst many small businesses will often launch a website in the hope of driving more traffic, sales, and revenue, without a strategy in place, their time, effort, and resources can be wasted.
This applies to all aspects of digital marketing. First, you need to understand your audience and the platforms they are using. Then, you need to determine which platforms you are most likely to be able to engage with them. Then, you need to determine your overarching digital strategy, identifying which platforms you will use and setting clear goals for each of those platforms.
From there, you will be able to determine the best tactics you can deploy across those platforms to drive maximum engagement, and ultimately, drive sales and revenue.
Digital marketing strategies should be bespoke to every business and whilst you can look at other businesses for inspiration, your own digital marketing strategy needs to reflect the goals of your business as well as your target audience.
Buyer personas
One of the best places to start when it comes to creating a digital marketing strategy is to create some buyer personas.
These can be super-detailed and go into a lot of depth about each of your ideal customers, however, you can also simplify the process to provide your team with some basic information about the type of customers you are targeting.
When you know and understand what your customers want, the platforms they use, and the type of content they typically engage with (blogs, videos, podcasts, etc), then you are in a much better position to tailor not only the platforms you use but also messaging you use to reach different personas.
Goal Setting
Once you understand your audience and the different “groups” of people you are trying to reach, you can then start to set goals for your digital marketing activity, making these specific to the platforms you are using.
Whilst the ultimate goal is to increase sales and revenue, some of your goals are likely to revolve around raising brand awareness, especially for small businesses. Social media platforms are typically a good avenue for raising brand awareness so your goals for your social media channels are likely to be very different from the goals you set for your website or paid campaigns for example.
It’s important to tailor the goals to the platform and whilst social e-commerce has undoubtedly gathered traction over the past couple of years, it is still a place where you should proceed with caution when it comes to direct sales and revenue, especially if you don’t yet have brand awareness or a presence in the market.
Learn from big brands
Leading global brands all have digital marketing strategies and whilst this is not something they will actively publish, you can often gain insights into their strategies and tactics by looking at their website and finding out more about their business.
Make sure you are following not only your competitors on social media but also leading brands so that you can align your own audience. Seeing how other brands, not necessarily in your sector, target people with similar interests to your own buyer personas can really help to guide your own digital marketing strategy.
Let’s say we are a sports brand. We would obviously look at the likes of Adidas and Nike for inspiration as two of the world’s leading brands in the sector, however, we might also consider sports betting sites like Betway for inspiration. Looking on their website, they talk about the content they create and how they are “a multi-disciplined team of journalists, designers, video producers and social experts who create compelling content for digital and social platforms.”
From this, we can start to get a sense that the tactic they use to engage their audience and drive more people to their site is to be an expert across all areas of sport, interviewing leading sports professionals and providing the best possible insights to drive more people to place bets on their site.
If I am a sportswear company, I might consider some of these tactics for my own brand, helping to add authority and build trust with my audience through expert tips and commentary.
Summary
If you haven’t already, it’s time to create a digital marketing strategy to help drive your business forward. If you do have a digital marketing strategy in place, make sure you keep up with the latest digital marketing trends – from social media to email marketing to SEO – maximizing your potential in the digital space and growing your customer base through a multi-channel approach.