Digital marketing is more important than ever. Where do you start if you want to develop a digital marketing strategy? It’s still a common challenge since many businesses know how vital digital and mobile channels are today for acquiring and retaining customers. Yet they don’t have an integrated plan to support digital transformation and company growth and engage their audiences effectively online.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing, specifically, refers to ‘Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies and media.’
Digital technologies and media include:
- Websites
- Mobile apps
- Social media
- Search Engines
- Advertising
- Email and automation
- Digital Partnerships with other digital companies
4 reasons why you need a digital strategy?
1. You need to know your online audience or market share
Customer demand for online services may be underestimated if you haven’t researched this. Perhaps, more importantly, you won’t understand your online marketplace. The dynamics will be different from traditional channels with different types of customer profile and behavior, competitors, propositions, and options for marketing communications.
2. Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share
If you’re not devoting enough resources to digital, or you’re using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch!
3. You don’t have a powerful online value proposition
A clearly defined digital value proposition tailored to your different target customer personas will help you differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially
4. You’re duplicating marketing resources
Even if you do have sufficient resources, they may be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger companies where you see different parts of the marketing organization purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.
