From Basics to Brilliance: Your Digital Marketing Roadmap

In this overview of the digital marketing strategy, we'll start off with an introduction to digital marketing to give you the fundamental knowledge of what the concept entails. Whether you're familiar with the concept of digital marketing, or you're simply a beginner looking to expand your knowledge, this blog post will help you obtain everything you need to know before diving into more details.

Defining Digital Marketing  

Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, is a system that has the same objective as offline marketing but uses technological and digital media and advertising channels and has undoubtedly become one of the main positioning and marketing strategies of all types of organizations. Now let us explore the various components that make up digital marketing, as shown in the image below.

This medium allows products or services to be promoted through platforms and tools, applying strategies and offering specialized services to provide a satisfactory user experience.  

• Branding: This is the process of creating a strong, positive perception of a company, its products, or services in the customer's mind by combining elements such as logo, design, mission statement, and a consistent theme throughout all marketing communications.
• Website: This is made up of a variety of web pages that are linked together. These pages are usually hosted on the same server and created and managed by individuals, groups, or organizations as a source of information.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
• Advertise: Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service, or idea.
• Social Media: Social media refers to online platforms that allow users to interact with each other, share content, and create communities around similar interests.
• ‍Content Marketing: Content marketing involves creating and sharing online material (like blog posts, videos, and social media posts) that doesn't explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. ‍
• Viral: In a digital marketing context, "viral" refers to content that becomes extremely popular in a short period, typically through social media sharing.  ‍
• Service: This component refers to the act of helping or doing work for a customer, which might be a part of the product they are purchasing or something standalone.  

Have you ever thought about what differentiates offline or physical purchases and digital marketing from each other? It's simply the personalization of messages, products, and advertisements thanks to the collection of user data. While marketing consists of a set of techniques and studies that aim to improve the marketing of a product, digital marketing is the development and application of marketing strategies carried out in digital media. All the techniques of the offline world are imitated and translated into a new world, the online world.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

Now that we have established an understanding of the definition of digital marketing, we can now look into what the benefits of digital marketing are:

• Better segmentation capacity: Digital marketing allows segmenting of the market thanks to the information collected from users who browse the internet. This makes advertising campaigns more targeted by incorporating targeting variables such as geography, language, interests, and purchase intent, for example.
• Better targeting: As a consequence of targeting, it can be considered less intrusive, since people will click on those ads that interest them, and a large part of those ads will be related to their tastes and interests.
• Interactive medium: It gives the possibility of creating a community around the brand, being able to create communication between the company and clients, and obtaining feedback. This has also been boosted by social networks, which allow much greater interaction.
• Advanced measurement possibilities: Offers more than those applied to offline market research. It's possible to monitor the actions carried out by the user on the web, with the possibility of obtaining information on personal data, preferences, time spent on the web page, which part of the web page has seemed most interesting, etc.
• Lower costs: The great advantage that digital marketing offers is the ability to take businesses to any part of the world at much lower price points. Through the internet, anyone anywhere in the world can learn about your brand and products.

Digital marketing is the unity of design, creativity, profitability, and analysis, always looking for ROI.  

Now that you understand what digital marketing is, let's explore what a digital marketing strategy is and why it's such a big part of digital marketing. Generally, strategies are essential when you want to plan something important to ensure you're doing everything correctly. In the same way, digital marketing also requires a proper strategy which you will learn about further.

Defining a Strategy for Digital Marketing

Digital marketing strategies are a series of actions that help marketers to achieve their goals through implemented tactics, these tactics are a set of methods used to promote the goods or services of a business through selected online marketing channels. These channels include paid, earned, and owned media and can all support a common campaign around a particular line of business. The adoption of a strategy is closely related to understanding the place and role of the company in the future flow of events. Digital marketing usually involves aspects such as creating content and publishing on social networks, managing emails, and paid ad campaigns, and so on, which is further elaborated below in the digital marketing wheel which consists of:

• Web design: Visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces to enhance user experience and promote brand engagement.
• Email marketing: Personalized email campaigns to connect with customers and drive conversions.
• Social media platforms: Channels that enable community interaction, content sharing, and brand promotion.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimizing web content to increase visibility in search engine results, driving organic traffic to a website. ‍
• Blogging: Creating and publishing informative, engaging content to boost SEO. ‍
• Display ads: Advertisements placed on websites to promote products or services ‍
• Online PR: Managing a brand's online reputation and building relationships with online communities. ‍
• Viral media: Creating content with the potential to be shared rapidly across social platforms. ‍
• Podcasting: Producing and distributing audio content to build brand authority, engage with an audience. ‍
• Pay per click (PPC): Where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked, driving paid traffic to a website. ‍
• Website content: Written, visual, or multimedia content for a website to inform visitors.

Strategy is the means by which they create and control the future. - Charles Harvey

Creating a digital marketing plan can be a bit overwhelming, but it all depends on the size of your business and your goals. If you're a small company, having a website and a social media account may be enough. However, for bigger brands, a more complex plan that involves multiple channels and online spaces is necessary. It's important to have a flexible and well-planned strategy that considers all the relevant spaces and channels where your target audience interacts. By doing so, you can influence opinions, improve your search engine results, and analyze the information provided by these channels to optimize your marketing efforts.

Benefits of Digital Marketing Strategy

Once you have a clear understanding of what a digital marketing strategy is, along with the components that play a vital role in the strategy, you can then move on to exploring the benefits of a digital marketing strategy, which we will explain.

• Helps build meaningful and targeted engagement with borderless and wider audiences  
• Delivers information to a larger number of potential customers in a short time
• More powerful impact on the audience
• Increases brand awareness and customer loyalty in the correct direction
• Measures the results of a marketing campaign transparently and has the ability to make adjustments in real-time
• It's cost effective leading to spending less and gaining more

Why is a Strategy Required?  

Here is the short answer: As with any other aspect of your business, you need an overarching strategy so that you can stay on track and work effectively. That way, instead of wasting your energy on aimless ideas, you can always make the right decisions. If a product or service comes out that nobody knows about, the product/service will not sell. With the help of a suitable strategy, a company and its products and services can be made better known. Companies that don't have a digital marketing strategy don't really have well-defined goals in terms of acquiring new customers or strengthening relationships with existing customers.  

With digital marketing strategies, companies can work easier, more efficiently, and more successfully. Simply put; strategy gives security. Companies save time through specific structures and guidelines. In addition, all marketing-oriented employees are managed with its help. This is particularly important in digital marketing with its diverse forms. Here's what can be achieved with a strategy:

Saving time and money: Each advertising channel and site is chosen deliberately, taking into account the company's individual characteristics. In most cases, this makes it possible to initially successfully set a general vector for further marketing efforts. As a result, the entrepreneur can reach their business objectives more quickly due to a notable decrease in the amount of "alterations", approvals, and "running-in" required. In the case of funding,  funds will not be lost on the same unsuccessfully selected advertising channels, and secondly, you will not have to pay for the same "alterations" and "testing".

Simplification of control: Having a clear scheme of work in front of you can make it easier to orient yourself in the situation and identify where mistakes were made. This can also help in determining the specialist responsible for the errors. For more details on digital marketing strategy, be a part of our Digital Marketing Strategy Online Training.

It is only through the correct execution of a digital marketing strategy that progress can be made in the continuous improvement of other key aspects, such as search engine marketing, user experience, email marketing, or social media marketing.