What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing refers to companies achieving their marketing objectives through the application of digital technologies and media. Digital marketing strategies may include the following:

• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Targeted advertising
• PPC advertising
• Email marketing

In 2012, 67% of marketers were not utilising digital channels according to SmartInsights report. Now that number has reduced, which shows that businesses are realising the significance of digital marketing and taking active steps to prove its potential.

However, the majority of these digital companies market without a strategy, with only 35% having a digital marketing plan integrated into their overall marketing strategy.

Why do you need a digital marketing strategy?

The benefits of having a digital marketing strategy helps in many ways for example:

• Strategies give you direction

Without having specific and measurable SMART goals, it will be difficult to allocate sufficient resources and it will be extremely hard to measure, through analytics, whether you are hitting your targets.

If you don’t have direction or an effective tool, you are will not have a clear strategic goal for what you want to achieve online, whether that is building deeper relationships with existing customers or gaining a new target audience.

Planning digital marketing strategies consists of defining your goals and KPIs so that you can document them down the line. It helps you focus on increasing your reach and gives you exposure to build an effective brand recognition.

• It enables you to understand your market share better

Without a clear strategy, companies could easily underestimate the demand for their digital online services. It is even more likely that you will not understand the dynamics of your online audience including your customer behaviours, customer profiles, and competitors. 

More importantly, companies need to gather extensive research to understand their online marketplace and provide them with options for marketing communications. 

Bark Street Digital can provide support to you and your team to help accelerate your ROI from digital marketing so that you can reach and retain more potential customers. 

• Helps you develop an effective value proposition

Many existing competitors may gain market share, so for you to stand out from the crowd and succeed, you need an effective digital marketing plan. 

A clearly defined digital value proposition can be tailored to your different target customers in order to attract B2B, B2C sales and leads. Ultimately, the content is what engages your audiences through different channels such as search engine optimizations, social media, email marketing, and blogs.

• You will be able to understand your customers better

Although Google Analytics is useful for recognising the volume of website visits, it is not the most measurable medium to understand your customers. However, numbers are not enough – you should be able to obtain sentiment to address your customer’s pain points. Other forms of website user feedback tools will help you to identify and address your weak points by getting the visitor’s views and opinions.

A study showed that 82% of consumers use websites and check reviews and 25% use social media and blogs to find new brands, products, and solutions. Therefore, it is important to build your customer connection through feedback with the right marketing technologies, so you can deliver insights and make decisions quickly. 

• Helps you avoid time and resource-wasting duplication

Having sufficient resources could be wasted if different parts of a marketing department is purchasing different software or tools or using different agencies to perform similar marketing tasks. You could eliminate such costly duplication and have a more cost-effective digital marketing strategy by investing. 

• You can avoid the risks that come with disintegration

Marketing that is accomplished in silos is too common whether that is a specialist digital or content marketer, or a separate digital agency. Digital marketing works better and easier when it is integrated with traditional media and response channels. By focusing on building new technology, it will help you share data across the organisation so that there is clarity in managing your capabilities.

• Enables you to optimise

Once the basic digital marketing efforts have been executed, you can then progress to the continuous improvement of other key aspects of inbound marketing such as podcasts, site user experience, and social media marketing.

A digital strategy is measured by KPIs, so this will give you direction to constantly optimise areas for improvement. Therefore, it will be easier to track and manage the marketing efforts you already have in place.

• Increases your brand awareness

Digital marketing campaigns such as blogging, improving search results, online advertisements, and affiliate marketing, means customers can receive a more personalised experience. 

Making use of images, infographics, short videos will help keep your audiences informed and entertain them. Personalised ad content allows more interactivity with your consumers so that it raises your brand awareness and encourages them to purchase from you in future. 

How can Bark Street Digital help?

As you’ve noticed, digital marketing strategies are important for business growth. Our team can help you get started and guide you step by step so that you can understand your customers better and make significant changes to your business. 

We can help you implement both inbound and outbound marketing techniques to help you retain customers and reach new audiences. 

If you have any questions, please get in touch by calling 01204 263028 or by completing our Contact Us form.

You can find out more about the services we offer at Bark Street Digital by checking out the Our Services page.