6 Simple Steps To Nail Your Digital Strategy

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you first move your business online and have to think about a digital strategy. There is Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which one should you be on or should you try them all? Should you make videos? How can you make your business show up on Google?

It is important to approach your move with strategic perspective. Focusing on many different digital tactics can lead to a lot of activity and few results. Creating a digital strategy helps you decide where is best to spend your time and money. In addition, it should also be clear about where you shouldn’t invest your budget.

Step 1: Set clear business objectives for your digital strategy

So, the first step in your digital strategy is to determine why you’re creating it. What do you want to achieve by implementing digital tools and online platforms into your business?

Some common motivations include:

• Finding more customers
• Saving on traditional marketing costs
• Improving customer communications
• Attracting quality staff to your team

Once you distinguish your goals, you can research the technology options that will best help you to achieve them.

Step 2: Optimise your website for mobile

If you are not yet online, now is the time to build your website! Around 85% of small businesses have an online presence already.

If you already have a website, ensuring that it’s optimised for mobile devices is imperative. Statistics show that 86% of all Australians between 18 and 29 and 66% aged from 50 to 64 are using their mobile phones to access the internet. It is essential that your website is user-friendly and simple to navigate. It must keep your customers coming back.

Step 3: Building your audience with social media

After your website has been set up, the next step is reaching your target customers. The best place to find those customers is usually where they spend their time already. This is usually social media. Your digital strategy needs to be a clever one. Don’t waste time, energy and money on the wrong platforms. You won’t get a return on your investment if your content isn’t being seen by your target market. If you can find out which networks your customers are using you can specifically develop content for those channels.

Step 4: Extend your reach with paid advertising

You can fast-track your digital strategy by using paid advertising or social media. Doing this gets your business in front of more people then you could have reached by yourself. Using tools such as Facebook ads allows you to specify your audience based on certain criteria like location, age and interest. This helps to ensure that your products & services are being shared with people who are most likely to purchase them.

Other useful online advertising tools include Google Ads, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Step 5: Use PR to engage more customers

Coverage in traditional media such as TV and radio help to create credibility as a professional in your field. It can also assist in reaching more potential customers while increasing your engagement with your existing customers.

PR companies can help you feature in the media. Some of their initial questions may include:

• What makes you stand out from your competitors?
• What can you contribute?
• How can we make your message interesting?

Knowing the answers to these questions will assist the agency you’re working with to find more media opportunities for you.

Step 6: Measure and tweak your Digital Strategy

Finally, one great thing about digital marketing is that almost everything you do is measurable. You are able to analyse the traffic to your website. Firstly, there is the number of people engaging with your posts on social media. Secondly, you can look at the costs when someone clicks on one of your ads. Furthermore, the number of people who subscribe to your newsletter might be of interest. You can even track those who fill out your contact form. This information allows you to experiment. You can test which different subject lines work best when you send an email to subscribers. Find out which images people most respond to when you run ad campaigns. Also test which buttons and in what position people are most likely to see and click. Then, of course, you can use whichever option gets the best results.

To kickstart your digital strategy we recommend our Ultimate Website Management Plan which includes consistent social media setup & styling for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. and also provides you with fresh monthly SEO website content which can be fed across your social media channels for maximum exposure. For more information about this affordable and effective fixed-cost option, please get in touch.