Digital marketing requires the same kind of rigor and strategy that you would apply to any aspect of running your business. My approach follows these steps:
- Know Your Objective. Identify a clear and measurable business objective (at least one)
- Know Your Audience. Identify a clear target audience (at least one)
- Know All Constraints. Determine available budget and timing requirements
- Audit Your Resources. Identify all assets that can integrated with digital marketing. These typically fall into three categories:
- Owned Media: Your product, sales force, store materials, events, call center, e-newsletter, Facebook page, etc.
- Paid Media: Traditional (TV, radio, print, billboards, etc.) and Digital (display ads, paid search, etc.)
- Partner Media: The assets of suppliers, retailers, or other strategic partners
- Choose Wisely. Determine which digital marketing tactics make sense for your objective, audience, available assets, and budget/timing constraints (conduct research to help answer this question). See a table I created to illustrate how to select.
- Integrate Smartly. Determine integration plan for digital with all other assets (which are drivers, which are destinations, which are both)
- Prepare for Results. Determine measurement plan for digital (necessary tracking, testing, reports, internal and external benchmarks, and plans for optimization)
- Apply Best Practices. Review applicable case studies and consult other resources to know what best practices to follow for each tactic used
- Execute & Optimize
- Measure & Learn. Measure against benchmarks, identify consumer and campaign insights, report, and present recommendations
