Digital Marketing Strategies: Ultimate 2023 Guide
What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy is a plan for how your business will reach a specific marketing goal, such as increasing website traffic or online visibility. It’s essentially your game plan for achieving your marketing goals.
In this guide, we’re covering everything you need to know about a digital marketing strategy. Here’s a quick overview of everything we’ll explore:
Digital Marketing Strategy Guide Overview
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What is a digital marketing strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is a plan for how your company will establish an Internet presence through various online channels. The goal of a marketing strategy is to increase your online visibility to reach more members of your target audience and encourage them to become paying customers.
Marketing strategy vs. marketing tactic
When researching digital marketing, you might hear the terms marketing strategy and marketing tactic. So, what are and what’s the difference between them?
A marketing strategy is a detailed, organized plan that outlines how you’ll reach your goals through Internet marketing.
A marketing tactic is a specific action you’ll take to implement your strategy. Common examples of marketing tactics include sending emails to customers and leads, creating blog posts and articles, and launching advertisements.
Marketing strategy vs. marketing campaign
You may also hear the term marketing campaign while your developing your strategy. Let’s dive into how it differs from a digital marketing strategy.
Like we discussed above, your marketing strategy is your game plan that outlines how you’ll reach your target audience online and convert them into customers. It determines your overall marketing and business goals.
A marketing campaign is a promotion that’s designed to help you achieve a specific objective in your strategy rather than your overall goal. Campaigns typically have a start and end date. For example, you may launch a series of ads on Google to generate more traffic over a period of four months.
7 types of digital marketing strategies
Now that you know the answer to the question, “what is a digital marketing strategy,” let’s explore the different types!
7 Types of Digital Marketing Strategies
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of improving your website so that it ranks highly in search engine results for keywords and phrases related to your business. The more keywords you rank for — and the higher you rank — the more people will see and become familiar with your website and business.
SEO aims to direct more traffic to your website from members of your target audience. These are consumers who are actively searching for the products and services you offer.
Why use SEO?
When it comes to digital marketing strategies, look at SEO as a requirement. It intercepts every member of your target audience — no matter where they are in your buying funnel. The reason is that almost every user begins their search for a new product or service with a search engine.
For example, did you know that 80 percent of consumers do their product research online? Or, that after searching for something, more than half of users discover a new company or product. With SEO as one of your online marketing strategies, that could be your business.
2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
PPC is a paid form of advertising that relies on an auction-based system.
With PPC, you bid on keywords that you want your ads to show up for — your ad triggers when a user’s search includes your keyword. These ads then appear at the top of search results, above organic listings. If a user decides to click on your advertisement, you then pay for that click.
In other words, you don’t pay for ad space — only for the results.
PPC aims to reach searchers with transactional queries, meaning they’re ready to buy your products or services. When they click on your ad, they’ll arrive at your landing page and see a call-to-action (CTA) to convert, whether by purchasing a product, signing up for an email newsletter, or another action.
Why use PPC?
PPC is one of the most cost-effective paid advertising methods.
For many businesses just getting started with digital marketing or looking for a quick boost, PPC is a useful online marketing strategy. It propels your website to the top of search results, which can help if your company’s organic search result ranking is several pages back.
3. Content marketing
In content marketing, your business focuses on reaching, engaging, and connecting with consumers via content. This content, which can include videos, blog posts, infographics, and more, provides values to users.
For example, if you run a business that sells ski and snowboard supplies, you could write an article about what a beginner needs for their first outing. You could also write articles on how to take care of a snowboard, and what accessories can help improve ski performance.
The overall goal of content marketing as a digital media strategy is to provide valuable information to your target audience, increase traffic, and generate conversions. From a technical standpoint, content marketing also focuses on optimizing your content for search engines to improve your visibility in search results.
Why use content marketing?
With the ability to connect with audiences throughout the buying funnel, as well as double website conversion rates, content marketing is a smart digital marketing strategy to use. The best part is that it costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing efforts.
4. Email marketing
Email marketing is an Internet marketing strategy that involves nurturing leads, building brand loyalty, and promoting your products or services to your audience through email.
Email marketing focuses on retaining existing customers, as well as gaining new ones. It’s an excellent technique for building brand awareness, keeping your company top-of-mind, and encouraging repeat purchases.
The idea is that, while these users may not need your services or products now, they’ll remember your brand when it’s time to make a purchase. That brand awareness encourages them to choose your company when they’re ready to buy.
The main objective of email marketing as a digital marketing initiative is to stay at the top of mind for potential customers, and provide current clients with beneficial information, like relevant industry news, and personalized content, like product coupons, that keep them coming back.
Why use email marketing?
When it comes to email marketing, it offers tons of benefits. That’s why more than 80 percent of companies use email marketing, from manufacturing operations to retail stores to technology businesses.
Some of the biggest benefits of email marketing as a digital strategy include:
- A return on investment (ROI) of $44 for every $1 invested
- A 50% boost in sales compared to other lead generation methods
5. Social media marketing
Social media marketing focuses on building brand awareness and increasing conversions. A social media marketing campaign can feature one or several types of social media platforms, like:
In addition to marketing your company on social media, this strategy often focuses on advertising too.
Why use social media?
With less than 30 percent of companies using social media as a marketing strategy, there is an immense opportunity for businesses that invest in it. Even better, more than 25 percent of a user’s Internet time is spent on social media — meaning it’s a perfect outlet for connecting.
6. Voice search optimization
With voice search optimization, your company optimizes existing and new website content for voice search. The intention is to earn your website the featured snippet or position zero spot in Google search results.
Why?
The various voice assistants, from Siri to Amazon Echo, use the featured snippet to respond to voice searches. So, if a user asks, “how do I clean a stinky dishwasher?” Amazon Echo or Siri would reply with the featured snippet, which you can see below.
As search queries differ when using voice, versus text, voice search optimization is important. If you’re a local business, this strategy is even more critical, as many users rely on their mobile devices — and voice search — to find a restaurant, salon, or hardware store near them.
Why use voice search optimization?
With more people purchasing smartphones, as well as voice-activated speakers, voice search is becoming a new — and popular — way to search. As a result, it’s one of the newest digital marketing strategies for companies to adopt.
7. Video marketing
Via video marketing, your company increases its reach, grows its revenue, and expands its operations. Like content marketing, as well as email marketing, your business focuses on creating informational and valuable videos for its target audience.
A few types of videos for video marketing include:
- Instructional
- Announcement
- Behind the scenes
- Event
- And more
No matter which types of videos you create, you’re working to build brand awareness among your target audience. Like social media, email, and content marketing, this brand awareness can lead to valuable conversions later.
Why use video marketing?
With the ability to improve conversion rates, video marketing is becoming a go-to online marketing strategy. It’s also an excellent addition to email marketing and content marketing, which both benefit from using videos.
How to build a digital marketing strategy
Now that you know the top digital marketing strategies to invest in, you may be wondering how to get started.
How to Build a Digital Marketing Strategy in 7 Steps
1. Build buyer personas
Buyer personas represent the people who are most likely to purchase your products or services. In other words, they are the people you want to reach with your marketing messages so that you can maximize your sales and revenue.
Creating a buyer persona involves thinking about your target audiences’ interests and needs. Once you’ve created a buyer persona, you can tailor your marketing messages to resonate with their unique interests to encourage them to buy from you.
To create a buyer persona, you need to understand your target audience. Think about user demographics, as well as the motivations that drive people to choose your company, products, and services.
2. Set goals and objectives
The whole point of developing a digital marketing strategy is to reach your goals. That’s why it’s important to set clear goals and objectives that you want to attain with your strategy right away.
Use specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals (also known as S.M.A.R.T. goals) to guide your strategy. Think about your organization’s short- and long-term goals for growth.
For example, you might set a goal to drive $300,000 in revenue this year. You can set objectives to reach that goal, such as driving more traffic to your website, increasing product sales, and more.
3. Audit your existing digital channels
Before you implement any new Internet marketing strategies, it’s a good idea to audit your existing digital channels, such as your website, social media accounts, content, and email campaigns.
Conducting an audit involves assessing your current results and campaigns to determine what you can improve and what’s working well for you. You can then use these insights to inform your overall strategy.
For example, you might notice that most of your website traffic is coming from search results on Google. As a result, you may want to invest more into an SEO strategy in the future to drive even more traffic to your site.
4. Establish a marketing budget
It’s important to ensure that your marketing strategy doesn’t break the break and fits within your company’s overall financial goals.
Establish a realist budget for your strategy so you know how much you can invest in different campaigns.
You may also want to create multiple budgets for your strategy. For example, you may want to determine a budget for your advertising spend and a separate budget for creating content.
5. Decide which digital marketing strategies you want to invest in
Now that you’ve established a budget, you can decide which online marketing strategies you want to invest in.
You want to make sure the strategies you choose will help you achieve your wider business goals.
Focus on the techniques that offer the most value for your business and industry, versus trendy strategies.
6. Plan out your strategies
Guide your strategy to success by planning your strategy. If you’re advertising, determine your ad spend. If you’re publishing content, build your content calendar.
Determine who on your team will work on the strategy and what their role will be.
7. Monitor and report
Monitor and measure the performance of your strategies by tracking their performance.
Measuring the success of your Internet strategies helps you understand how you can improve them moving forward so you can earn a higher ROI. For example, you might notice that your social media ads perform better than your PPC ads.
Then, you can invest more in social media ads and less in your PPC ads to drive even more sales and revenue for your business and ensure you aren’t wasting your budget on campaigns that don’t help your company grow.
Use Google tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads to keep a pulse on your strategies and their ROI.
FAQs about digital marketing strategies
Get answers to common questions about online marketing strategies here!
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the practice of promoting your business through online channels, like search, social media, paid advertising, and email.
What is the most effective digital marketing strategy?
The most effective digital marketing strategy will depend on your unique business, industry, and target market.
However, many companies see success with SEO. That’s because today, a lot of people use search engines like Google to find local businesses near them, find answers to their questions, and research products and services.
An SEO strategy is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your company online, drive more traffic to your website, and earn sales and revenue.
What is a digital marketing campaign?
A digital marketing campaign is a promotion that’s designed to help you achieve a specific objective in your strategy rather than your overall goal. Campaigns typically have a start and end date.
What is a digital marketing tactic?
A marketing tactic is a specific action you’ll take to implement your strategy. Common examples of marketing tactics include sending emails to customers and leads, creating blog posts and articles, and launching advertisements.
Our digital marketing campaigns impact the metrics that improve your bottom line.
See More Results
WebFX has driven the following results for clients:
$3 billion
In client revenue
7.8 million
Leads for our clients
5.2 million
Client phone calls
Are you ready to start using digital marketing strategies?
Digital marketing is one of the best ways to reach new customers and achieve your business goals. Plus, it offers a variety of strategies, from video to email to social, to reach your unique goals. Whether you’re looking to increase sales, revenue, awareness, or loyalty, digital marketing is the way.
The success of your strategy, however, depends on the development and execution of them. That is why businesses partner with WebFX, a full-service digital strategy agency that provides custom, results-driven end-to-end marketing solutions.
Start choosing and building your personalized strategy by contacting our award-winning marketing agency today! Contact us online or give us a ring at 888-601-5359 to get a free quote for your next digital marketing strategy.
