As the owner of a business, increasing sales and creating brand awareness should be two goals that are very important to you.

How are you going about achieving these goals?

The first step would be to ask yourself some very important questions:

• What is your USP?
• Who’s your target market?
• Who are your competitors?
• What is your budget?
• How are you going to market your product or service effectively?

The problem is that many start-ups do not take these questions seriously enough. As a result, they all make the same mistakes. These mistakes will inevitably lead to their downfall.

How to avoid these mistakes?

Do your research! It’s crucial for you to have an ongoing understanding of your business strengths, weaknesses, your competitors and the market. This understanding will help you develop and keep an effective digital marketing strategy.

When creating a digital marketing strategy, there are very important components that you will need to focus on.

To help you, we have compiled a list of areas that you should be focusing on and shared a few reasons why it’s so important to develop a marketing strategy.

Let’s get started…

Why is it so important?

Other than the obvious direction that developing a marketing strategy allows your business to take, there are other reasons as to why it is such an important factor in the possible success of your business:

It helps determine optimal prices for your product/s or service/s

An effective marketing strategy plays a huge part in this because it outlines your exact target market, what channels are going to be used to market and the budget that is going to be set aside for these activities. When creating a digital marketing strategy, you’ll gain insight into what kind of prices your audience will respond to.

Assists with marketing communications

This is where market research on how you are going to communicate with your customers is key. If your brand needs very photograph heavy content, for example, Instagram would be one of the better platforms to market on.

It’s important because you do not want to be spending unnecessary money or time marketing on channels that are not going to contribute in any way.

Has significant internal organisational impact

Having an effective and set marketing plan will assist the cohesion within your organisation as employees and departments are fully aware of the plan and goals that need to be achieved.

Helps establish effective distribution channels

Having completed the research to develop an effective marketing plan, you should have discovered and decided on the relevant distribution channels that are needed to get your product where it needs to be when it’s needed.

Which components are the most important when developing an effective marketing strategy?

There are many factors that play a part in the development of an effective marketing plan. However, there are some that are more important than other.

Here are the ones that you should be focusing on the most:

Set Goals

One should set the companies goals according to the ‘S.M.A.R.T principle.

Not sure what this principle is? Well, in this case, it means that the goals set should be smart, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.

This is important because setting unrealistic goals will end up being very detrimental to the success of your business. These goals should be monitored constantly, making sure that all your staff is on track to achieving them.

Budget

This is debatably the most important part of your marketing strategy, as it takes into consideration the amount of money that you are willing to invest in the campaigns that will be used to market your product to potential customers.

Setting a budget can be extremely difficult, and you will need to include all your expenses; current and estimated (potential), when deciding on the budget for the product.

Social Media

This component is the most important component when it comes to increasing brand awareness and building a community around your brand. It is also one which you must be very careful about because if the wrong social media platforms are chosen to market your product, it will account for endless hours and amounts of money being wasted on a weekly basis.

So, be smart, choose the platforms that fit your brand and customer needs, and mass market!

Website

How can marketing online be effective when there is nowhere for online users to end up at where they can explore your company and product offering.

A website is essential, without one there is absolutely no way of being a successful company.

Why?

If there is no way for customers to find information about you immediately or can browse from the comfort of their own electronic device, they will forget about you in no time at all.

To conclude, a digital marketing strategy is of the utmost importance to the growth and success of your business. So, why not hire a group of experts to strategize and develop the perfect digital marketing strategy for you and your business.