[TEXT: DEMOCRACY, PROSPERITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, EDUCATION, SECURITY A PRODUCTION OF U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE]
Welcome back to Digital Marketing for Entrepreneurs.
This course covers practical ways entrepreneurs can develop
and maximize digital marketing for their online businesses.
We look at personal branding, best practices for website design,
keys to developing a digital marketing strategy,
and how best to maximize your online marketing
using available tools such as social media and search engines.
[TEXT: Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy] This lesson is Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy.
[TEXT: Written by Christopher Gray, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Scholly]
[TEXT: Learning Objectives] In this lesson, Christopher focuses on
how you can not only find and target your ideal customers online,
but also convert them into buyers
using a variety of digital marketing strategies.
He outlines the steps to take when creating a digital marketing strategy
and what to do and not do when building
the right digital marketing strategy for your business.
This course was written by Christopher Gray,
co-founder of Scholly,
a mobile app that helps students easily find scholarships for college.
The app also helps graduates pay off their student debt at U.S.-based institutions.
As a quick reminder, digital marketing
refers to the process of using digital channels
like your website, search engines, email, and social media
to market your business’s product or services to consumers.
Within digital marketing, you have a variety of tools and methods
you can use to strategically target your ideal buyer.
There is … Pay-Per-Click Advertising,
which involves paying a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo
to display your advertisement whenever users search for specific keywords.
Whenever someone clicks on your ad,
you’ll pay the search engine a set cost
depending on how much competition there is for the keywords you choose.
Social Media Marketing involves creating free content and paid ads
to promote your business on social media platforms
like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter.
Content Marketing involves creating educational and entertaining content
like blogs, videos, e-books, photo galleries, and other online resources
that help customers learn about topics related to your business
and come to view your business as an authority within your niche.
Email Marketing involves sending information, content, and offers
directly to subscribers of your business’ email list.
Influencer Marketing involves hiring influencers, people or businesses
that have a large online following
to promote your products or services to their followers.
Mobile Advertising involves creating ads that will show up
on your target customers’ mobile devices
as SMS text messages, banners, social ads, and chatbot ads.
Search Engine Optimization, which as we discussed in lesson 1,
involves optimizing your website to appear on search engine results pages
for keywords related to your business.
Depending on your target consumer,
you may find it more valuable to focus on one or more of these strategies than others.
For example, at Scholly,
one of the strategies they prioritize is Social Media Marketing
because, as Christopher notes, their target audience is young
and tends to spend a lot of their time on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
So, how do you build the right digital marketing strategy for your business?
Let’s look at what Christopher says are some DOs and DON’Ts.
When creating a digital marketing strategy for your business,
you want to do the following:
Create buyer personas.
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers.
You want to think about basic demographic information
like their age, geographic location, and income level.
You’ll also want to consider some of the core questions
this type of customer might have about the topics
related to your business.
Map out the customer journey.
There are likely many steps a customer will need to take
from their initial contact with your brand to making a purchase.
And it’s important to know what that journey looks like
so that your marketing is relevant to customers at every unique stage.
Develop SMART goals.
SMART goals are goals that are specific,
measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
By creating marketing goals that include each of those characteristics,
you make it easier to develop steps
toward achieving the goals of your digital marketing strategy.
Set a budget.
You want to at least have an estimated budget
of how much you can spend on digital marketing.
Not only will this help you choose the appropriate digital channels,
but it’s also important to help you calculate
the return on investment in the future.
Choose your digital marketing strategies.
After creating your buyer personas, customer journey, SMART goals, and budget,
you’ll have enough information to know which digital marketing strategies
have the highest potential for success.
If you’re just starting out, choose a few strategies to master first
and then add in others as your company grows.
Analyze results and make improvements.
After a set time, it’s important to step back
and see what is and isn’t working.
Then, you can make more informed decisions when setting new goals
and developing future digital marketing campaigns.
Now, let’s look at what Christopher says to avoid.
When creating your digital marketing strategy,
you’ll want to make sure you don’t:
Dismiss customer feedback.
Customer feedback, good or bad,
should be seen as an opportunity to improve the customer experience
and all of your marketing efforts.
Rely exclusively on paid advertising.
The growth you get from paid ads is temporary
and is not suitable for a long-term strategy.
So, you need to also invest in other forms of marketing,
such as content marketing.
Try to market to everyone.
You can’t sell to everyone.
And if you don’t target your marketing to fit your ideal buyer persona,
you risk wasting money and effort
on people who may never buy from your business.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at how,
once you’ve created your digital marketing strategy,
you can put it into action and maximize your efforts.
For more on this course and to access related resources,
visit our website.
[TEXT: DEMOCRACY, PROSPERITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, EDUCATION, SECURITY A PRODUCTION OF U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE]