Any activity with an end goal [whether it’s winning war, building a city or selling a product] should have a blueprint in place.

Value exchange

It is important to identify the supporting value-adds to the brand promise that are unique to the digital landscape. What extras beyond the basic products and services do you offer to customers?

The internet offers many channels for value creation. However, the definition of what is “valuable” depends largely on the target audience, so it is crucial to research your users and  gather insights into what they want and need.

Content marketing is a process of conceptualizing and creating this sort of content –examples of value based content include a DIY gardening video for a hardware brand, a research paper for a business analyst or a funny info-graphic for a marketing company.

Objectives

Objectives are essential in any marketing endeavour-without them, your strategy would have no direction and no goal or win conditions. It’s important to be able to take a step back and ask, Why are we doing any of this? What goal, purpose or outcome are we looking for?

  • What are you trying to achieve?
  • How will you know if you are successful?

 

Objectives needs to be SMART

  • Specific- the objective must be clear and detailed, rather than vague and general.
  • Measurable- the objective must be measurable so that you can gauge whether you are attaining the desired outcome.
  • Attainable- the objective must be something that is possible for your brand to achieve based on available resources.
  • Realistic- the objective must also be sensible and based on data and trends: don’t exaggerate or overestimate what can be achieved.
  • Time-bound- finally, the objective must be linked to a specific timeframe.

Key Performance Indicators

KPIs are the specific metrics or pieces of data that you will look at to determine whether your tactics are performing well and meeting your objectives. For example, a gardener may look at the growth rate, colour and general appearance of a plant to evaluate whether it is healthy. In the same way, a marketer will look at a range of data points to determine whether a chosen tactic is delivering. KPIs are determined per tactic, with an eye on the overall objective.

Targets

Finally, targets are the specific values that are set for your KPI’s to reach within a specific time period.

Here is an example of

SMART OBJECTIVE

  • Increase sales through the e-commerce platform by 10% within the next 6 months

Tactics

  • Search Advertising
  • Facebook brand page

KPIs per tactic

  • Search advertising-number of search referrals, cost per click on the ads.
  • Facebook brand page- number of comments and shares on campaign- specific posts

Target per tactic

  • Search advertising- 1000 search referrals after the first month, with a 10% month-on-month increase after that
  • Facebook brand page- 50 comments and 10 shares on campaign-specific posts per week.

Tactics and evaluation

Many digital tools and tactics are available once you have defined your digital marketing objectives. Each tactic has its strengths-for example, acquisition [gaining new customers] may best be driven by search advertising, while email is one of the most effective tools for selling more products to customers.

Tactic

 

Outcome

 
SEO Customer retention and acquisition 
 

This is the practice of optimising a website to rank higher on the search engine results pages for relevant search terms. SEO involves creating relevant, fresh and user-friendly content that search engines index and serve when people enter a search term that is relevant to your product or service.

 SEO has a key role to play in acquisition, as it ensures your organisation’s offering will appear in the search results, allowing you to reach potential customers. A site that is optimized for search engines is also a site that is optimized in retention.
Search advertising Sales, customer retention and acquisition
In pay-per-click or search advertising, the advertiser pays only when someone clicks on their ad. The ads appear on search engine results pages.

 

 

  

 

The beauty of search advertising is that it is keyword based. This means an ad will come up in response to the search terms entered by the consumer. It therefore plays a role in sales, acquisition and retention. It allows the advertiser to reach people who are already in the buying cycle or are expressing interest in what they have to offer.

 
Online advertising Branding and acquisition
Online advertising covers advertising in all areas of the Internet – ads in emails, ads on social networks and mobile devices, and display ads on normal websites.

 

 

 The main objective of online advertising is to raise brand awareness online. It can also be more interactive and awareness on the internet. It can also be more interactive and appealing, as users can choose to engage with the ad or not. Online advertising can be targeted to physical locations, subject areas, past user behaviors, and much more.
Video marketing Sales, customer retention and acquisition
 

 

Video marketing involves creating video content. This can either be outright video advertising, or can be a valuable useful content marketing.

 

 

 

 

 Since it is so interactive and engaging, video marketing is excellent for capturing and retaining customer attention. Done correctly, it provides tangible value – in the form of information, entertainment or inspiration – and boosts a brand’s image in the eyes of the public .
Social media Branding, value creation and participation
 

 

Social media, also known as consumer-generated media, is media (in the form of text, visuals and audio) created to be shared. It has changed the face of marketing by allowing collaboration and connection in a way that no other channel has been able to offer.

 

 

 

 From a strategic perspective, social media is useful for brand building, raising awareness of the brand story and allowing the consumer to become involved in the story through collaboration. Social media platforms also play a role in building awareness, due to their shareable, viral nature. They can also provide crowd-sourced feedback and allow brands to share valuable content directly with their fans.
Email marketing Customer retention and value creation
 

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that delivers commercial and content-based messages to an audience. It is extremely cost effective, highly targeted, customisable on a mass scale and completely measurable – all of which make it one of the most powerful digital marketing tactics.

 

 

 

 Email marketing is a tool for building relationships with potential and existing customers through valuable content and promotional messages. It should maximise the retention and value of these customers, ultimately leading to greater profitability for the organisation as a whole. A targeted, segmented email database means that a brand can direct messages at certain sectors of their customer base in order to achieve the best results.