Key Tips for Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy

Having developed many digital marketing strategies for several B2B and tech companies I have learnt a few tricks along the way.  Here are some top tips for developing your digital marketing strategy.

Everything is constantly changing

The only certainty in the digital world is constant change.  This is hardly surprising when you think of all the many moving parts in digital marketing from search ranks, shares, cost per click, impressions, conversion rates, bounce rates, not to mention the influence of competitors and even economical circumstances all impacting on your performance. So you need to build in flexibility into your strategy to ensure you can adapt to the changing online world and have a plan B and even plan C for hitting targets.

Here are my tips for pulling together a digital marketing strategy.

You won’t hit your exact plan

It is rare for any company to hit exactly the KPIs earmarked in their digital strategy. However if you have devised it properly, basing it on historical performance and building in realistic planned improvements, whilst you may not hit it exactly as planned, you should hit it. E.g. you might not get the website visitors you’d planned but your conversion rate may be higher.  You may get more leads but less move into the qualified stage etc.

Be open to experimentation

Part of continual improvement sometimes involves failure.  So plan in testing, experiments and new activities to try, but perhaps keep a separate budget outside of your core plan so you can afford to learn what works and what doesn’t, without it impacting on your ability to hit your targets.  Once you learn what works, you can pull this into your core plan.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Given everything is constantly changing in the online world, if you are over reliant on any one activity you can be leaving yourself vulnerable to failure. Your digital marketing strategy should include a variety of activities which often complement each other (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts) and this will ensure if one activity doesn’t work as planned, you will still stand a chance of hitting your targets.

If you would like help or advice in building your digital strategy, contact me today.