How to Create a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy

Are your marketing campaigns stuck in a rut? Do you feel as though you’re putting in more work than ever just to get subpar results? It’s time for a fresh approach. In this article, we’ll review a few basic steps you can take to craft a winning digital marketing strategy.

1. Understand the customers

For many marketers, “customers” are a nebulous, undefined group of people who may or may not decide to do business with your client. That sounds vague, doesn’t it? If you’re going to create campaigns that work, you need to put some time and effort into surveying customers and building true-to-life user personas. Start with demographic data at a 10,000-foot view and work your way down to the finer details.

Use your customer data and personas to make key campaign decisions. Sure, you could put several months of work into launching a new video player on your website. But, if your data shows that 80% of your site’s visitors are on mobile devices, that might not be the smartest allocation of your limited resources.

2. Set yourself up for success

Digital marketers have a lot on their plates. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work there is to do. Automation is key. Divide all of your work into two categories: what can be automated, and what needs to be done manually. If you put the time upfront into automating things like data collection and reporting, you’ll feel far less squeezed for a time later.

On that same note, make sure you set proper expectations with your peers, stakeholders, and clients. Setting realistic goals is hard: most people either overestimate their own abilities or promise things that are out of their control. Perhaps even worse, they don’t set goals at all—which means they have no way of measuring their own progress. Put some time into setting larger goals, and then outline all the milestones you’ll need to hit along the way to achieving them.

3. Treat failures as learning moments

Not everything you try is going to work. That website content you put all that time into? It might not resonate with people. Or, that amazing graphic you created for Instagram may not be the attention-grabber you thought it’d be. No one’s perfect.

When things don’t work out, it’s important to take a step back and reflect. What happened, and what can you learn from your failures or mistakes? Great marketing strategy happens when smart people are willing to make adjustments and grow from their shortcomings.

Speaking of learning, there’s a lot more that goes into building a successful digital marketing strategy! Take a look at the infographic below for a more comprehensive look: