How any business can make digital marketing successful

Ellie Buckle

By Ellie Buckle, head of digital and strategy, Purpose Media.

I speak to so many people from various business sectors who aren’t sure where to start with their marketing. And the problem is that the term marketing always sounds like a mountain rather than a mole hill. So unless you have the experience, it can be tricky to know what comes first when it comes to marketing your business online.

The marketing industry has changed so much in the last year, and the speed of digital adoption has almost tripled – changing many industries overnight. It’s now time for a digital first world. A world where you either fight for survival, or you fail. It’s time for businesses to invest in the future by delivering strategic result driven solutions for their customers – and time for permanent change. Below I discuss five tips for your business to start on its digital journey, and how you – like many others, can excel your business online.

Five tips to digital success online

1. Get to know your customers

Understanding your audience and what your customers want is one of the most underestimated elements of marketing. Clients I deal with always want to start their marketing and decide on channels to communicate on – before actually understanding who they are communicating to.

So, if you want to find out who your customers, or prospects really are here are 3 things to think about:

– What are your audiences problems? By understanding how your product or service solves a problem –  you can rest assured that your route to market will be much more straight forward. This is finding out WHY you should be able to get in front of them.

– Where do your customers hang out? What do they read, what do they do with their spare time etc. This is where you can think about HOW you can get in front of them.

– What do your customers do? This helps you focus on the ‘perfect customer’ who are they, where do they work and what are their job roles? This is the ‘what’ you are trying to market too.

Write those things down. You might have a few different variations – but they are all important. I recommend looking across sectors/industries – as different people will have different combinations of the above.

2. Get to know your business

One of the most valuable tools a business can have when it comes to starting their marketing journey – is its people. Your people know your business inside out and this is a huge resource you can draw on. What do they want from your business? What are their personal growth goals? Whether you are the Managing Director or Marketing manager – you have a responsibility to work with your employees on what they want and getting buy in. Only then will you be able to bring your business objectives to life.

3. Have an objective in mind

Before you ask for any marketing help, or start out on your marketing journey – you have to know the answer to this question. Every single marketing objective must achieve a business objective. So, if your business is focussing on improving its profit – make sure your marketing objectives match that. If you are focussing on revenue – make sure your objectives are focussed on growth. And if your objectives are focussed on growing business size physically – then make sure you objectives feed into that. If you don’t do this – you will end up with a poor return on investment, and repeating poor mistakes – ultimately wasting time and money.

Every business and marketing objective should also come hand in hand with measurable goals. Make sure you have numbers against any objectives you put in place – if these slip – there must be a reason why to hold all parties accountable.

4. Be patient

Marketing isn’t a one size fits all solution. It’s not going to solve all your problems over night, and it certainly isn’t going to give you the ROI you are after in the space of a week. But what marketing, particularly digital marketing will do is give you incremental growth.

If you use the AIDA (Attention, Interest, desire and Action) model to guide your thinking – you can set measurable goals and you will see incremental growth. I always recommend putting in place short term and longer term goals – with a stretch goal in place If you really smash it!

5. Try and try again

Your marketing woes will not be solved straight off the bat. But for every solution you try that fails, you are one step closer to finding a solution that works for you and your business.

Testing different types of marketing on different channels – as well as different messaging is a great way to do this. If you aren’t seeing the results you set out in your objectives – then maybe they weren’t realistic? Or perhaps growth is much slower than anticipated?

Trying and failing with SEO, PPC, Social Media, Email and Digital PR will only work if you measure it. Get a report in place and measure it every month. After a while – you’ll see the growth you want, and you can start to focus on further growth with every new tactic you try.

If you want to find out more about how Purpose Media can help you plan your digital marketing strategy email Ellie here.

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